VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Ben Amos

I had a brief discussion with Dan Lenard about this, and the only area where he could definitively weigh in was on the Mac Mini. I'm going to be overhauling my booth area in the coming months. (It's 62" x 56"). As of right now, I keep my laptop that I record on outside the booth, as the fan is noisy and obviously picks up on the mic. I'm hoping to incorporate my studio desk into one end of the space, and I'm not opposed to working from a seated position at the desk for most stuff, and mount my mic on a scissor boom arm a la the Heil P2-T. This is only possible if there's no noise coming from my machine, though.

I will have a bit of wiggle room in the setup of it all, once I get the closet hardware out, and I can always put the mic in a different location in the booth, but I'm trying to measure twice, cut once when it comes to configuring all of the pieces to the puzzle.

My question for any who would like to weigh in is: Does the solid-state drive of the Retina Macbook Pro/Air mean that there's no discernible fan noise? Dan says that the Mac Mini "sounds like a hairdryer" under load with the quad-core i7.

In a related fashion - Does anyone have a 27" iMac in their booth with them? Is it largely silent, too? the iMac 27 is the most cost-effective solution when I don't HAVE to be able to record on the road, as I'm not on the road very often, anyway.
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"Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish." - Jean de la Fontaine

Jason Huggins · Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:17 am Post subject:

I have a 21.5" iMac and I have it in the room. I have an average noise floor of -70db. I thought about moving it out, but it is so quiet, it wouldn't be worth the hassle.

Bruce · Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 3:05 pm Post subject:

I have a Mac Mini i5 with a standard hard drive and if you get real close to it you can hear a faint hum, but it doesn't get into my mic at all (which points away from it) about 24" away. I'm in a well sound treated 10' x 12' room. That's as good as dead silent to me.

B
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Bish · Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 8:03 pm Post subject:

I have a MacPro with half a dozen fans and four hard drives... it sometimes sounds like a 747 starting it's take-off run (therefore, it lives on the other side of the studio wall). I also have an iMac in the house which is next to silent. When I retire the Pro, I'll probably go for a Mac Mini as I already have a number of Mac cinema displays. The Mini seems to be well-suited for in-studio use. I also have a MacBook (old, black version with retro-fitted SSD) and that can be a little noisy when the fan cuts in.
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
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Jason Huggins · Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 8:49 pm Post subject:

Ya, I tried the MacBook, but it was way too noisy if I did anything before recording. I installed a program to control the fan, and would turn it off when recording, but that isn't a good daily solution. I've read a bunch about loud minis (doing a google search for Mac mini fan noise was enough to scare me off), but I know there are lots of others who use them with no issue. I'd personally go with the iMac and an SSD. The hard drive is most of what I hear in my recordings (although it is so quiet that I only hear it if I record silence and crank my headphones to max). Or you could just be silent and keep the computer out of the room.

georgethetech · Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 1:54 am Post subject:

First choice is always mount the computer outside the room, when possible.
None of the Apple computers are silent because none are fanless (the iPad is fanless, though.)

Any computer when under a load will spin up the RPM's on the fans to deal with the heat. Mac Minis just have one tiny fan to deal with the heat, so when things really get cookin' in that i7 CPU, the fan has a lot of work to do. Unless you are working with a lot of video, Flash, or gaming, the majority of the time it's whisper quiet.

I don't usually go for iMacs because if you are reading from the display you now have a very sensitive mic in close proximity to the fans, and I find you pay dearly for the "ooooo, look at my skinny Mac" factor. You can get a honkin' 27" IPS display for under $500 with the same panel as in the Apple Cinema 27, or two cheap 24" 1080p LED displays for under $300 (what I did). Plus, the ONLY current model Mac (not Mac Pro) with a Firewire port is still the Mac Mini, so keep that in mind.

Definitely get the SSD drive, absolutely worth the $300 premium for the 256GB SSD, upon which you install your OS, applications, and record your audio. Then use an external for Time Machine backups, turning on when necessary to avoid the noise during sessions (if it's not outside the room).
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Ben Amos · Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 6:39 am Post subject:

Thanks for everyone weighing in. This is definitely a perspective that you can't get from the folks at the Mac store or Best Buy.

George - special thanks for your input. I really would like to keep everything in the booth, if at all possible. My bride is relinquishing the walk-in closet in our master bedroom in exchange for converting the office into a full room closet, so I really do need to keep the studio space self-contained.

