[JohnR]

I'm working on an article/opinion piece about eliminating noise from the (audiophile) desktop. Has anyone else gone through the process of a. realizing that their desktop is too noisy for proper listening and b. solving the problem?

Here are a couple of graphs showing hard drive noise. This one is a couple of 3.5" drives in red and blue (ambient noise level shown in green):



This one is a couple of 2.5" drives:



In all cases the mic tip was placed 5 cm from the drive casing. It's not what you would hear from the listening position but it provides a basis for comparison.

[low.pfile]

I appreciate the technical data John, though I am interested in your perception of the difference. is the 3.5" HDD 3x as loud or just a hair louder? different frequencies are perceived differently in loudness. I just lost one of my OWC HDDs and am looking to upgrade, so I am considering 2.5 vs 3.5 at the moment.

[As I am writing this there is an window air conditioner running about 20ft away and a floor fan 10ft away. so everyone has different needs for sound levels from their desktop equipment.]

[dB Cooper]

I have noticed different "audibility" of HD activity with different drives. Obviously fan cooled drives would be undesirable. WD drives imo seem quieter than most. SSD based storage would render the issue moot.

[isobaric]

I have a relatively silent PC in my setup although plan on building a more Hifi inspired build. Scythe make http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/hdd/005/sqd1000_detail.html, which are pretty effective. Also Intel's new Haswell chips, with the aid of a big enough heatsink, can run passively. You can also use fanless power supplies, although I can not hear mine even at high loads.

[JohnR]

I appreciate the technical data John, though I am interested in your perception of the difference. is the 3.5" HDD 3x as loud or just a hair louder? different frequencies are perceived differently in loudness.

That's a good question. The graphs give an indication of what's going on but don't exactly correlate to audible objectionableness. The 3.5" drives are louder, but now that you ask that's made worse by the startup noise (which doesn't show in the graphs) and head noise during activity (80-160 Hz in blue in the first graph). The red line in the first graph has a big peak at 125 Hz - that drive is just noisy.

The 2.5" drives aren't necessarily quiet though. The enclosure seems to be an important factor. The red line in the second graph is an "open" enclosure so the drive noise just gets out, the noise character is different than the 3.5" drives but still annoying. This drive is advertised as "near silent" - it's nothing of the sort! In fairness it does have two drives in it, perhaps I should re-measure that one with just one drive. The blue line in the second graph is a LaCie Rugged, which seems to keep the drive noise contained much better. It does make a low humming noise that doesn't show in the graph though... well, now I look again it may be that peak at ~90Hz. This drive in say a cupboard or a distance away (Firewire cable length) would most likely be undetectable.

This exercise made me rethink what the drives are for and why I need them. As dB Cooper suggests, the only real solution is SSDs. That is if you need them directly attached.  For backups, options then become:

1. Online backup (Crashplan etc)
2. Network backup (NAS, time capsule)
3. A hot-swap enclosure with rotating drives for a weekly/offsite swap

I'm switching over to 1 and 3. Money that would otherwise go into a NAS can be put to a larger SSD.

[skunark]

I will point out that online backups aren't perfect, besides the numerous blogs and articles reporting this, I've had issues recovering as well and luckily I could fall back on an old bare HDD or just re-rip a CD.  For the value though, you can't beat $5/month for several TBs of storage or even you are very mobile.

Has anyone else gone through the process of a. realizing that their desktop is too noisy for proper listening and b. solving the problem?

I think anyone attempting to do a DIY HTPC has gone out of their way to reduce noise with liquid cooling, larger sized fans, insulated cases, etc.   

I would suggest doing a comparison between an open shelving vs closed cabinets with the mic at the listening position and perhaps 1meter away.   With one USB bus-powered 2.5" HDD in a cabinet in the far back, I don't hear it during playback or even when I add files to it. But.... In another room with a 2.5" hdd inside a computer on an open shelf, I can hear HDD noise as soon as I walk in the room.   Both setups are fanless computers (BDP-1 and atom mobo) and the HDDs are the only moving parts.   

Back in the days when HTPCs were cool I did play around with 'hdparm -M' on linux and did seem to help but still had the power supply fan noise.   I would also suggest dynamat for the silient DIY computers with HDDs, it's rather cheap and works.   But with SSDs prices dropping, these minor improvements are short lived.

For audio, it seems folks still try to buy the fastest computer/parts for their audio PC, which isn't at all necessary.  If you can stream hi-rez audio to a raspberry pi, a fanless atom is more than enough horsepower to accomplish the job.     Even for the NAS box, a fanless atom is more than enough to do the job.

Jim

[ctviggen]

I have a case (not Apple though) that's totally silent.  I have a 2.5 HDD in it.  The external drive I have, I have to turn off because I find it incredibly loud now. The case does not use any fans, water cooling, etc. and only uses copper pipes.  It's only good up to 65 watt processor power, but that's all I need for home theater and general purpose use.  The case alone was over $300 though.  For some reason, I've blanked on the name of the case, or else I'd provide a link

[embz]

I'm using a fan-less, solid state only Audio PC with the following configuration:

Intel DN2800MT mini-ITX with ATOM processor
Mushkin 4G Laptop Memory
Wessena ITX6-B Chasis
Crucial Solid State HD 128G (I forgot the model)
SOTM tX-USBexp PCI to USB card
Generic Netbook Power Supply
Windows 8
JPlay 5.1
Teamviewer for headless control

Completely silent, if it wasn't for the blue power LED, I would have no idea it's on.  The Audio PC is networked via 100M Ethernet to a small Wireless Bridge close by which is used to access music on NAS.  24/192 files are no problem on the network (but you need a good high speed Wireless LAN setup).

