When you're recording in a studio environment, any piece of gear that makes background noise is going to get in the way of your session. That's why some folks try to silence their gear by putting noisy hard drive units in "isolation boxes" to muffle the noise of the drives and fans spinning.
Unfortunately, "iso" boxes have a drawback: heat buildup. Even in the best boxes, it's nearly impossible to get total acoustic isolation and also get the heat out of the hard drive product that's in the box.
Wouldn't it make more sense to stop the noise at its source?
Stopping the Noise Where It's Made
Most of the noise in a hard drive system comes from two sources: the hard drive itself, and the fans used to circulate air through the enclosure. Noise is vibration, and it is the vibration of the hard drives and fans that is so objectionable in an audio recording studio.
So Glyph studied the situation, and determined how to stop noise at its source - first, silence the fans, and second, block the vibration of the hard drive from getting to the chassis, where it could make its way into the studio. The fans in our ultra-quiet enclosures are specially chosen for nearly-silent operation, and we further reduce their noise output by over-sizing them and then running them slower than their ratings. This leaves only the hard drives as the main potential noise source. The clear place to reduce this was in the mounting hardware that holds the drives within the chassis. Glyph researched the problem, and found the solution.
Quiet Metal® Tri-Laminate
We took advantage of advanced composite metals technology, and incorporated a tri-laminate - two layers of metal skin, separated (and bonded) by a viscoelastic polymer core - into our systems to dampen vibration and control noise. The tri-laminate metal actually absorbs vibration before it can get to the unit chassis. Extensive research and testing demonstrated that careful application of Quiet Metal® to our products would dramatically cut the noise level produced by the hard drives.
We use Quiet Metal® for the internal drive frames, making Glyph products the quietest high-performance storage systems available today. The combination of viscoelastic damping and secure fastenings, along with our use of the latest in quiet drive mechanisms and fans, virtually eliminates vibrational noise.
This translates into a storage solution that is significantly quieter than the rest of the gear in your studio - which means your recording is quieter, too.
Quiet Metal® is a registered trademark of Material Sciences Corporation
