[linux-audio-user] Quiet case

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano nando at ccrma.Stanford.EDU
Sat Jul 15 23:59:29 EDT 2006


On Sat, 2006-07-15 at 06:56 +0000, carmen wrote:
> > Working with them, is there anything that you've found that doesn't live
> > up to the information on the Zalman site?
> 
> after listening to sound clips of the Zalman 4'33" i can say its nice in 
> theory, but silly in practice. you can buy a metal-cased laptop for $1000, 
> put it on a metal table. and the fan wont even come on since the  case and 
> the table itself are giant sinks. i usualy set my laptop on the radiator 
> (in the summer) when i want the fan to shut up..

:-)
I'm almost inclined to agree, but it depends on what you want to do.
This is not laptops, it is fast powerful (or at least as powerful as I
could cram in that case) desktops and many of them. We considered other
solutions and some were obviously cheaper - the appeal of no fans
won[*]. 

> likewise, sitting in an auditorium, listening to people cough (or hard drives 
> seek) and paying for the privelege seems absurd

Hmmm, well... not from my point of view. Seek noise is there, of course.
We can netboot and that gets rid of that but I have not really found
that necessary so far. We have them in the studios and it is very nice,
and clusters that don't make noise are also nice. Not for everyone, of
course, and it depends on finding funding for them which was far from
trivial in our case. 

But then again we then make godawful noises on our own with synthesis
and whatnot. Go figure :-) ;-) :-)

-- Fernando

[*] another very quiet option was the Zalman Reserator(sp?) water cooled
system... The thought of many workstations with a water pipe between the
case and the cooler, and many students (some students are not
particularly careful) moving things around did not quite convince me. 





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