Quicksurf Internet Media

I previously wrote about my podcasting rig, and since then, I’ve done some hardware and software updates to it in the name of better, cleaner sound… This is my current rig as it is as of this weekend. I’ll break it out as best I can…

In Studio Computer Hardware

• Antec Sonata Computer Case, with an Antec Phantom 350 Fanless Power Supply. Need I say more? Built to be near silent (and it is).
• Stock 120mm case fan that comes with the Sonata case. The Phantom doesn’t have a fan only connector that controls the fan speed based on system load like other Antec power supplies, so I swapped the fan power pins from the 12 volt rail to the 5 volt rail on the fan power connector. The fan went from spinning at full speed all the time and making a complete racket, to spinning considerably slower (and not changing the case temps at all) and near silent. The fan is rubber mounted just like it is from Antec. I can’t hear the fan over normal house noise. It’s great. Over time, as I add heat generating components, I may change the fan out with a temperature controlled one, but for now, it’s sufficient.
• Albatron Mars PX915P Pro Motherboard with an Intel Prescott Pentium 4 520 (LGA775, 800FSB, 1MB L2, HT) CPU at 2.8GHz with 512MB of DDR3200 ram (soon to be 2 GB). I have a CoolerMaster Hyper48 CPU Cooler with a 92mm fan. At first I used the original fan that came with the Heatsink, but it ran off the mobo PWM, and I couldn’t get it to be very quiet due to the Albatron Bios not slowing the fan down slow enough, so I picked up a 3 pin (non PWM) thermistor temperature controlled fan at CompUSA, and installed that in place of the stock CoolerMaster fan. What a difference! My fan RPM went from roughly 2800rpm off the PWM to 1500 RPM and I can no longer hear the fan at all. The kicker is, my CPU temp hasn’t changed one bit with the new 92mm temperature controlled fan from CompUSA! It’s temperature controlled and I have the thermister stuffed between two of the copper fins on the heatsink, so it’ll speed up as needed to keep things in check.
• ATI Radeon X300 SE PCI Express Video Card. This card was chosen because it was compatible with Windows Media Center Edition 2005. It originally had a little heatsink and fan on it, and at first I didn’t think that little fan was that noisy, but truth be told, after I got the case fan really quiet and the CPU fan really quiet, I could hear that little thing with no problems at all. Sooo… back to CompUSA, and I picked up a 2 heat pipe fanless universal video card heat sink cooling kit (Updated: Aerocool VM-101). It’s not listed on their website, and in the store, it’s listed as a managers special, but it’s $18, has a massive array of fins for the two heat pipes, and it just works. I put that on my video card, and truth be told, the fins end up right in front of the case fan, so the heat from the video card just blows straight out the back of the case. I’ve been running this configuration for about a week now, and have had not a single problem with my video card getting too hot or overheating.
• Creative Labs Audigy 2 sound card. This is fairly self explanitory, and can be had for roughly $99 dollars just about every where. I do all of my recording with this card. It will soon be upgraded (supplanted actually) with the EMU 1212M Audio Interface for recording my podcasts.
• Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA150 Hard Drive. 7200RPM, 16MB Buffer, SATA, 300GB. Need I say more? It’s also rubber mounted in the Sonata case, and I almost never hear it except when it’s doing a lot of seeks back to back, and even then, it’s barely audible. As a main system boot drive, I have no complaints at all. As funding permits, I’ll also be adding 3 more 400 or 500 GB SATA drives as secondary storage, so my storage noise may go up a bit, I’m going to be shopping around for the quietest drives around.
• Asus 16X DVD +- R/RW DL+R DVD burner. I haven’t had much time to play with this, but it’s double layer and pretty much the fastest drive around at the time of purchase. It also has a black face plate to match the case.
• Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005. I got this and decided not to dual boot between Linux and this because I wanted to see what Windows MCE was all about. I’m not going to delve into it here, but I like what I see so far.

In Studio Analog Audio Recording Hardware

• M-Audio Nova Studio Condensor Microphone. I have this attached to a generic mic desk stand from Radio Shack, and a Stedman Pro-Screen 101 spit/pop filter.
• M-Audio Audio Buddy 2 line microphone pre-amp. It’s fairly clean for the money, provides 48V phantom power, and can provide up to 60DB of gain. I’ll soon be upgrading this to either a DMP3 or a Tampa, but for now, it works and works very well.
• Logitech Z-5300 THX certified 5.1 speakers. These double as my studio monitors and allow me to mix audio at 5.1.
• Sony MDR-V150 Headphones for when I’m actually recording.

In Studio Recording Software

• Syntrillium CoolEdit. This is now Adobe Audition, and I’ll soon be upgrading to the latest version so I can do audio mastering in 5.1 at 24/96.
• Sony ACID Pro 5.0. Need I say more? For multi-track, it’s the best, hands down. There is no worthy competition in my book. Also supports 5.1 mastering at 24/96
• Sonar 2.0 XL. How else do you do MIDI?
• Fruity Loops 5.0. This is also very good software, and worth every penny.

Mobile Recording Setup

Right now, for mobile recording, I’m just using my Toshiba e405 Pocket PC 2003 PDA, but I’m undecided if I’m going to stick with that, or get another setup. We’ll see.

That’s All Folks

Hardware-wise, that’s about it. I’ll get into how I actually record a podcast in another post later, but I figured for those of you who wanted to know what I was using, I’d post my hardware goods.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 8th, 2005 at 12:58 am and is filed under Broadcast Media, Digital Audio/Video, Interests, Life, Personal, Podcast, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.