Noise canceling computer fans!:

http://www.gizmag.com/rotosub-noise-cancelling-fans/19463/

This company Rotosub has combined noise canceling and computer fans to dramatically reduce noise in the fan. I need something like that for my digital home studio, the fans are quiet but could be a lot quieter for me, I can hear them when I have the recording going and playing an instrument, acoustic ones. Electric ones don't care about ambient noises but acoustic guitars, mandolins and such, the fan noise gets picked up along with the instrument so that is the cats meow for me!

They can turn on and off the noise cancelling effect and it is dramatic in the video.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Noise canceling computer fans!

Its a great idea. However it is not the only way to do it. Generally, larger fans are quieter, and the use of heat sinks can in some cases eliminate the need for a fan altogether. Then there is also water cooling.
But if it doesn't cost too much, it might be the best solution.
Another factor is that better efficiency due to shrinking die sizes (in computers) has resulted in far lower cooling requirements.

On my computer, the hard disk is nearly as noisy as the fan, so I need a noise cancelling chip for that too.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Its a great idea. However it is not the only way to do it. Generally, larger fans are quieter, and the use of heat sinks can in some cases eliminate the need for a fan altogether. Then there is also water cooling.
But if it doesn't cost too much, it might be the best solution.
Another factor is that better efficiency due to shrinking die sizes (in compu ...[text shortened]... r, the hard disk is nearly as noisy as the fan, so I need a noise cancelling chip for that too.

I built a big wooden box around my PC and paved the inside with 3 inch thick foam. It got rid of the noise but had an air flow problem and the comp overheated, so I added some holes on one end and ducted a fan inside but I was back to noise, no help!

I did solve the problem however, but it was a pain the the butt solution.
I drilled some 3 inch diameter wide holes in the baseboard and put the comp on the other side of the wall inside the hallway away from the music studio and that solved the noise problem for sure but it was a pain in the but for post production, having to go around the corner, put in a CD, close the drawer, and mix down the tracks to the CD back in the room where the mouse, keyboard and monitor was.



It worked but such a pain in the butt not having the box close.

I had to use some USB extender cables but it worked.

It would have been nice if I had a real studio with glass enclosed sound booth and all but I think the wife would have nixed that one🙂

Originally posted by sonhouse
It got rid of the noise but had an air flow problem and the comp overheated,

Surely you saw that coming?

It would probably have been easier to simply get some quieter fans. If you don't need a high powered computer, you can probably find one that is cooled with heat sinks. Or if you are rich enough, get water cooling.

Or if you are daring, you could go for the oil cooled solution:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

Originally posted by twhitehead
Surely you saw that coming?

It would probably have been easier to simply get some quieter fans. If you don't need a high powered computer, you can probably find one that is cooled with heat sinks. Or if you are rich enough, get water cooling.

Or if you are daring, you could go for the oil cooled solution:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

Yeah, I saw all of that. I hadn't thought the thing through when I built the box! Was a nice lesson in thermodynamics though.

For audio processing you need all the cpu horsepower you can get. Also, all the ram you can get! I have some sampling programs, Kontakt for instance, that has samples 30+ gigabytes wide. So to keep up with the samples, you either have many gigs of ram, keep the sample fully in ram or you have a HD banging itself to death transferring data continuously.

Originally posted by sonhouse
For audio processing you need all the cpu horsepower you can get. Also, all the ram you can get! I have some sampling programs, Kontakt for instance, that has samples 30+ gigabytes wide. So to keep up with the samples, you either have many gigs of ram, keep the sample fully in ram or you have a HD banging itself to death transferring data continuously.

Well maybe you have found the easiest solution (relocate the computer), but if you can afford all that horse power, you can probably afford water cooling.

My PC has 4 cores, and I never manage to fully utilize it because the RAM is so much slower, and the HDD slower still. In fact I doubt I've ever pushed it over 50%. In my case the HDD is the main limiting factor for most tasks. I see solid state disks are getting a whole lot cheaper, but still well outside of my price range.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Well maybe you have found the easiest solution (relocate the computer), but if you can afford all that horse power, you can probably afford water cooling.

My PC has 4 cores, and I never manage to fully utilize it because the RAM is so much slower, and the HDD slower still. In fact I doubt I've ever pushed it over 50%. In my case the HDD is the main lim ...[text shortened]... ee solid state disks are getting a whole lot cheaper, but still well outside of my price range.

