The quest for the ‘quiet PC’ is always a challenge for any audio engineer.  A standard PC has several fans, each of which contributes background noise that a sensitive microphone will pick-up.  It is easy enough to remove the background noise in post-production but the ideal situation is to keep your source signal as clean as possible.

My sE2200a is a wonderful mic and annoyingly my case fan has been showing its age, over the last few months it has noticeably become louder.  My quest for the best solution took me to Noctua.at, they produce high-end fans.  My choice was the NF-R8, reviews are always positive.

Using my sE2200a and Audacity I recorded the original case noise-level (-30dB) and the improved noise-level (-36dB), for this I ran Audacity on my MacBook with the mic placed at the back of the PC.  The PC and mic were kept in exactly the same position between the tests.

The 6dB noise reduction comes with the use of the Low Noise Adapter (L.N.A.), the earlier review suggested that this was the most effective to reduce noise (the Ultra L.N.A. is too wimpy).  The L.N.A. is just a resistor that sits in-line with the power-supply.

This fan is the first I’ve mounted using rubber screw-replacing ‘vibration compensators’.  These are the same shape as screws but are long rubber fixers that you pull through the case – they cut down the vibrations that the fan could transmit into the case.

All in I’m very happy with the NF-R8, the reduction in noise is quiet evident and this means even clearer recordings for me than I’d achieved before.

The Sound clearer by recording with 6dB less noise by ProCasts' Blog about Professional Screencast Production, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England License.

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