[MPA] Sound Studio Advice Needed

[Jay Shaffer]

Well put Alan!
Richard, I've designed a couple pro studios, and I always put the CPUs 
and recorders in an machine room to keep the control room quiet.
As far as a dream setup goes. Two Xserve G5s and a Xserve raid. With 
one for audio and the the other for soft synths and effects through VST 
System link or studiolink. The advantages of being able to put the 
computers in a rack is huge in terms of being able to control sound and 
also power. Good clean mains power is probably the second most 
important consideration when building a studio. (acoustic isolation 
being #1)
I am pretty much anti-Pro Tools and would go for Logic or Cubase XL or 
Nuendo instead, especially on your side of the pond. Audio interface 
wise MOTU 828MkII for firewire or MOTU pci-424 w a 24i/o (which is now 
G5 compatable BTW)
The Yamaha 01 series are good Mixer/controller/interfaces.
Future Music and Sound on Sound magazines are good resources for your 
research.
Best of luck.
--
Jay Shaffer
Mac Audio Guy
Author of "The MacAddict Guide to Making Music with GarageBand"
mag at macaudioguy.com
http://macaudioguy.com/



On Sep 16, 2004, at 2:10 AM, Alan Taylor wrote:

> Generally speaking, Macs are substantially quieter than PCs.
>
> There was one recent Mac, I think it was the original G5 tower, which 
> was very noisy and that attracted a great deal of criticism but Apple 
> revised the design and dealt with the problem.
>
> Apple have always taken acoustic noise levels very seriously. After 
> the bondi blue iMac, G3 iMacs had no cooling fan. The new G5 iMacs 
> have a very sophisticated cooling system to minimise noise - which is 
> very important if the whole computer sits a foot in front of your 
> face.
>
> In a studio context, I would hope that you have no equipment with 
> cooling fans or hard disks in an area where microphones are used. 
> Whatever manufacturers claim, they are not silent. Even transformers 
> in power supplies and lighting fittings have been found to vibrate and 
> be audible.
>
> Presumably you're concerned about acoustic noise within the control 
> room. I would have thought that the ideal solution is to put all 
> equipment with fans into racks that have doors ( with the rack being 
> independently ventilated ). That way it's accessible but not audible.
>
> Much depends on the level that you monitor at. At high levels, even a 
> quite noisy PC isn't troublesome, but at low levels, you can hear all 
> sorts of things.
>
> I'm puzzled why your colleague is so keen on PCs for audio.  OS X has 
> many advantages for high quality audio and the new version of OS X 
> will further strengthen support for pro audio.
>
> Alan
>
>
> On Thursday, Sep 16, 2004, at 02:33 Europe/London, Cass Carlos wrote:
>
>> Sounds great! Please keep us updated, if you wouldn't mind.
>>
>> On 15/09/2004, at 5:21 PM, Richard Edwards wrote:
>>
>>> Hiya folks.....
>>>
>>> I'm in the process of setting up a Sound Studio [in London]  from 
>>> scratch and as a long time user of Mac would like it to be Mac 
>>> based. The purposes of the Studio are to build a sound fx library, 
>>> make some music :) live and synthetic and mixed and to dub voices to 
>>> Film as well as add FX to film,we plan a voice booth, a small live 
>>> area for up to 7 musicians with a drum area, two mixing suites and 
>>> some storage. But we don't know a lot about what to put in the space 
>>> :)
>>>
>>> A colleague has proposed a PC based system [ I won't be doing that 
>>> :)] but he also raised the issue of whether the Mac we choose may be 
>>> noisy ? CAn anyone help me with the some advice on how to keep down 
>>> noise and is the Mac especially noisy ?
>>>
>>> Can anyone recommend what Mac to go with [Box G5 ? new cool G5?] and 
>>> what the a 'dream' set up might be - eg Pro Tools, Logic Audio etc ?
>>>
>>> While wanting to be wise and economical we are not constrained by 
>>> any budget limitations which makes a big change ....
>>>
>>> I'll be glad to supply any more info required and biGGG  biGG txs in 
>>> advance for any suggestions
>>>
>>> Richard
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> MacProAudio mailing list
>>> MacProAudio at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
>>> http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/macproaudio
>>>
>>
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