Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with some of the team from G-Tech who wanted to know my thoughts on product design. One question they asked me was what features could they add to make their drives more useful.

I told them that it wasn’t what they needed to add but what they more companies making equipment for the modern recording studio need to understand, we need equipment that has very little noise.

In our recent controller survey, over half of audio professionals work from home and the likelihood is that all their equipment is sitting in the same room. One fan whirring is bad enough, but then you add the whir from several hard drives, an external chassis, audio interface and other external gear and you may as well be mixing in an airport. OK so I’m overstating the case, but for both reasons of trying to keep noise out of recordings and the general malaise of environmental noise, we need things as quiet as we can get it.

Some manufacturers manage to do it, but some need to try harder.

Yes there are still some large studios with machine rooms, but they are in the decline and those working from home grow year on year.

So if you have any involvement in designing audio for the next generation then please take fan noise seriously - it may be the difference between people buying your gear or buying something else, it certainly sways my buying decisions.