VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago

My trusty Mac Mini 2007 version is fading into the sunset… the computer is dead silent, which is great because it sits about 3 feet from my mic and boom attachment at the desk that I occasionally record at…

the easiest solution would be a another Mac mini, but since I may also upgrade my monitor, I was wondering if anyone has any noise issues with iMacs…is there any model in particular that is as dead quiet as a Mini? I had an older 2006 iMac and it was unusable for close proximity recording..

thanks!
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paulstefano · Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 11:43 am Post subject:

What's your price range? The new 12 inch Macbook is completely silent. Zero moving parts. I've been drooling over it.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/03/22/intel-core-m-lets-new-macbook-go-light-fanless-but-with-sacrifices
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captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago

I've got a silent MacBook Air 13 for travel. I'm looking for more of a desktop solution
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georgethetech · Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 12:23 pm Post subject:

Again, budget info required. A $499 Mac Mini works fine, or a $3000 iMac 5K.
Or plug a Thunderbolt dock into your Macbook Air, instant desktop solution.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/TB2DOCK12P/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_campaign=googlebase&gclid=Cj0KEQiA496zBRDoi5OY3p2xmaUBEiQArLNnK2kFlmE2GHEtZPeN5Tf2TguX0dRwsnPmf7LGsAfNKIQaAli68P8HAQ
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Bruce · Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 12:50 pm Post subject:

iMacs are pretty quiet these days but I don't think they're as quiet at the Mini. I've got a Mini just three feet from my mic and there's not a bit of noise coming from the mini.

And as slick as an iMac looks, you can get a new Mini and a name brand (but not Mac) monitor for a whole lot less money, if saving is your desire.

B
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Jason Huggins · Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 2:59 pm Post subject:

I recorded with my iMac (2011 model) for 2 years with the mic (then using a LDC mic) about 18 inches from the mac with zero issues at all and no gate or expansion. I have a booth now. One thing you'll want to put some thought into is external monitors. Having two monitors on the desk (the iMac screen and one other monitor) and a 3rd monitor in the booth meant I needed to make sure whatever I was using had the ability to feed those monitors. Current Mac Minis have two thunderbolt ports AND an HDMI port, so you could put plenty of external displays on that bad boy. The $699 version seems like a super great system.

The new iMac does NOT have a 1/8" audio input but the Mac Mini DOES. This is how I have my mix-minus set up so if I personally was buying a new system (and I might be pretty soon as my 2011 iMac is starting to have a couple of dodgy ports) I'd be picking up a 2.6ghz Mini. I would hate the Macbook option as my daily driver, but that's just me. Seems like a waste of money to buy the laptop when you need a desktop. The Mini could also be great to travel with if you needed to. It has an HDMI output so pretty much anywhere you stay is going to have a TV with an HDMI input that you could use as a monitor.

Bish · Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:50 pm Post subject:

My iMac 5K is dead quiet (SSD)... the fans never come on unless I'm crunching video... which I tend not to do when I'm recording Smile

All my stuff with spinny things (MacPro with four drives, two Drobos with a total of nine drives) are in the next room, but the iMac sits in my recording space.
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Deirdre · Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:55 pm Post subject:

SSD cures many ills.
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captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago

budget wise.. probably on low end.. the $500=$600 range..

my current setup has the desk monitor as the master and the booth monitor as the slave…. they both run off of a powered VGA adapter.. a DVI to VGA adapter from the Mac Mini feeds the adapter.. it works swimmingly and I hate to mess with it, but the Mini is on its last leg..

in addition to two separate USB audio interfaces, I need to run one USB and one Firewire Drive…

I'm more or less leaning toward another Mini.. I've had this Mini going on 5 yrs now and I have run this thing thru everything imaginable, with only a 1 GB Ram upgrade along the way…..
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paulstefano · Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2015 5:42 am Post subject:

Sounds like you should just stick with a mac mini. If it ain't broke...
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Glenn Moore · Been Here Awhile Joined: 24 Jan 2005 Posts: 241

My Mac Mini is 3 years old now. Super Quiet. It is outside of my booth but sometimes I do record at my desk where the Mac is and have no issues at all with noise and I am just a couple of feet from the mic.

Mike Harrison · Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2015 7:18 pm Post subject:

One way to ensure the Mac mini's fan noise remains practically nonexistent is to keep dust from accumulating around the air intake (cleverly disguised by the circular cover on the bottom). Fan speed will increase if the mini can't get enough air.
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sdaeley17 · Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 5:51 pm Post subject:

At the risk of threadjacking, I`m in a similar situation to the OP, and trying to decide between a mac mini and a macbook pro.

I know SSDs are the bees knees, but how much storage do we actually need? Is 256 gb enough? I know some mac minis also have the fusion drive option (1 tb HDD and 128 gb SSD) but doesn`t that defeat the purpose of a silent computer?
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Bish · Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:01 am Post subject:

Fusion drives are a compromise that will give you more storage than an SSD and faster speed than a spinny thing. In some worlds, it's a good balance to bridge the moment in time when SSDs are considered too expensive. 18/24 months and people will wonder what all the fuss is about as SSD prices come down more. For the moment, use an SSD for operating systems and performance related tasks and regular drives for bulk storage.

How much space do you actually need for your operating system, programs, scratch disks and daily routine storage for current projects and recent files? I have a new iMac with a 500GB SSD and I don't even come close to using half of it even having most of my audio archives on it. I got the 500 because I was throwing money at the iMac 5K and thought "why not". Meanwhile, my MacPro was sitting there with a 256GB SSD, only half full.

So, I would say that 256GB is more than enough... get a small USB RAID or just a couple of redundant disks for bulk storage and backup (I use a Drobo... in another room).
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sdaeley17 · Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:04 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the insight, Bish! I feel if it's strictly for work, 256 would be sufficient. I also have a MacBook Air that I put in a beast of a 1tb ssd into, so I can always offload files there.
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