emusonacid!

The last few months i've made several steps towards making my Ultra the perfect sampler for me. I replaced the internal hard drive with an SSD, replaced the onboard fan with a Scythe "silent" one, installed SCSI -> IDE -> CF, extended the front panel cables so i can have the sampler under my desk and the front panel on my desktop. i've found lots of useful info here about the above mods, so i was thinking that maybe someone here has some tips to share about my next step: turning the Ultra from "silent" to 0db silent. even though the fan is pretty silent it still bothers me to hear it whenever i stop my sequencer to make edits.

the options i could think are:

- take the PSU out of the case and use Thermaltake or Zalman passive coolers to keep it cool.
- replace the PSU with a silent computer PSU. the wattage would be much greater but i don't see why that would be a problem. computer PSUs have all the voltage outputs needed, so i'd just have to reroute them.

if anyone has any experience or any tips to share, please do.

Would be interested in seeing the pics of your "remote desktop" - sounds interesting.

In terms of the PS - www.powdec.com/pdf/pte43.pdf or similar according to other posters on this board.

PTE43-31 +5VDC 500mA 6.00A +12VDC 300mA 3.60A -12VDC 100mA 0.50A for some ultras (non RFX)

Power supply internal pic:

http://www.jsigle.com/musicol/emufixcap.htm

So, other than the molex connector which is removable, it looks very similar to a PC power supply spec - in fact simpler.

I would guess a low profile Zalman would work for example. However, one thing to consider: the fan is not just to cool the PSU, but to cool the motherboard and so on. It may be ok if its not in a rack to have passive cooling, but it might also not be good - consider a temperature sensitive fan setup perhaps for cases where it my get warm in there.

RFX users would have heat from that card (passive GPU cooling my work there too - I'm actually looking at that in the future for my platinum).

M

The remote front panel mod sounds very interesting indeed, care to share any pointers, tips etc?

regarding the removable front panel:

the whole mod is pretty straightforward but i had to mangle the front panel a little to complete it. that's because i had to replace the short ribbon cable that transmits button & encoder data. however i had to do that anyway because that ribbon cable was damaged on my ultra and it wouldn't transmit encoder clicks correctly.

the tricky thing about this cable is that one side of it is clamped on the front panel itself on a connector that's soldered in place. so i had to desolder that connector (if you're not an electronics expert don't try this! old solder is not as easy to desolder as fresh solder) and replace it with a regular IDE-like connector. the problem is that the new connector wouldn't fit between the front panel PCB and the plastic, so i had to cut a hole in the plastic which is visible and ugly. i couldn't find a connector like the original one and even if i did i wouldn't have used it. i don't care for the looks so much and i wanted to be able to replace the ribbon cable in case something happened.

the backlight cable is easy peasy, i just cut it and extended it. you can do this with duct tape but that would be too cheap for a 500$ sampler, so i used solder and heat-shrink tube. the rest of the mod is as easy as finding the appropriate ribbon cables and the respective connectors and plugging them in place.

i don't have any proper pics and i can't take one now, but if your eyes are sharp enough you can see the front panel on top of my ASR-10 and a part of the Ultra right under it in the following pic:

http://www.em411.com/blog/em411_com-blog-6536-3.jpg

the hole and the edge of the ribbon cable is also visible in the middle of the front panel.

kalide wrote:However, one thing to consider: the fan is not just to cool the PSU, but to cool the motherboard and so on.

thanks for pointing this out kalide. however, isn't it far fetched to assume that a tiny fan like that actually dissipates heat from the RFX card (especially with the metal compartment installed)?

i hope i'll have some spare money / time soon so i can experiment with this, maybe do some temperature measurements etc.

it would be sweet to have the ultra run completely silently, that and the closet pc i'm planning to build will be a dope combination :-)

delete : first it's really GREAT news to know that an SSD can work into the E-MU ! Could you post the brand / model / specs for your HD ? I suppose you got a 3.5" -> 2.5" IDE adaptor ... may I ask you that i'm also interrested about the one you use

Concerning the 0dB E-MU, perhaps the first question is : is your fan under-voltaged ? because if not, this can make a very big difference. I've posted this in another thread :




All you need is a simple pot and mine is set at the minimum (in fact the minimum voltage for the fan to turn on and rotate at startup). It's very very acceptable as noise. If you need I'll explain the soldering diagram with a pot, it's a very simple one.

But if you really need 0dB perhaps one solution (unless you have an RFX-32 like me, that gets very hot inside the box) would be to use an external power instead of the one provided with the E-MU and forget about the fan. If you own an RFX-32, you'll probably need to add passive dissipators on the RFX's chips : they could even do a better job than the fan does.

I can't wait to test an SSD in my E-MU !

Cheers

kalide wrote:PTE43-31 +5VDC 500mA 6.00A +12VDC 300mA 3.60A -12VDC 100mA 0.50A for some ultras (non RFX)

My Ultra is working fine with the PTE43 PSU, although I've got the RFX
installed. As you mentioned, what worries me more is the heat that
the RFX produces. Some combination of separate fan (60mm) and
some additional cooling sink on the RFX plate might help.


TSR

aerodrink: i'm using a Transcend 4GB IDE SSD. the 3.5->2.5 adapter was part of a 5-pack i bought from ebay (something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-HD-2-5-to-IDE-3 ... otohosting).

here's the exact product page:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=2503

i believe that all other SSDs of this product line will have the same performance (quite zippy!).

regarding cooling of the RFX card, i was thinking maybe sticking something like this to it will do the trick:
http://www.mittoni.com.au/thermaltake-s ... -2014.html

observing the pics aerodrink posted above, i noticed that the power supply cover in his ultra is different than mine. mine has a few circular holes that form a grille in the back part (the grille is in total ~60cm^2 and then the cover becomes solid). my point is that in aerodrink's ultra there's an even smaller probability that the fan dissipates any heat from the RFX card.

also, i noticed that the metal plate on my RFX card is facing towards the front panel and not the back. that means that the heat coming from the plate moves slowly towards the front panel. i don't think that there's any chance that a small 40mm fan which is enclosed in a metal box and already sucks the heat from a semi-hot power supply can make any difference in the RFX card's temperature.

my guess is that the RFX card will do just fine by itself without a fan. however, just to be safe, i'll probably stick a couple of heatsinks on the metal plate to drive the heat towards the front panel (which in my case isn't there :) ).

Delete : could you post the model of your SSD ?
I purchased a 64 Gb SSD from Transcend but it is not recognized bu the Ultra ...
I've read in a forum that it could work with a SLC and fail with a MLC (which is mine), so it would be great if you'd post the exact model of yours.

Thanks !