Gillian,

I was quite astonished to see how so very few people donated that much money, and how little that is compared to all unique visitors to the site. 153 individuals is really a lot less than what I expected... And the money is indeed a lot more than what I expected.
SPCR is by far the best (though specialised) hardware review site in the universe, and I didn't think that the "core community" (sorry) is such a small minority...

I can only assume that crawlers are a big part of those unique visitors? Just because for me it is hard to believe that someone with a technical interest (ok, a geek) would not become hooked on the quality and usefulness SPCR.

I am not very well off, and I considered not to donate, but I gathered so much knowlegde here that it just felt sinful to turn my head away.


MikeC and co., I don't care what you spend that money on. But that's the thing with this site: I just know it will be used in the most efficient way possible.

(However, if you do end up spending it on Uma T or Scarlett J, please post pics.)

FYI, CoolerMasteralso decided to sponsor some juicy prizes to add to the second draw: A Cosmos 1000 case, a couple of Hyper Z600 heatsinks (massive!), and a passive Cool Viva Z1 VGA cooler.

I wonder if all the $ I ever made in my whole life would be enough to even make an eyelash flutter momentarily with either of those bazillionaires..... The size of my fan collection might trigger some response, however.

Maybe you can cut their silhouettes into the inner wall of the floating chamber? That will make SPCR quite the fansite... (Excuse the horrible pun.)

I have to agree with ridegd - you could spend my donation on beer and it would be well spent in my opinion. I get lots of ideas / reviews from here so it's all good in my eyes. I do like the idea of the sound isolation room, and would love to see it built from top to bottom. Some reviews of the other cool sounds related gear would keep us happy until then too! Cheers and thanks for all the great content and thanks also to the sponsors for the chance to make it all even more worthwhile.

PS either uma or scarlett are fine with me if you can't have both

Scarlett over Uma any day.

Alessandra Ambrosio would be my first choice though.

oh and btw fwiw I didn't see anywhere to comment my forum name when donation using the premade donation amount link. Luckily you shouldn't have much trouble figuring out the association between my forum name and my email address.

A bit tight on cash atm (from all the quiet gear purchasing) but i've decided to donate $25us anyway.
I've learnt a lot from here, and i frequent the forums when i have spare cash/ or my computer starts getting loud again.

(This is very low and already got old, but I couldn't resist. No offence will be taken if this post is removed.)

Maybe she'd donate if there was a "signature series" of fans:
Nexus 120 SJ editions

(And the race for the "celebritypcreview.com" domain name begins...)

Hey, wait a second, the original suggestion was about me spending money on them, now you're suggesting them spending on me? on SPCR? Well! That's a whole nuther thing altogether. Hmmm...... I would probably have to masquerade as a 3rd world orphan... but then that would only attract the likes of Angelina Jolie, who most of you probably wouldn't approve.

Well I just figured, after you show Ms Celebrity your fan collection, her manager will realise the untapped potential in the PC enthusiast market.

It's an easy choice between a Fatal1ty model or a SJ model.

Although I never posted on the SPCR Forums before, I often visit Silent PC Review and the forums. The articles/reviews belong in my humble opinion to the best. I hope that my small donation will improve the articles even more so we can enjoy them for the many years to come! Although I wasn't able to add the reference "UPGRADE 2008", I think you'll know the donation was meant for this. Keep up the good work!

Even though I'll only be making a total of $2100 this summer(Hooray for a cheap Grad School!) I'm going to donate...it isn't much, but given all the knowledge and intelligent and courteous help in the forums I'd feel guilty not to.

See? Now, that's exactly what I've been talking about. This is the epitome of finding the means to help out. EVERY single donation helps, no matter how small.

I'm a fortunate one, who was able to make a decent donation, but that doesn't mean someone who donates $5 is any less appreciated by the site nor appreciative of the site! Some years I can only donate $20 to the local EMT's on the month they come around, other years, it's $100 or more. Nobody should feel "bad" because of how seemingly little they FEEL they're donating!

