PC isolation booth? Do they really work?

[Odeo]

Ive seen some isolation boxes, specially those cube looking ones the size of a rack enclosure. But most project or home studios I have seen with it, leaves their door open. They say it gets too hot.

Anyone else have one. Is it silent, but it gets too hot that you have to leave the door open. If they get a stronger fan to compensate the heat, does it become too noisy.

I have one and encounter the same problem, and mine uses an exaust pipe. But still it gets as hot as 27-32 inside the box and hotter during summer or when more people are in the room. Does your box get that hot. Will the PT systems, comp, HD, Burner etc in the box, handle this kind of heat, so that I should just leave the lid closed. What temperature should these boxes be at inside.

Opinions and personal experiences please.

Ta

[warhead]

I've thought about buying an iso box, but instead I'm buying long cables and getting the computer out of my room! Cheaper solution and can't hear it anymore at all.



External DVDRW/CDRW in the room and what else do you need?

War

[LumenStudio]

Originally posted by warhead
I've thought about buying an iso box, but instead I'm buying long cables and getting the computer out of my room! Cheaper solution and can't hear it anymore at all.



External DVDRW/CDRW in the room and what else do you need?

War

I thought about this too, but with all the digital audio cabales (adat / spdif / wc) coming out of my PC (14+) that becomes a more expensive solution

It's probably not that hard to build one. I saw an ISO Raxx used for $250 at GC, I should have bought it.

Cheers,
Lumen

[orange]

i've not used an iso-booth - i took warhead's route and moved the machine into another room. Its great - it can now make as much noise as it wants and I don't care.

I can't imagine that the spdif/wc cables would be that expensive - i'm not sure about the adat cable however - but still cheaper than $250 ?.

I personally wouldn't feel comfortable about locking a modern dual cpu machine - 500w psu - monster graphics card and loads of extra pci stuff inside it - inside a closed box. I find it hard to believe that you can just vent the air out of the box and expect it to remain cool inside. If there was some kind of aircon in there then it might stand a chance.

It does seem that people are using them however so I assume they do work to some extent. If you can't move the machine then I don't suppose you have many other options. I seem to remember that Pentium cpus slow down when they start getting hot (to protect themselves)...so maybe those people with 'overheating ?' machines don't notice the fact that they are running hot.

si

[Ruphus]

I have a self-made isobox.
Still, usually kept with open door, because it does work closed too, but I´m not sure how it would be when kept closed the whole day. ( And I have normally not installed the temperature detecting software in order to keep the system free from background operation.)

Yet, with open door it helps to keep away much of the PC noise, though not enough for to track in the same room.

Pondered about putting the machine in the next room, but with all the audio cables required it would have ended in the hundreds of Euros dimension.

I´m looking after a new place ( with hopefully better possibilities ) since months now.

Ruphus

[steins]

I have one of those Custom Consoles Iso-boxes (www.custom-consoles.com). They work very well containing the CPU noise, but the fans make too much noice for quiet acoustic recordings in the control room. You can install a switch to turn off the fans, but the air heatens fast. With the fans running, he difference in ingoing and outgoing air is about 10 degrees celcius.

The noise in control rooms are usually quite static in nature. I've found that a good noise-reduction plug-in can often do wonders, especially if it's the "sample-noise-then-remove" type. Waves X-Noise has saved me many times when I need to record vocals or acoustic guitar in the control-room.

Of course, it's best to get it right the first time.

Stein Tore

[HudHudson]

I also have an Iso-Box and it effectively quiets the fan noise from our console's power supply and G5 (which is usually very quiet anyway). It was even more effective when I had a rack full of Apogee AD-8000SE's blasting away.

[hakkamacher]

Originally posted by orange
- i took warhead's route and moved the machine into another room. Its great - it can now make as much

What brand/type of cables did you use? Are you getting weird effects on your monitor?

[orange]

i'm using belkin 10m vga cables....great quality
using some cheap ps2 extension cables (about $2 each)
i just made wordclock cables (bnc crimp tool and some van-damme cable - really cheap to do)
aes cables - soldered my own - shouldn't be expensive
firewire cables - I think the ones I had were 10m - work fine
usb cables - belkin


I'm using 3 analog-in flatpanel monitors and I can't see the difference using using the 10m cable and a 2m. I have used cheap vga cable before and I have seen terrible ghosting - so buy the best you can afford. If you are using DVI monitors i think there is a max recomended length of 7.5m but I've used 10m before and they've been great- i'm willing to bet you can use longer than this. Bear in mind that the flat panels run at a nominal 60hz and this is probably a little easier on the cable than a high refresh rate CRT.

i also use http://www.kvmpartnership.co.uk/kvm-extenders.htm for our AVIDs and Flames. These send the data down cat5 cable - you can use really extended runs and obviously the cat5 cable is cheap. Loads of companies do similar products .

hope this helps

si

[Jack Ruston]

I built a large enclosure that had a decent air exchange with the outer cavity of my room within a room. The air in the cavity is always cool but it still got too hot in the box. A modern computer working hard is like a blow heater. As someone above said, you need active cooling for this to work well. I think machine rooms are the only option for silence. Personally I can work no problem with my G5 in the control room but I would never track a quiet source in there...which means basically never tracking in there at all.