I need a bigger monitor, to be sure. Especially when whatever computer I get will be pulling double-duty editing photos, since we just got a DSLR, last Christmas. That part pulls me toward the 27" iMac, but that's just coming from a hobbyist perspective with the photos. The (mountain) lion's share of work on the computer would be for recording, as that actually makes me money. I'm not opposed to spending a little extra on the SSD upgrade to the Mini and just get one of the Crossover 27Qs or similar monitor and adapter cables to fit the Apple, so long as the SSD is quiet enough.

Isn't the RAM on both the iMac 27" and the Mini user-upgradeable?
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"Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish." - Jean de la Fontaine

Jason Huggins · Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:20 pm Post subject:

Ya, you can upgrade the RAM in both (as long as it isn't maxed already).

I know we are jumpin rails here, but in another thread, I had a realization. The iMac only has a set amount of display adapters. The iMacs use the Thunderbolt port for display, so you'd have a MAX of two additional monitors and no Thunderbolt devices. This might not be an issue, but it is something to think about.

Ben Amos · Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2013 3:07 pm Post subject:

I'm wondering if there's truly a difference in the fact that the Mini tops out at 16GB DDR3, while the iMac27 goes to 32. (Not that 32GB of RAM is cost-effective right now anyway...).
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"Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish." - Jean de la Fontaine

georgethetech · Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 10:18 am Post subject:

Ben, Apple COULD allow 32GB of RAM in a Mini, but they want you to buy the iMac. Apple has always limited the power of the Mini to push sales toward higher priced products. That said, it's still FAR MORE POWERFUL than any VO user could possibly need.
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If it sounds good, it is good.
George Whittam
GeorgeThe.Tech
424-226-8528
VOBS.TV Co-host
TheProAudioSuite.com Co-host
TriBooth.com Co-founder

Ben Amos · Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 10:37 am Post subject:

I'm guessing that with a quad-core i7, it'll still give me the horsepower I need for the photo editing, too?
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"Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish." - Jean de la Fontaine

Bish · Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:18 am Post subject:

I'm going to buck the trend here... I've been rockin' my 2006 model MacPro 1.1 for quite a while now. It's got 2 x dual-core 2.66GHz Intel Xeons and as such is less powerful than later models (including iMacs and Mac Minis). As soon as I got it, I slapped in 4GB of third-party RAM (far more expensive then than now). The only upgrades I've done since then is a new video card and filled the drive bays, including a 256GB SSD as the boot drive. While increasing the memory is on my list of things to do someday, I find no compelling reason to. Certainly, if I was getting a new machine, the new lower price of memory would make it sensible to have more, but the only time I have ever felt restricted by my 4GB is when working on a Final Cut project where there's a lot of paging in and out required... but still, it hasn't stopped me actually doing anything. The current thinking seems to be that you absolutely need the highest amount of memory that can be physically stuffed into the machine. Unless you're doing a lot of video production work, in most cases, it's totally unnecessary and the equivalent of putting a go-faster stripe down the side of the car.

All that being said, I should add that memory upgrades for my Mac Pro are a lot more expensive than later models and I'd have to remove all my smaller modules as my slots are full. 16GB is currently going to run me $420, so I'm certainly in the mind-set of if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Smile

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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.

georgethetech · Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:29 am Post subject:

Yeah, and 16GB for a Mini is $90! LOL. What uses the most RAM? Web browsers! Chrome with 15 tabs on my machine can use waaay more than 4GB of RAM, while Safari 6 is much more efficient with RAM use.

Mac Mini and Mac Pro are intended for different types of users, and the expandability of a Mac Pro is unique among the Mac line. As for processing power, the i7 quad is extremely fast at rendering audio, video, and photo files, anything that is highly math intensive. If that's what you do a lot of, you will notice the performance quickly.

If you are doing hard-core gaming, real-time 3D video effects, then you need a bad-ass GPU (video card), an area the Mini is not strong.

OK, can me make this a sticky so I can stop typing this stuff over and over? Wink

_________________
If it sounds good, it is good.
George Whittam
GeorgeThe.Tech
424-226-8528
VOBS.TV Co-host
TheProAudioSuite.com Co-host
TriBooth.com Co-founder

Bish · Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 5:30 am Post subject:

I am now going to back-pedal on my earlier comment Smile

I've just ordered 16GB of RAM for the MacPro... I managed to find some third-party stuff on Amazon for a total of $128 (8 x 2GB sticks). All this talk here made me jealous and wonder if I was posturing (just a little) when I really wanted to crawl out of my 4GB basement! My plan is to make my 2006 MacPro viable for many more years, and the memory was the only sticking point.
_________________
Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.