Every who donates ANYTHING should feel very proud that they're helping out.

Hey Mike... looking for someone to work PR for the site? LOL! Before you get any ideas... I'm just kidding!!! I rather enjoy being just a visitor to the site!

pay day today, so here's another $50 (Lifetime patron, yay!). Don't think I'll be able to give any more or my wife truly will have my balls

Good to hear it's going so well, can't wait to see the first pics!

Original post updated:

Well I've been sponging these free resources for far too long now, so I've just donated $50 as well. Great job you're doing and I'm only too happy to do what little I can to help get more noise-orientated reviews onto the site.

I haven't posted much, but have been a regular lurker for quite some time. And I got some input for my HTPC build from here, so I donated $100.

Keep up the good work.

FYI, the original post was updated...

What's the actual cost looking like now? I believe the original target was to raise $10k, but, last we heard, the quotes were coming in higher than you expected.

We've spent ~$3800 on the new audio measurement/recording tools so far -- SpectraPLUS, ACO Pacific 1" mic (10 dBA self noise!), another used B&K 2203 SLM for backup. The latter 2 have not been received yet; the B&K looks to be in excellent shape, we'll see. An ebay purchase from a Toronto source. I plan to have at least one of the B&K SLMs recalibrated by B&K. That's ~$300.

The building materials have not all been tabulated yet, but the latest estimate is...

QuietRock 5/8" 4x8 sheets, 32 x $106 + taxes: ~$3900
Bonded Logic Ultra Touch batting - 106sf bundles, 20 x $80 + taxes: ~$1900
2 prehung steel entry doors (better sound proofing) - $400
Steel studs/joists -- ~$300
Materials for floating floor: est. ~$600
all kinds of misc things that will invariably add up: ~$1000

Total looks like ~$12,000 right now. But I'd have to add something for Rob, who has experience w/ building sound rooms, studioes, etc -- really can't expect him to shell out at least a weekend of his time, labor & expertise for nothing. Maybe $1000...

FYI, Ultra Touch all that batting is not just for in the walls -- it will be used in place of conventional anechoic wedges. Long story, but having those wedges built would be >$10,000. I got several quotes. Ridiculous considering it's just foam or fiberglass... but DIY is not what I want to do with those. However, I came across a unique and apparently effective way to use fiberglass batting instead... and I'm adapting the easier-to-handle UltraTouch for this. $1900 for the stuff (including what goes in the walls and celing) is nothing compared to those quotes.

this is so cool, what an awesome project. So impressive to see how much people have contributed - just goes to show that excellence, rigour and humility can be rewarded !

Dollars are so cheap that I was considering a donation, but the thing is, I have never acquired a credit card, so paypal is out the question.

Then there's the lottery issue. Let's presume I donate 100$ and accidentally win the Q9650, and SPCR mails it to me. First of all, I'd probably have to 22% value added tax and 4% customs fee just to get it out of customs. ANd second, the lottery draft is not held in a EU-country, which means that by our law the prize would be considered as a source of income and I would have to pay income tax for it. Winning can be expensive, if you live here.

Then donate but explicitely tell you don't want to be included in the second draw .

I'm reading SPCR for quite some time and bought some stuff based on the recommendations I read here. It's about time I thank the people managing the site for their hard work.

I'm not familiar with the 2203, but I know B&K makes EXCELLENT mics. We have a handful of 4006's that sound amazing. If you ever get a chance to put your ears on any of the new DPA mics, do so. DPA is an offshoot of B&K.

Have you considered adding spectrafoo or smaart to the list? They are some great software tools with handy real-time frequency content measurement graphs. You could even use it to pink out the room and chamber to verify the frequency response of each room. Overkill...I know...

The 2203 is an SLM that dates back to the 70s, and it uses a 1" 4145 steel diaphragm mic. rated for 10 dBA self noise. The electronics in it are said to bring the self noise up to around 16 dBA tho the analog meter allows readings down to 0 dB. This is what we've been using for years, and I've just picked up a second unit from ebay. One of these will be sent to B&K for complete calibration.

