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Quieting Your G5?
metajunkie wants to take a bite out of this issue: "I recently set up an at-home recording studio with a DP G5 and a ProTools mBox. Problem is, I can't record (like, say, a voice over) anywhere near the computer because when the cooling fans kick in, it comes in way too loud over the mic. I can't move the computer into another room, and while I'm tempted to throw a blanket over the thing, I don't think that'll help. Does anyone know a place that sells a silencer box for the G5 or some good DIY way to cut out the noise?"
That should help...
Stick it under the desk or in a cabinet.
You don't need all that G5 power for recording. On my G4 laptop I can go into energy saver in system preferences and set the processor performance to 'Reduced'. That burns less power, creates less heat and the fans don't turn on. You may be able to do the same on your desktop.
Also, if you have a lot of junk software on the machine burning CPU cycles it's going to create more heat and more noise. Shut down power-hungry apps.
Me too. This almost sounds like FUD trolling. I have a dual G5 2.0 and while it is noisier than my G4 laptop, it is an order of magnitude quiter than any other desktop machine I have owned. The drive makes no noise at all and only the fan makes any real noise.
-Sean
there is quiet and then there is 'quiet'.
it all depends on what you compare it against, in a quiet room a computer that is relatively quiet can sound like it's a hurricane when the fans kick in(the fans in g5 are temperature controlled afaik).
my main pc is nowadays pretty quiet, but it is still audible. however when you compare against a 'usual' modern pc it's 'totally silent'(thanks to the psu fan being the ONLY fan in that system, cpu+gpu are watercooled and the water is kept cool enough by just having a big enough reservoir)
as to making that g5 more quiet, if not wanting to tamper with the thing itself I'd make sure that the thing is not too close to a wall(better airflow). if that doesn't help maybe build a soundproof enclosure(with damped tunnels for airflow)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Same here. I can hear the three Boxx-brand blades in the other room, and the PC on the desk across from me, and the HVAC, but not the dual 2GHz G5 under my desk. I suspect the poster has a faulty box, or the clear plastic air guide inside is misplaced.
Any chance he's using some kind of condenser mic? That'd make any kinda background noise jump all over you, wouldn't it?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
This has been modded funny, but this is an actual studio trick that's been used for many years. Bathrooms have pretty good acoustic qualities and built-in reverb. For a budget home musician, I'd sing in the shower instead of pay studio time for vocals. Run your mic cable from the shower/bathroom to your pre, into your mac in the other room. You might be surprised by good results.
I always find new reasons to be impressed with Apple's engineering. Unmarked wires shouldn't be a problem. A little harmless experimentation with the wires on the fans will determine the power, ground, and monitoring wires. Panasonic does make panaflos with fan speed monitoring, though they tend to run quite expensive. It would be very important to know whether or not the G5 can run without monitoring, but that is also a test for experimentation. If so, you can always set your variables yourself, and just feed back the RPM settings to keep the mobo chugging along yourself. Bypassing the system is only dangerous if you let parts overheat. Plus, the effects of fan noise are reduced if all of the fans are spinning at the same speeds... giving off the same white noise, if you will. Generally, the dual ball-bearing stuff that passes for low volume fans can't touch a hydro bearing one, but we can give Apple the benefit of the doubt. Assuming Apple has a great setup and assuming they have optimized fan usage for silence (which it doesn't seem like, seeing as how people seem to be complaining that it is the loudest component), there is still the option of replacing the faster running fans with a liquid cooled system and a large radiator. Such a thing could be used only on certain locations such as the CPU, PSU, and graphics card, and could significantly reduce overall volume. Passive heat-pipe based GPU coolers also exist for ATI's card range, but do take up quite a bit of room in a case. Here we're talking about a real investment in equipment, but the effects can be quite pronounced. And of course, as much acoustic absorption material as can fit will reduce last-mile sound emissions. A musician out here in Boston recently had a G4 case custom built from sound-deadening plastic, with a lot of extra room for airflo and more acoustic padding. Warranties aside, there is no reason to treat any computer like a black box. We don't need to know all of the details of how it is supposed to do what it is doing. We just need to know what it is supposed to do, come up with a better way of doing it (with usually means cutting fewer corners than they did), and trick the old system into accepting the new one. Again, not having a G5 in front of me, I can't give more than preliminary ideas from someone who has been doing this for a while. But there is certainly no reason to give up, especially while improvements can be made.
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I am currently recording some vocal overdubs in a small room with a dual G4 in it. Here is my advice if you can't move the machine to a second room:
1) Position the mic so that the maximum angle of rejection faces the computer (180 degrees for cardioid patterns, 90 degrees for figure 8, etc).
2) Dampen the walls of the room with auralex, blankets, mattress foam, whatnot.
3) Gate the vocals when mixing down.
If you're close mic'ing the vocals, fan noise shouldn't be a big issue. It's really when you want to start using distant mics that it becomes a pain. Obviously omnidirectional mics will also tend to be more problematic.
Another thing I do sometimes if I want to record an extremely quiet audio source is fire up VNC on my laptop and run mic cables into the next room. My laptop is dead silent under normal operating conditions so it makes a great remote control for my desktop.
Both are correct these days. It's short for "microphone," but "mike" is a common alternate spelling for it. I've even seen it on the packaging from some microphones I've bought. Dictionary.com lists both spellings as legit, too.
Sort of like how "Coke" is short for "Coca-cola" but is not spelled "Coc," is it?
Railing against it is as useless as complaining about "catsup" being spelled "ketchup." Language evolves with usage, and "mike" is becoming the more common spelling than "mike", mainly because it works better when you verb it (as in "Miking" or "Miked".)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's not a troll, if the poster cares enough about audio to blow vast amounts of shift-4 on Pro-Tools, then he's after some seriously high-end results. The G5 is a quiet machine but it's a long way from being totally silent.
My advice is for the poster to do whatever is necessary to put the G5 in a different room. This doesn't have to involve moving the G5 though, maybe the answer is to turn the problem round, and get a dedicated vocal booth to record in?
Other things to do do are ensure that the mac is not resting on a hard surface which reflects or transmits a lot of sound (a desk can act like a sounding board) and to try to cut down reflected sound from objects near the G5 (walls, desk etc) by putting something soft on them - you might be surprised how much of the sound is reflected.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Right, because that's not going to alter the thermal properties of the case design.
/really/ quiet.
Sticking a lint-laced towel inside your nine-fan, four-cooling-zone, twenty-one-temperature-sensor G5 surely isn't a bright way of going about cutting back on the noise--unless when it shuts off from choking on towel lint or overheats. Then it's
Mikey-San
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I've used bandpass filtering to cut out all kinds of dynamic fluctuations in background noise... fans are the least of my worries. Fans are far more consistent in their sound frequencies, at their various fixed speeds (they aren't continuously variable like a passenger jet turbofan). You'd be surprised at what a few fine-tuned bandpass filters can do. If you want to get really creative, try keyframing sometime... and then you can begin to understand the nightmare of filming in a live environment as opposed to a locked down set! *evil grin*