That is part of the problem here, I cannot afford the latest and greatest comps, just XP machines with a max of 3.5 gigs of ram. I would love to have a 50 gig ram machine with a dozen processors and such and totally immersed in oil or whatever but I can't afford the 10 kilobucks it would take to make such a system.

Samsung is working on a solid state drive that is a million times faster than those out today and able to have rewrite cycles in the trillions so when that kind of thing comes out, the industry will be totally shaken up for sure, HD's relegated to the scrap heap of time.

Originally posted by sonhouse
That is part of the problem here, I cannot afford the latest and greatest comps, just XP machines with a max of 3.5 gigs of ram. I would love to have a 50 gig ram machine with a dozen processors and such and totally immersed in oil or whatever but I can't afford the 10 kilobucks it would take to make such a system.

My main machine has 4Gb RAM and I am sure I am way poorer than you. It used to be XP, but it crashed, so I installed Windows 7 64bit. (a pirate copy).

I cant imagine what machine would cost 10 killobucks. A top of the range system here is only about R10,000 which is just over US$1,000 and we pay more for such things than you do.

Samsung is working on a solid state drive that is a million times faster than those out today and able to have rewrite cycles in the trillions so when that kind of thing comes out, the industry will be totally shaken up for sure, HD's relegated to the scrap heap of time.
Unless it also has the capacity of a HDD and the same price per GB, the HDD might live on. The best system now is a hybrid with Solid state for frequently accessed stuff and ordinary HDD for main storage.

Originally posted by twhitehead
My main machine has 4Gb RAM and I am sure I am way poorer than you. It used to be XP, but it crashed, so I installed Windows 7 64bit. (a pirate copy).

I cant imagine what machine would cost 10 killobucks. A top of the range system here is only about R10,000 which is just over US$1,000 and we pay more for such things than you do.

[b]Samsung is workin ...[text shortened]... w is a hybrid with Solid state for frequently accessed stuff and ordinary HDD for main storage.

I see the fastest gaming machines up at the 9000 dollar range. I could never buy something like that, even though I could use the CPU horsepower for audio samples where the more ram the better.

The only problem with using SSD for the most frequent reads and writes is the limited cycle numbers, around 100,000 accesses and it dies.

Not sure how long a time that represents in terms of regular use of a comp but it will die.

That is why the Samsung development sounds so promising. I imagine their product will be more expensive to start but like you said, matching that with a nice terabyte HD would give a real boost to computer speed. A SSD with nanosecond access times could even mean you may not need so much ram, couple of gigs might be all you need.

But all that is in the future, have to live with what I have now.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The only problem with using SSD for the most frequent reads and writes is the limited cycle numbers, around 100,000 accesses and it dies.

I think they can get round that quite easily with clever algorithms to ensure that frequent writes are spread around the disk. This is already done quite effectively with thumb drives.
Remember also that the typical HDD only has a life time of about 5 years.

Maybe they could even have a small section of the drive for high write cycles which could be swapped out. One of the advantages of SSD drives is they could be made modular so you could add Gigabytes to a drive or replace failing sections. It would even be possible to implement RAID protection on a single drive.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I think they can get round that quite easily with clever algorithms to ensure that frequent writes are spread around the disk. This is already done quite effectively with thumb drives.
Remember also that the typical HDD only has a life time of about 5 years.

Maybe they could even have a small section of the drive for high write cycles which could be s ...[text shortened]... lace failing sections. It would even be possible to implement RAID protection on a single drive.

Yep, all possible. Still, if the Samsung development holds out and makes it to commercialization, it will blow everything else in the SSD field out of the water. No need for special algorithms when you get a trillion read-writes! News at 11.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Yep, all possible. Still, if the Samsung development holds out and makes it to commercialization, it will blow everything else in the SSD field out of the water. No need for special algorithms when you get a trillion read-writes! News at 11.

It all depends on price. Current SSD would already have replaced magnetic storage if the price was right.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I see the fastest gaming machines up at the 9000 dollar range.

The one and only house I owned, I bought for about US$10,000. It was actually two houses semi-detached, but we combined it into one by removing the dividing wall. That was back in Livingstone and we have since sold it.

Originally posted by twhitehead
The one and only house I owned, I bought for about US$10,000. It was actually two houses semi-detached, but we combined it into one by removing the dividing wall. That was back in Livingstone and we have since sold it.

Sounds like you got a real deal, that wouldn't buy a garage here! So lets see, should we by a maximus gaminous machine for ten thou or buy a house for the same money. Hmm, I have to think about that one...... NOT!