I've had my console for about 4 months and it has been great. Yesterday there were some electricians working in the facility and the blew the main fuse. Today when I tunred the console on I noticed the Fan was very loud and clicky. What is most interesting about this is that when I first auditioned a D7 in my studio I heard this same loud fan noise. My dealer said it was the first he had heard of it! The console has not moved and I believe the power source has not changed.

Anybody have ideas or similar experiecnes?

My fan has made noise in the past. It comes and goes. When it shows up, it's all of a sudden. There are (or at least were) other threads in this message board about fan noise.

I've posted on this several times in the past. I finally got a new fan--went through a lot of trouble getting those screws off (they have "teeth " in them to resist being backed out!!!!!!) Got the new one in place. It was much quieter but not inaudible. Now several weeks later it is getting a bit more noisy with a bit of a soft chatter. Will it keep getting worse? and be as loud w/ chatter as the one I ripped out. We'll see. You would think that Pan/Ramsa would have made this board w/out a fan like that "OLD" Yamaha 02R--no fan in that baby! Yamaha knows what's up in the studio...silence from recording gear!!! By the way someone posted some time ago that they removed the fan. If you read this post please respond and let me know if that has caused any problems. Thanks.

I actually got in touch with carl at panasonic inside tech support. he said that they have been experiencing problems with the fans and that they will replace them under warrenty. With the only catch that I need to send the board to LA and shut my studio down for that week!! yea that is a great idea, i'm running a commercial facility!

anyway, they will fix them. In the meantime I gave the board a solid whack on the side and the fun shut up... for now.

Carl's assistant sent me a new fan to replace the original as I've stated in the previous reply. I talked w/ him about the down time and they just sent me one. I had to fax some info. that's about it. But even the new fan ain't that quiet.--just quieter.

Going on three months now with the fan disconnected. I don't suggest it, but there was no alternative for me since I do VO work right in front of the board. No problems...yet. It's my policy to leave all equipment on 24 hours a day, but I turn the DA7 off at night to limit the heat buildup. FYI, I use a CDQ Prima ISDN codec from Musicam that had the loudest fan I've ever heard. With factory blessing I disconnected it. That was 5 years ago and it's on 24/7. Not to say that cool equipment isn't desirable, it's just that cooling fans are impractical for many control room environments. Kudos to Panasonic for trying to help by replacing the noisy fans with new noisy fans. But I think the final solution for all console manufacturers must eventually be noise free cooling of some sort.

Allen, isn't there an option on the Prima for the fan NOT to come on? I thought I saw that in one of the menu options and I just left it alone... could be dreaming, too.

You're right... it's HORRIBLY loud!!



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ERIC SEABERG • San Diego, CA
eseaberg@cts.com

Eric,
Yes. I believe that option WAS added in later Prima models. Mine didn't have it so I had to pull the wires. Ya know, adding a fan ON/OFF option to the DA7's utility menu might not be a bad suggestion. Perhaps it should be designed to automatically start again after a predetermined time. That way, those of us who need to kill the fan noise for short periods could do so.

Yes the Prima 220 has a fan off switch which I use, and I leave my box on all the time for about 2 years now, no problem.

I gave my DA7 a nice switft "love tap" on the fan side. It seemed to quite its complaining for now. If it acts up again I should have to replace her!

I have the noisy fan problem also. It sounds like Panasonic cut corners on the fan, and use an inexpensive ball bearing fan.

The other possibility is that the mount the fan is on likes to rattle.

- Sam