But we'd decided on a PC-based measurement system some time ago. The first choice was pcRTA by LinearX, which makes LEAP, a spkr industry ref. design tool. Turned out pcRTA needed a PC w/ an ISA slot, and I decided that was not a good route. This led us to a soundcard-based solution -- http://www.spectraplus.com/ -- which we've already got working fairly well in the lab (as an SLM, RTA, etc) with the Sennheiser ME66 mic we've been using for recording and M-Audio Firewire 410 exteral sound card + Tamp mic preamp. That ME66 also has a self-noise of 10 dBA, but it's a highly directional shotgun not ideal for measurement purposes. (SeeSPCR's Test / Sound Lab: A Short Tour and Audio Recording Methods Revised for details of these, our current audio test system.)

Actually, here are the most salient pics from those articles:







The idea was to mate the SpectraPlus RTA software with a truly quiet reference mic. We already have 2 very good mics, the Me66 mentioned above, and also a test mic sponsored by T.H.E. years ago -- KP-6M. The latter sounds great -- better than the Sennheiser, imo -- but a bit too noisy, which is why the Sennheiser took its place. For the new system DPA was considered & rejected for too high self-noise. ACO Pacific's 1" measurement mic kit was our final choice. A number of pros in the mic/measurement arena recommended http://www.acopacific.com/ -- the website is a mess tho. The self noise was less than 10 dBA and pricing was more attractive at ~$2000. I'll pick up this item in San Fran in 2 weeks time when I am there for 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment.

Hi Erssa,

of course nothing stops you from letting someone else have your prize (eg me)!

BTW I didn't mean to say that anyone has to feel bad about not donating, not at all, really... I was just fascinated by the statistics, that's all.

I never thought SPCR would gather that much money this quickly, and I never though SPCR fans are such a small percentage of all site visitors.
To put it another way: I always though most SPCR visitors were major geeks/techies (or whatever is the least offensive) who are mad about this site


As for PayPal: I don't mean to be a smartass, but you don't have to have a credit card - all you need is a bank account. (At least that's how it is in the UK.) However, in that case all PayPal transfers will be sent as eCheques, which is slower than an international bank transfer...
(When I opened my PayPal account I was really unhappy with the amount of help and the quality of FAQs on PayPal's site. I had to use google and personal experience to find out about the types of transactions etc.)

Curiously, progress slowed dramatically yesterday -- down to around $200 compared to >$1000 the day before. We were at $9250 yesterday and we're only only $9450 today. All we need are a handful more contributors...

There are lots of non-geeks who are interested in a quiet computer, and a web search on relevant words will almost always find SPCR near or at the top of the results. Unlike many tech web sites, SPCR draws over half the traffic via search engines -- which most analysts interepret as a good thing. It means fresh eyes for ads, apparently, and certainly we're not as dependent on new links on other sites for normal traffic, tho they do boost traffic. Astonishingly, perhaps because so much traffic comes from search engines, publishing new articles infrequently doesn't impact unique visitor traffic much, tho pageviews can go up. I recall a crazy-busy crisis period some time ago when no new articles were posted for over 2 weeks -- and traffic patterns hardly changed.

About half the unique visitors in a given month visit only once. About a quarter visit more than 10 times, and about 8% visit more than 100 times. I think that includes most of the folks who have posted in this thread.

I may also be wrong about the exact percentage of contributors -- it might be 0.2%.

One more detail -- some 2/3s of visitors don't ever make it to the forums.


Paypal is not a fantastic service, I agree, but there aren't too many alternatives that can be used internationally. No way we wanted to get in handling credit cards. That's moving to ecommerce which is outside SPCR's range of interests. If anyone has suggestions about alternatives that are easy, I'm all ears. I'm also going to be looking into interac cash transfer possibilities for US/Canada.

Another $50 from me. Looks like its only a matter of time before you can get everything paid for and installed.

So citizens from outside Canada and the US are also able to win?