J

[neve1073]

Originally posted by HudHudson
I also have an Iso-Box and it effectively quiets the fan noise from our console's power supply and G5 (which is usually very quiet anyway). It was even more effective when I had a rack full of Apogee AD-8000SE's blasting away.

Does it quiet it enough to track acoustic guitars or vox in your control room?

[joeq]

there are thing like the AcoustiLock which use a coolant with pipes and a passive radiator

no fans- no opening to the outside world, but it stays cool inside. more costin' than the ones with fans, but if you are tracking in the control room it might be worth the extra $$

[HudHudson]

Originally posted by neve1073
Does it quiet it enough to track acoustic guitars or vox in your control room?

Yes. We have a fairly large CR (450 s.f.) and the Iso-Box fan, being on the back of the unit, isn't very audible in front of and away from the unit. In a smaller CR you might want to use a gobo or two and place the mic to minimize anything you might hear in the room (like the engineer!).

i am sort of in the same situation, im in the process of making a box for my computer. im not sure exactly what ill do, but i think ill try to find a quiet fan, and with some sort of baffling system on the input and output, i imagine no reason why this should not work well.

[Odeo]

A box will definitely work to keep noise down. But the problem lies in the heat inside the box and the noise from the fan to keep the heat down. I use ball bearing fans and their the quietest and expensiviest from all the fans I have encountered but still noisy when the box door is open and I am tracking. The box is well noise suppressed and that just adds to the heat build up due to the insulation inside.

I do not have problems with keeping the box door closed, but I notice that if my room temperature is at 18-21 degrees and I am alone, the box temperature is in the 28-32 degrees region. If the heat outside my box is greater than 25 degrees, I have found, the inside temperature of my box reaches up to 34-38 degrees easy. Unless I leave the box door open, then It will reach about 29-34 degrees. Still I feel its too hot, I prefer it at about 21-26 degrees inside the box. But if I have more than one person in my room and the weather is in their mid 20's. Then I have to leave the box door open and it does get noisy, specially if you track in the same room so it defeats the purpose of having a box.

Besides moving the computer to another room. Is there a box out there that people have tried or modified that have been successfull, when using with the box closed and with people in the room. Were they able to get matched temperature inside the box and their room temperature.

When I turn my airconditioner on, the box stays fairly kool about 21-24 degrees, but everyone in the room complains how damn cold it is, while I wear my jumper, jacket and my beanie. Not only that , my airconditioner is very noisy, I really can't win.

What is the safest maximum temperature should the inside of the box be at to prevent shortening the lifespan of equipment inside or damaging the equipment inside the box.

Are Equipment like PT and computers made to run at high temperatures? What is their limit, anyone know? Ive seen pics of boxes with like computer and interfaces stacked up with HD, Burner etc. in the box. Is that just for show?

Ta

[Ruphus]

Most AMD CPUs can take pretty high temperatures ( up to 90° celsius, check the individual specs ) and seem quite sturdy. My last CPU, an Athlon 1800 XP was tortured with marathon conductment over 2 years at maximal and reliable processing power.

In winter it was running around 45 to 50°, in summer around 60°. However since I separated the iso cases fan from the mobo for certain reasons it happened a couple of times during last summer that I forgot to turn on the fan while the box was closed. usually discovering at the end of the day that the whole thing had been running with over 70°.

Despite of all that it remained reliable and extremely powerful for its size ( sessions with bunches of 96k tracks and fx like convolution reverbs ) until it got unmounted and replaced by a 3k Barton a month or so ago. It seemed to protest when I put it to rest.

If you build an isobox on your own try to engage MDF sheets for the housing. The thicker the better. Cover the inner surfaces with aluminium foil and if you have something for diffussion on top of that it won´t hurt either.
You need only one fan if you arrange the inner array of HDs and all practically for air flow. Position a 12 cm quiet fan ( like from Papst e.g.) in the upper back side and drill a couple of holes ( in my case 5, each 28 mm, placed like the olympic rings ) in the lower section of the front door.
Also for comfortable access try to make the box in a way that you can remove / open not only the front but also one of the sides.

You might also want to take a look here for a proposal from Heinz for a quiet system.
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showt...pu+temperature

Ruphus