The configuration is based on a C.A.P.S. V3 setup which I chose over the MAC mini because of the SOTM card and price. 

The PC I was using before had too much fan noise, and I didn't have a good solution for silent operation because the cases that the CPU heat sinks required where too big to put next to my Audio gear.

[ebag4]

I'm using a fan-less, solid state only Audio PC with the following configuration:

Intel DN2800MT mini-ITX with ATOM processor
Mushkin 4G Laptop Memory
Wessena ITX6-B Chasis
Crucial Solid State HD 128G (I forgot the model)
SOTM tX-USBexp PCI to USB card
Generic Netbook Power Supply
Windows 8
JPlay 5.1
Teamviewer for headless control

Completely silent, if it wasn't for the blue power LED, I would have no idea it's on.  The Audio PC is networked via 100M Ethernet to a small Wireless Bridge close by which is used to access music on NAS.  24/192 files are no problem on the network (but you need a good high speed Wireless LAN setup).

The configuration is based on a C.A.P.S. V3 setup which I chose over the MAC mini because of the SOTM card and price. 

The PC I was using before had too much fan noise, and I didn't have a good solution for silent operation because the cases that the CPU heat sinks required where too big to put next to my Audio gear.

Interesting, I was under the impression that I should build an i7 PC like the Zuma for JRiver.  Do you feel that this solution ever runs too low on processing speed or falls short any other way?  It appears you are running a single PC solution, is this true or are you running a separate control PC?

Thanks,
Ed

[embz]

Interesting, I was under the impression that I should build an i7 PC like the Zuma for JRiver.  Do you feel that this solution ever runs too low on processing speed or falls short any other way?  It appears you are running a single PC solution, is this true or are you running a separate control PC?

Thanks,
Ed

Hi Ed, I run a single PC and a dual PC setup, just depends on the player. 

For JRiver, I currently run it on a control PC.  JPlay integrates with JRiver via ASIO driver and networks with the Audio PC running the JPlay client.  This is a nice solution because JRiver can be controlled via iPad/iPhone with JRemote.  It is very convenient.

I haven't run JRiver on the AudioPC, just Foobar and JPlay Mini, and neither has had any issues.  I wasn't sure what to expect with the ATOM processor, but it has performed well.  I can easily give JRiver a try on the AudioPC and let you know how it goes

[Atlplasma]

I use a tweaked Mac Mini as a music server. It has a solid state drive that makes for a very quiet unit. However, the connected external hard drives are noticeable even with the enclosure fan on minimum. My power converter also adds a bit of hum even though I changed out the fan.

I'm in the process of building a house and may try putting all the "noisy" stuff in a remote location. 

[asliarun]

You could also consider something like the Minix Neo X7 (I have the X5).
It has fairly good connectivity options (multiple USB, optical out, HDMI, etc.), comes with Android out of the box (you can download apps from the Google app store), is completely silent, and is fairly compact.

The only big drawback of these boxes is that they are not x86 which means the software support is not that great. However, the fact that it supports Android apps goes a long way in mitigating that issue. Please note that I haven't yet started using my X5 as a media server yet.

As far as Atom is concerned, it would also be worthwhile waiting for Intel's Silvermont (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvermont) which is a significant upgrade on the existing Atom in terms of performance and cores and system bandwidth while being in the same power envelope. It will likely be released during Intel's IDF on Sep 10/11, and you should start seeing interesting low power and fanless motherboards and systems a month or two later.

[ebag4]

Hi Ed, I run a single PC and a dual PC setup, just depends on the player. 

For JRiver, I currently run it on a control PC.  JPlay integrates with JRiver via ASIO driver and networks with the Audio PC running the JPlay client.  This is a nice solution because JRiver can be controlled via iPad/iPhone with JRemote.  It is very convenient.

I haven't run JRiver on the AudioPC, just Foobar and JPlay Mini, and neither has had any issues.  I wasn't sure what to expect with the ATOM processor, but it has performed well.  I can easily give JRiver a try on the AudioPC and let you know how it goes

Thanks for the reply.  I misspoke/mistyped  earlier when I said JRiver, I actually meant jplay.  I have had the jriver/jplay 2 pc config. running on a couple of laptops, it seemed to work well.  I could'nt use the laptop permanently so I am looking into a solution for the audio PC, still in the research mode, thanks for your response.

Best,
Ed

[embz]

Thanks for the reply.  I misspoke/mistyped  earlier when I said JRiver, I actually meant jplay.  I have had the jriver/jplay 2 pc config. running on a couple of laptops, it seemed to work well.  I could'nt use the laptop permanently so I am looking into a solution for the audio PC, still in the research mode, thanks for your response.

Best,
Ed

I can confirm that JPlay in a dual PC mode with Windows 8 works great, no processing issues.  I run Ultrastream, DirectLink for the regular buffer, 4 sample for the 96kHz Buffer, and 8 sample for the 192kHz Buffer and Hibernate mode all the time (which is the best part about the dual PC setup).

Just for fun, I did load JRiver (without JPlay add-on) on the AudioPC.  No issues with 16/44, 24/96 or 24/192 PCM playback from local HD and Networked HD.  But when I tried to play a DSD file, JRiver had to resample from 352.8kHz to 96kHz and there was some buffering.  I played the same file with Foobar and there was no buffering.  It happened the same from the local HD and the Networked HD.  Not sure if there is a way to play the DFF file without the resampling in JRiver or not.