Heat and racked gear.

[FNM]

I recently got another Mackie 400f which makes 3 spaces fillled in my 4U portable rack thing, along with my half rack headphone amp and a half rack preamp.

I did a session the other day all day and by the end I put my hand on the top of the top 400f and on the front of the lower one, they were directly on top of each other. They were both hot as a mother. Not too hot to touch, but damn close. The other stuff in my rack gets pretty damn hot too.

I spaced them out for the time being to be safe, but I'm looking into another 1RU preamp that will actually fill the entire thing, is it possible I shouldn't worry, or should I be safe and space em? How hot can electrical components get without failing?

They get pretty damn hot on their own btw, but obviously two of them on top of each other is adding to it.

Any insight?

Thanks

[locosoundman]

I had a similar problem with my own rig. I ended up buying a 10-dollar clip-on fan at Rite-Aid. Just clip it on to the lip of the rear opening after you wire up and point it in. Mine is pretty quiet and it keeps my rack nice and cool.

Alternatively, you can buy a rack with more rack spaces than you need or buy a rack with cooling fans installed.

[roscoenyc]

Fans are good.

I like how the Manley gear has perforated metal on the top and bottom of most of its gear to allow air flow. I've removed the top/bottom from a couple things that I have to get more air flowing through the gear.

[The Real MC]

Few people pay attention to heat when filling their racks. Fans don't always do the trick. I either leave an empty 1U space above accumulated heat sources, or I arrange the units so that as you go from bottom to top the deepest rack items are near the bottom. With the shorter units above the deeper units, this gives space for the heat to flow away from the unit.

Also if your rack has a rear lid - remove it. That makes a big difference in heat dissipation. I have to remove the rear lid on the power amp rack for my PA. The power amps have fans but they were not enough, I had to remove the rear lids.

[A-Barr]

You can always get something like one of these:

http://www.sweetwater.com/c875--Rack_Fans

if you want to be all classy about it.


Although the $10 solution sounds pretty good to me!

[locosoundman]

I was actually really surprised at how well the $10 fan idea works!

I was doing a three-day recording in a venue with no A/C and it was typical "June in NYC" weather. By the middle of the first night, my main rack was so hot that I swore the converters were going to melt and crash the whole rig.

Desperation is the mother of invention...

[Ryan Silva]

I recently got another Mackie 400f ...

Do you have two of them chained? What OS are you running? Does it work?

I have been wanting to chain 2 400f together but I hear the PC Beta Drivers are no good.

Any stories?

[FNM]

I'll try the fan idea once I fill my rack, it seems like it would be equivalent to fanning a space heater though. Actually, by then maybe I'll just get a bigger rack and space them since I don't wanna risk any gear.

I would get a 1 rack space fan, but like I said all I have is 4 spaces and am about to have 4 spaces worth of gear leaving me no room.

Thanks for the insight everyone.

I recently got another Mackie 400f ...

Do you have two of them chained? What OS are you running? Does it work?

I have been wanting to chain 2 400f together but I hear the PC Beta Drivers are no good.

Any stories?

I am running XP pro on a custom PC I put together, and yeah it's working pretty decent, I have to turn them off and on every once in a while when I am switching between apps a lot (and consequently sample rates), which is somewhat expected.

I was apprehensive for a long time to get another one, but I got a sweet ebay deal, I kept hearing that the new drivers are coming soon (bullshit), and the beta driver worked pretty well for me with the one so I went for it.

They both get very slightly different latency's which I can compensate for in Tracktion, and my main peave, which is actually kinda major is that you just get two completely seperate DSP mixers for each one, which is retarded. So you can't monitor the inputs of the second one through the control room outputs of the first, which drives me insane. I deal with it by sending the outputs of the secend to my headphone amp, so you can hear all the inputs in the headphones when tracking, but not from the control room. Oh well.

[cyantologist]

rack space covers + computer fans + dremel. go to radio shack and make your own version of those $120 things for a really fun easy project. you can even be sweet and mount switches on the front or even on the side of your rack or something. or just go clip on. but this sounds more fun to me

[Ryan Silva]

Thanks very much for the info, i was however wondering.....

[/quote] They both get very slightly different latency's which I can compensate for in Tracktion, [/quote]


.....I also have to compensate in 'Nuendo' will I able to adjust two units? Or is this unit built around 'Tracktion' for that very reason? Hmm?

Thanks again,

[FNM]

Thanks very much for the info, i was however wondering.....

They both get very slightly different latency's which I can compensate for in Tracktion, [/quote]


.....I also have to compensate in 'Nuendo' will I able to adjust two units? Or is this unit built around 'Tracktion' for that very reason? Hmm?

Thanks again,[/quote]


The new drivers just came out miraculously FYI.

Tracktion has the detect latency thing that you need to use to sync up the inputs when overdubbing with the 400f. The second 400f had about a millisecond or two different latency when I did this, but you can have separate "time adjusts" or whatever, for each input in Tracktion, so it ends out ok. Never used Nuendo.

A few milliseconds might not make much of a difference, but all the inputs for the separate units usually match spot on with each other so I thought it was worth mentioning, I want my stuff the be as time accurate as possible as most people do.