My computer is loud.

I've done a lot of sample and synth based composing in the past, and recently have been expanding my horizons by adding some vocals.

But, as I said in the title, my computer is too loud.  Here is my setup:

M-Audio Nova
http://www.amazon.com/gp/...ref=wms_ohs_product_T2

Emu 0202

Behringer PS400 Ultra-Compact Phantom Power Supply
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FG795I

The computer itself is one I built myself 5 years ago or so.  It's slowly dying.  I will probably wait until it completely dies before replacing it.

Maybe the best solution would be to get a portable recorder.  Something like the Zoom R16 or V-Studio 100.  Then I could just turn off my computer or go into another room and record the vocals, with the backing playing through my headphones.  The Zoom R16's 16 tracks is about 15 tracks more than I need, though I might use it in the future.

If there is still background noise I could get a dynamic microphone.  Or maybe a dynamic mic is all I need in the first place.  I can move my microphone a distance away from my computer.  I probably have enough cord length to use my headphones from a distance as well.  But then I'd have to walk back and forth from the computer to do transport, etc.

Or maybe I should get an inexpensive laptop.  Then I'd have something to take notes on at school.  (There's always a pencil and paper but I type about 100wpm.)  I could just do the recordings on the laptop and do most of the heavy duty stuff on my desktop.

Any advice?

I finally got it.

You mean your computer is too noisy.

My initial reaction was how can your computer be so loud as in producing too much output

I need more coffee.

I cut a hole in the wall and ran the computer cables through the wall so that the tower is in a closet in an adjacent room.  No noise.

@Dave King
That is a good idea.  Maybe when I get my own place I'll get a setup like yours.

@Cactus Music
When I build my next computer I will be sure to use a quiet heatsink and fan for the CPU.  A chair cushion you say?  That's creative.  Maybe if I moved my tower into a corner I could use a similar solution temporarily.

What I really need is more RAM, the i7-950 is doing great, what I really need is more RAM and hard drive space. I have a laptop (more like a mobile workstation) it has 3 internal hard drives in it. I'd like to get a desktop eventually so I can have greater storage capacity (it would also be quieter). In the interim I should probably invest in more RAM though as I've found 6 gigs limiting. 

@Old55
We agree that dust is evil.  I've cleaned out most of the dust, but I realize I missed the power supply.  That might help a little.

@Shadow of The Wind
I read that dynamic mics are better at filtering out background noise.  The microphone I have is a cardioid.  Maybe I just need to understand the one I have better.

I see that I should have mentioned this in the first place.  There are times when I would like to record whispering or near-whispering.  I combat the noise floor by getting quite close to the microphone, with a pop filter.  My computer noise is perfectly fine for normal use.  It's just too noisy when I'm recording.

Still, I've seen some good advice.

A dynamic mike will reject some background noise and is often a solution in a noisy environment. But there are many types and all are a little different. I use this Audio Technica Mike ( The Model number wore off years ago) that has a nice balance between rejection but is very sensitive to subtle nuances.
I recommend trying a better fan as it takes 1 minute to swap it out and they cost next to nothing.  I was at this guys house who games a lot and he had taken the side of the case and had a 12" house fan sitting there. It was not quiet.

The other solution is make a little iso booth out of some some quilts or ? with the open end facing away from were the computer is. They sell some space age looking gizmo that clips to a mike stand but to me it's more fun to build my own ugly contraptions.

Hi,

I'm not really adding much here, just adding to some general ideas that have been put forward.

If you invest in gear to silence your DAW, you can carry it forward to the next DAW, so you could start buying stuff now.

Passively cooled GPU's are available that are good enough for all but 3d gaming (on a DAW??).  I even have a passively cooled PSU, the Silverstone ST30NF.  It only has 300w though, so no good for power hungry rigs.

After market CPU coolers are cheap these days, and mostly silent.  I have a case for my HDD, which cuts out a lot of noise, and you can sometimes adjust the bios settings to make the HDD quieter, at the cost of a small amount of performance.

You could also look at SSD drives, or if you are cheap like me, you can buy a SDHC to SATA board from ebay.  Booting your OS and running your apps from SSD is the way to go.

The only thing I really hear now is my main HDD, but I can spin that down via power management and record onto SSD if necessary.

I even ran with a water cooled setup at one point, cooling the GPU HDD and CPU via a giant passive radiator.  Not to be advised.  The pump makes its own noise, and if like me you neglect to check fluid levels, you can fry your rig :(

On the subject of external recorders, I also sometimes use a Zoom H2, which is suprisingly good via the built in mics for a range of applications.  The only major difference between this and an entry level large diaphragm mic is the self noise.  The mic input is no good, and don't bother with 24 bit recording mode, as the signal path is not good enough to exploit the extra headroom.  But for the money, it's rude not to have one.

Cheers,

James

Starise

Old55

Anthop


@Old55
We agree that dust is evil.  I've cleaned out most of the dust, but I realize I missed the power supply.  That might help a little.

@Shadow of The Wind
I read that dynamic mics are better at filtering out background noise.  The microphone I have is a cardioid.  Maybe I just need to understand the one I have better.

I see that I should have mentioned this in the first place.  There are times when I would like to record whispering or near-whispering.  I combat the noise floor by getting quite close to the microphone, with a pop filter.  My computer noise is perfectly fine for normal use.  It's just too noisy when I'm recording.

Still, I've seen some good advice.

You can also replace the loud fans--at least the case fans--fairly cheaply.  Just make sure they can move enough air so you don't over heat any components. 

Here are a couple of sources for info:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/index.html

Once you know what you're looking for, you can probably find some quiet fans at your local shop, too. 

  Great ideas. I have put in decent fans. I know I'm living on the edge but I unplug my fans when recording vocals.all except  for the cpu fan which you can't really hear. I then monitor my cpu temps. In my air conditioned space the temps take a long time to become critical. My rig has a lot of fans in it. There is the one that is part of my power supply(very quiet) The one for the CPU(also very quiet) Then there are three case fans, one is a part of an internal heat sink cooler.

I would not recommend unpowering a cooling fan though unless you know what you are doing. Its my work around and it has never let me down yet. You'll never see this suggestion in any computer book lol.

If I tracked vocals all the time this would be usless and unproductive, but its just me, seldom tracking my own pipes.

Believe it or not my rig is fairly quiet even with all of those fans running. Quiet enough to mix sitting next to!

I don't think zoom will give you nearly what you could get from a dedicated computer. I have read the reviews on these and they have very short throw faders and lots of menus and submenus,and I don't know about you but I hate those. JMHO FWIW.

It sounds like you have everything under control.  Just a few more items--mostly out of curiosity.  

When you disconnect the fans, can you tell which fan was causing your original problem?  Did you do anything about that? 

If you do a lot of vocal recording, you might want to invest in a hardware fan controller.  You could turn down the fan speed without having to physically disconnect the fans.  The controller will also monitor the hardware in case it overheats and will increase the fan speed to compensate. 

Continued good luck with this. 

 I have the older zoom h4 which is very similar. It is a pretty amazing piece of kit. With XLR and phantom power you can add nice mikes to it and make really good location recordings in 24/96.The built in mikes are also nice.

There's alot of things you can do.  There are fan rebuild kits that insert rubber bushings and gaskets to minimize vibrations.  you could simply build a box around your tower with some neoprene on the inside to help quiet it down.  Placing it on the floor will help a little. or may be just keeping all of your CPU stuff in a closet and running cables out to the rest of the studio.  My personal recommendation would be to foam up a closet and use it as an isolation booth for vocals and other open air miking apps.