ARTICLES

The BIT 3 PCI Expansion Chassis for ProTools
by William Coakley 01/11/2001

Because the world of PCI slots diminished in the Apple line of computers following the 9600, it was necessary to design an expansion chassis for all those expensive DSP cards for ProTools TDM.

In the summer of 1998 I purchased a Bit 3 chassis at a cost of around $1400.00. I installed my cards and it worked. But when I first turned it on, I thought something was wrong with it because it made sooooo much noise! It sounded like I had just turned on an industrial vacuum cleaner. It was so bad that I called the company to find out if I got a defective unit. The answer I got was "no ...they're kinda like that." I couldn't believe that something so expensive that was made to work in a recording studio could be so noisy that you had to take the unit apart and alter it just so you could use it. There is no way you could have that much noise anywhere near you if you wanted to mix, record or just listen to material. So, I had to figure a way to make it work since the company offered no solutions except to acknowledge that they needed to improve the noise on the noise it made. It's hard to believe that no one noticed the enormous amount of noise and hadn't figured on fixing it with some descent fans. They do exist.

So, I ended up not mounting the unit in a rack but rather leaving it stand free. I disconnected the noise generators (the two fans in the front) left the top open and placed a wonderfully quiet AC "Whisper fan" (designed by professionals in the 70's) on top of the cards and it has worked fine for years now. This left only the third noise generator, the power supply fan to make a considerable amount of noise ...but at least I could work and hear.

To add further to this problem, the new Digidesign cards require a voltage that my unit didn't have. So I had to recently spend another $700.00 plus dollars to get new cards and a new power supply for it. After all the time Bit 3 had to make the unit quieter, they actually made it noisier. The new power supply fan was far more noisy than the first and has now created a problem.

Over the years I have put up with the occasional flaky performance and the lock ups from using this chassis but to have it actually increase the noise output is quite unforgivable.

I would recommend looking at the Magnum which is a welcomed competitor.

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