Empirical Audio Tune Bank
Storage and Security
The Empirical Audio Tune Bank provides up to 2.2 TeraBytes (TB) storage capacity for your music files and automatic back up security for your music library. You can have complete peace of mind that all of your music files are protected from erasure or compromise with the Tune Bank. Backup of your files is automatic, seamless and reliable. No technical knowledge is required.
Automatic Live Backup
The Empirical Audio Tune Bank is a RAID 1 (Reliable - Redundant Array of Independent Disks) hard drive system that automatically makes a mirrored copy of your primary music hard drive to a secondary drive live – all the time. As this goes on continuously in the background, you never have to worry about a crash. The Tune Bank even rebuilds your secondary drive without your computer being powered-on. Music files are so large that there is no other practical way to back up your files without secondary swappable drives.
For maximum flexibility, additional drives can be purchased. Each week, or every second week, depending on the backup schedule to suit your needs and how many spare drive trays you purchase, you unplug the secondary drive, put it away for safekeeping and plug in your third drive to continue the backup uninterrupted. The system works like a cartridge/cassette system.
Hot-Swappable Modules
The Tune Bank offers hot-swappable Tray Modules for simple maintenance and exchange convenience without shutting the system down. The Tray Modules can be swapped in and out at any time, with the computer powered-on or off. The Tune Bank must be powered-on. With the hot-swappable modules feature you can avoid being affected by virus or unexpected system error.
Alarm Function an Audible drive status in addition to Display status
A push button is provided to turn on audible alarm or turn audible alarm off. The alarm alerts you when there is a failed drive or no drive in secondary or primary tray position. In the event the primary drive fails, the Tune Bank automatically switches over to the Secondary Drive without any interruption to you listening to your music (playing your files). In this event, if you have alarm on, the audible beeping alarm will sound to alert you that the primary drive has failed and you do not have functional second backup drive. If this occurs, you can turn off the audible alarm or you can swap/plug in the primary drive with your backup drive and the Tune Bank will immediately begin to rebuild your primary drive. The alarm will stop as it is now rebuilding. In this case it would indicate “Primary Rebuilding 15% …30% …90%, and then “Primary Drive OK” and Secondary drive rebuilding and 20% 30% …100% and then finally “Secondary Drive OK”. The Tune Bank system truly looks after the safety of your music files by doing everything possible to alert you to take action. In the case of a failed drive, you should send your failed drive immediately back to us for warranty service so that you have a backup for the next time there is a drive failure. It’s rare, but drives do fail. The Tune Bank is protecting you because you always have a good spare drive in the event that any kind of disaster occurs.
User Gains Advantage
With Tune Bank you get the benefits of our trade secrets. We’ve invested many years in sourcing, modding, setup and testing different types of devices to optimize the Tune Bank so that all the right parts work together in a smoothly functioning system. Plug it in and it’s ready to play your music files through your Overdrive, Off Ramp or Pace Car.
Interface
The Tune Bank interfaces to your Laptop using an included SATA II Card or a SATA II PCI-E 1 card (PCI or PCI-Extended) for Desktops. It is important not to use USB for this storage interface.
Disk Drives
The disk drives are available in standard or high-reliability version at extra cost. Three drives are included
Unique Features
There are imitators, but they are not Tune Bank. Core differences include:
- More robust software and hardware controller
- Up to 2.2TB capacity
- Quieter than any other production RAID box
- Expert setup and testing
- Enterprise Server RAID drives with longer MTBF than standard consumer 1 yr drives
Specifications
- Capacity: ether 1TB, 1.5TB or 2.2TB per hard drive (3 hard drive included)
- Operates under Raid 1 controller that supports SATA II 3Gb/s disk drives
- SATA II Card bus for notebook use included
- SATA II PCI-E 1 card for desktop use included
- Drive Average Latency 4.16ms
- Drive Spindle Speed 7200 RPM
- Cache 32MB
- Average Power Idle 8 watts per drive
- LCD Blue backlit display to show status: Primary Drive, Secondary Drive, OK and Rebuild, % percentage left to rebuild, and Drive Failure.
- Only 1 fan 60 x 25 mm
Fan auto adjusts speed to temperature of hard drives and only runs when needed like the fan on your notebook. The fan uses high quality quiet FDB bearings (fluid dynamic bearings - same type of bearing used in hard drives). Fan noise rating 16 dBA. - Dimensions: 4.8" W x 4.2" H x 8.9" D
Inputs
- AC Power 70W (110V~240V Auto Switching) - US power cord provided (European power cord available)
- SATAII inputs
- USB inputs are present, but use not recommended*
Outputs
- RS232 for status monitoring - optional
Compatibility
Any PC running Microsoft Windows XP or Vista
May require installing SATA driver depending on which MS Windows service pack you have installed
The Empirical Audio Tune Bank is a reliable professional Windows (OS)-independent device. You can now have security and functionality without the complexity of a large enterprise system. You can sleep at night knowing your valuable music files are protected.
*We don’t recommend using the USB connection to Tune Bank. There could be USB bus contention with the sound card and/or Off Ramp or Pace Car.