the silent audio studio : move PC out of control room

The silent Studio Idea

This is actually a great idea. The silent studio . IT should be a no brainer but I have seen almost no studios base don this simple idea. I have been in studios including my own where they are trying to mix and master and record for tat matter and in the same room they have a super noisy PC whirring away. Terrible noise form the cpu fan, power supply fan and additional fans, even noisy hard drives. In my case it was like an air conditioner running. It was really irritating especially when recording mixing and mastering.

Solution: put PC in other room
obviously remove the computer from the room. You could put it in a closet but then there are heat issues,etc..So, here is what I did. I put about a 2.5" hole in my wall to the next room. I put it near the ground as the next room is my living room, the hole was simple to do as it was dry wall. I just used a simple drywall saw and made a round hole. ALso, I found these metal chrome covers that attached at each end and really gave it a professional look. ALso, I made the whole in the living room to be easily hidden by my home theatre speakers.

Considerations: Cables
ok, the PC is crutial to my home studio for recording ,mixing and mastering audio, so I had to get extension cables for everything, an expensive proposition if you buy locally , I checked and saw cables for $30.00 each!?! NOT!! online I found discounters who had extension cables for cheap ,about $10.00 for a vga cable, and then 2 p/s2 cables and ethernet cable and usb cable,etc... One thing I could suggest is to consider a cheap KVM switch used to switch PC's while still using the same keyboard,monitor and mouse, the cbales for this are cheaper in the long run.

Also, instead of lengthy cables, if you have a laptop, you could use remote desktop to access the noisy PC. This may work, but the video is the problem, if you have a fast video card in your pc ,you lose that performance as video is over an ethernet cable. I opted for just extension cables so far.

OVERALL
This sounds like a simple task, but I found this to be quite a task. Poking a hole in your wall is a nerve racking thing. After you have done it though and it looks good and you have not destroyed anything and have nice wall plates covering it, then its not so nerve racking. Also, after that there is no turning back, as your almost there. Then there are the cables, lots of them, 2 midi cables, spdif i/o cables, toslink cables, etc...and the regular pc cables and finding the right length. IT gets expensive. You can easily spend $100.00 on the cables alone. However, it may be the best $100 ever spent to improve your studio. When you think that people buy audio tiles and audio foam and so on which is really expensive, then this is not so bad and while a pain in the butt,; the result will make it worthwhile. My studio room now is really quiet and I can hear things so much better on my monitors. I wont ever put a noisy pc in my studio again. ever.a laptop would be fine, but my audio interface cards require a pc , so this was a great solution. Also, buy your cables online and you can get a deal. Local stores (not all) tend to sell the $40 vga cable extender that can be had for $8 online. You wont regret this simple way to really improve your studio.