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How loud are the fans in the i7's?

M

Man-Droid

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 27, 2009
187
0
Tampa, Fl
I'm in the process of buying a new iMac. I was hoping a few people could give their opinions of recording with the new machines. My main concern are the fans. I previously owned a Powermac G5 and the fans in that machine were awful. I do a lot of acoustic recordings. I need something that whispers.
 
Man-Droid said:
I'm in the process of buying a new iMac. I was hoping a few people could give their opinions of recording with the new machines. My main concern are the fans. I previously owned a Powermac G5 and the fans in that machine were awful. I do a lot of acoustic recordings. I need something that whispers.
Click to expand...

I suggest you go the digital audio section of MR

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/81/

& you'll find your answer there.

but off the bat, i'd recommend that you get a condenser mic and audio interface that's compatible with garageband or any other recording/audio app that runs on Macs. fan or no fan, a direct to pinhole mic recording will really suck.
 
I do a lot of acoustic guitar and vocal recording myself with a uMBP. Those are whisper quiet. I have not used the iMac enough to give you an accurate opinion on noise. My only concern is with it being a single unit for the computer and display is you are stuck with any noise there is. If you had a Mac Mini or Mac Pro, you could at least move the computer away from the display and your mic to help limit the noise.
 
mannix87 said:
I suggest you go the digital audio section of MR

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/81/

& you'll find your answer there.

but off the bat, i'd recommend that you get a condenser mic and audio interface that's compatible with garageband or any other recording/audio app that runs on Macs. fan or no fan, a direct to pinhole mic recording will really suck.
Click to expand...
I have a very solid set up right now. I'm using an Apogee Duet with a Sterling Condenser mic in Logic 8. I get very nice sound with it. I previously had a G5 that had a bad logic board. The fans were really loud. Like first generation Xbox 360 loud. Anything would be an improvement from that. I will check out your link. Thanks for the response.

Big Boss Man said:
I do a lot of acoustic guitar and vocal recording myself with a uMBP. Those are whisper quiet. I have not used the iMac enough to give you an accurate opinion on noise. My only concern is with it being a single unit for the computer and display is you are stuck with any noise there is. If you had a Mac Mini or Mac Pro, you could at least move the computer away from the display and your mic to help limit the noise.
Click to expand...

I like the Mac Pros but I think they are a little beyond my wallet and my personal needs and the Mini doesn't quite have the horsepower I'm looking for. With my G5 I had tried to do the whole move the computer away from the recording area thing. It really didn't work too well for me. sigh


Anyone else out there using these beasts? Even if you don't use audio apps, what are your experiences with the fans?
 
On my i7 iMac right now and it is by far the quietest computer I have ever owned. Keep in mind I am not in a completely quiet environment and I basically never do anything on here where I need total silence either, so I wouldn't notice a little hum.
 
I have an i7 with a 2 TB HD and 8 GB of RAM. I'm using Ableton Live, Reaktor, Massive, and Maschine and a whole bunch of plug-ins. My audio interface is a Presonus FireStudio Mobile. The fans are not an issue at all and the machine eats Audio/DSP like it's nothing. My latency is around 8 ms with a 256 sample buffer size. I've yet to have any programs choke. I can't imagine a quieter machine to be honest. I hope that helps.
 
my external hard drive makes more noise than my imac (I7 2TB)

I actually turned the external off today because it was disturbing the peace/quiet in my office.
 
bizack said:
I have an i7 with a 2 TB HD and 8 GB of RAM. I'm using Ableton Live, Reaktor, Massive, and Maschine and a whole bunch of plug-ins. My audio interface is a Presonus FireStudio Mobile. The fans are not an issue at all and the machine eats Audio/DSP like it's nothing. My latency is around 8 ms with a 256 sample buffer size. I've yet to have any programs choke. I can't imagine a quieter machine to be honest. I hope that helps.
Click to expand...

this was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the reply. I am currently using everything you have listed with the exception of Maschine. How do you like it BTW? I almost purchased it but I wanted to hold out for a while to see what people thought of it.
 
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