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Subwoofer and Mac Pro HDD's.....

drnebulous

drnebulous

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 27, 2014
181
0
Salford, UK
I have a mac pro (2012) with 4 Western Digital Caviar Black's and 1 OCZ Vector 150 SSD. In the same room I have have two KRK Rockit 6's and 1 KRK 10s Sub. Even with foam everywhere there I can still feel vibrations off the computer. How bad is this for the hard drives? I am really worrying about this. The subwoofer is on a load of polystyrene, the two monitors are on Universal acoustics foam pads, and the mac pro is on a load of polystyrene too. I really need advice on this!
 
drnebulous said:
I have a mac pro (2012) with 4 Western Digital Caviar Black's and 1 OCZ Vector 150 SSD. In the same room I have have two KRK Rockit 6's and 1 KRK 10s Sub. Even with foam everywhere there I can still feel vibrations off the computer. How bad is this for the hard drives? I am really worrying about this. The subwoofer is on a load of polystyrene, the two monitors are on Universal acoustics foam pads, and the mac pro is on a load of polystyrene too. I really need advice on this!
Click to expand...

1. It's bad for the hard drives. You probably have sky-high error correction happening. Long term? Unknown. I don't think it's good.

2. No amount of foam or polystyrene is going to absorb enough low frequency to matter.

I have two monolithic horn-loaded subwoofers with 15-inch drivers in my theatre. In order to keep the foundation from cracking (seriously) and the rest of the house from vibrating into oblivion I had to decouple the platform they sit on from the house as best as I could - no connection to the walls, minimal connection to the floor. To do this I built a stage platform that is filled with more than 2000 pounds of sand. The key here is mass.

IMG_0012.jpg


So while it's easy for me to say that it's bad the only solution I can really suggest is that you add mass and a lot of it to decouple the sub from the floor. That will reduce the mechanical vibrations. If the tower is vibrating due to air pressure then you have a totally different problem.
 
Ever heard of magnets? Subwoofers are big magnets... Some places have security standards so tights that they destroy hard drives with machines that are using magnets to just completely destroy the hard drives and make sure that nothing is recoverable on them. So I would pretty much say you don't really want to take chances running these "magnets" around hardware that is probably closest IT component thats sensitive to magnets...
 
It just occurred to me that you could use some rubber O-rings between the screw heads and the chassis to absorb a bit of vibration. You can get these at any DIY shop that sells plumbing supplies.

I'm not sure what kind of long-term damage will occur. I imagine that you'd have problems mostly with speed as the drive was trying to account for all the tracking errors.

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EvilMonk said:
Ever heard of magnets? Subwoofers are big magnets... Some places have security standards so tights that they destroy hard drives with machines that are using magnets to just completely destroy the hard drives and make sure that nothing is recoverable on them. So I would pretty much say you don't really want to take chances running these "magnets" around hardware that is probably closest IT component thats sensitive to magnets...
Click to expand...

Hard drives are certainly sensitive to magnets but they would have to be VERY close. Certainly closer than you have these subwoofers.
 
hualon said:
It just occurred to me that you could use some rubber O-rings between the screw heads and the chassis to absorb a bit of vibration. You can get these at any DIY shop that sells plumbing supplies.

I'm not sure what kind of long-term damage will occur. I imagine that you'd have problems mostly with speed as the drive was trying to account for all the tracking errors.

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Hard drives are certainly sensitive to magnets but they would have to be VERY close. Certainly closer than you have these subwoofers.
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Vibration wise as far as I understand from what he wrote... I think that the words same room are just enough said... :p
 
What about the ears?

I hope that you wear industrial hearing protectors - I'd be much more concerned about blowing out your ears than about damage to disks. (I have a nice pair of David Clark protectors that I wear when mowing or using other power tools.)

Or maybe you want when you're 30 years old that your hearing tests below the average 80 year old.
 
drnebulous said:
This is so annoying. What do most sound engineers do? Looks like I'll have to do the sand thing...
Click to expand...

I'm not a sound engineer but I'm guessing some combination of the following:
  • Keep tower/hard drives in another room far away
  • use SSD
  • use headphones
  • no subwoofers / small monitors
  • mass-loaded speaker / subwoofer stands / platforms


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AidenShaw said:
I hope that you wear industrial hearing protectors - I'd be much more concerned about blowing out your ears than about damage to disks.

Or maybe you want when you're 30 years old that your hearing tests below the average 80 year old.
Click to expand...

I'm kinda curious about just how much vibration we're talking about here.

If I placed a full wine glass on top of your mac pro would it get rattled off by your subs?
 
hualon said:
I'm not a sound engineer but I'm guessing some combination of the following:
  • Keep tower/hard drives in another room far away
  • use SSD
  • use headphones
  • no subwoofers / small monitors
  • mass-loaded speaker / subwoofer stands / platforms
Click to expand...

Or get a ButtKicker and put the subsonics into the furniture - not the air.
 
Well, it's quite a bit of vibration - The two monitors are 73W and the sub is 150w all turned up to the max. No, a wine glass wouldn't rattle off the mac pro. I can't use headphones due to stereo monitoring and a need the subwoofer to ear the bass. I would use SSD's if 1. they where cheaper (need TB's) and 2. If they where more reliable. The SSD I had (OCZ Vector 150) nearly killed my computer. I put it to sleep, came back 2 hours later and the computer was too hot to touch. It wouldn't wake up and when restarted just got stuck on the grey loading screen. I won't be buying SSD's for at least 5 years now. It was terrifying. Good job I backed everything up!
 
I have been using a 275 W bk electronics xls200 with my Mac Pro for almost 4 years now. No issues.

I have a mechanical HD in my Mac as well and an external HD on top of it which does rumble a little bit but I don't have any issues. It does vibrate a tiny bit possible because of the HDs and fans but its nothing that worries me.

Personally I wouldn't worry about it. People use DVD players amongst other things with subwoofers much more powerful than mine.
 
Keep your mac out of the corner is one thought. In a closet or machine room could help, too. I've been running Macs for years in machine rooms that undoubtedly get hammered with low end transients (live drum kit tracking sessions and powerful subs during playback) to at least some extent. Never a problem, but now everything is on SSDs except backup. (cue Alfred E.)

Bottom line on the bottom end: run redundant backup drives and stop worying.
 
drnebulous said:
Well, it's quite a bit of vibration - The two monitors are 73W and the sub is 150w all turned up to the max. No, a wine glass wouldn't rattle off the mac pro. I can't use headphones due to stereo monitoring and a need the subwoofer to ear the bass. I would use SSD's if 1. they where cheaper (need TB's) and 2. If they where more reliable. The SSD I had (OCZ Vector 150) nearly killed my computer. I put it to sleep, came back 2 hours later and the computer was too hot to touch. It wouldn't wake up and when restarted just got stuck on the grey loading screen. I won't be buying SSD's for at least 5 years now. It was terrifying. Good job I backed everything up!
Click to expand...

Recent tests suggest SSDs are a lot more long-lived than we thought, and their certainly less prone to vibration and the like. Your fear of SSDs is frankly misplaced and actively hurting your workflow.
 
Wired gigabit Ethernet is fast. Put your storage hard drives in a different room. Change your boot drive to an SSD.

Your experience with SSD is far outside the norm. In fact, SSD is becoming the standard for Apple computers as more models switch to it and drop hard drives. Give SSD another try. If there are sleep issue, there is some other problem going on. There's no reason for an SSD to make your computer really hot.

These are way easier changes than bringing in literally a ton of sand.

On a different note...
In the Home Theater world, subwoofers shouldn't generally be turned all the way up and left that way. Usually 12 o'clock to 2 o'clock is the norm (halfway or slight above halfway). OTOH, your subwoofer seems to be a musician's subwoofer and I don't know anything about that field at all, so maybe cranking it all the way up is the norm?
 
Last edited:
drnebulous said:
How many MB/s?
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Up to 120 MB/s and even a bit faster if the cables and HDDs and router/switch allow it.

Btw, your drive by posting the other afternoon as got many people riled up. Maybe you should tend to that Mac Pro thread of yours. But then again, it will probably not be the last dead horse.
 
ActionableMango said:
Wired gigabit Ethernet is fast. Put your storage hard drives in a different room. Change your boot drive to an SSD.

Your experience with SSD is far outside the norm. In fact, SSD is becoming the standard for Apple computers as more models switch to it and drop hard drives. Give SSD another try.
Click to expand...

This- SSDs are the best solution for you- either that or get some help for your apparent subsonic addiction! :D
 
elvisizer said:
This- SSDs are the best solution for you- either that or get some help for your apparent subsonic addiction! :D
Click to expand...

I suppose you're right. I'm getting a Samsung 840 pro for the so. I think the OCZ drives are dodgy with a bad chip design so I'll give Samsung a go.
 
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