Thankfully, I do not ever have migraines. Headaches are only a rare occurence.

I can handle most machine noise in the home at nights including (quiet) room fans (at low speed) and ticking clocks. But dripping taps annoy me. Unfortunately, it's something I have to put up with for now. The slight buzzing from the radio/CD player is annoying too. It somehow gets worse when we turn certain light switches on. Might have something to do with poor wiring or interference; I don't know. Or when someone listens to an analogue radio tuner and the frequency dial is a bit off, causing scratch and hiss. Airport activity has increased noticeably in the city over the last few years. The sound of planes flying overhead and at low level is not only annoyingly loud but a safety concern for many around here.

I wish I could silence the neighbours during their drunken social gatherings that persist into the early A.M. hours. Or the hoons that think that revving up a car/bike and speeding/burning out in the suburbs gives them some sort of control. Or uncouth, foul-mouthed and offensive people in general. Or barking dogs. Or ravens and crows. I wish there were silencing material for these. (Besides fire and brimstone.) Oh, well. I just have to be content with silencing my computers for now.

Ah, barking dogs, I know what you mean. Fortunately, the neighbor who kept their dog outside day and night sold their house and all is fine now.

One other noise that no one mentioned is the ticking/pinging from baseboard heat and that does annoy me, makes me want to move to Arizona.

Then you will have to deal with the noise from AC. At some point, even if you don't hear the unit or the fan itself, you will be annoyed by the airflow...

I have central air and the flow of air from vents in ceiling does not bother me one bit. The air compressor is located on opposite side of house so I don't hear it at all in my den.

Believe me, the air flow from central air is heaven compared to the ticking/pinging of baseboard heat. Add everything up and include noisy boiler and I will take Arizona, but 110 degrees outside is something else.

I should add that sizing and duct work have a bearing on the amount of noise you hear from central air vents. If you have an over-sized central air system, yes, it would be noisier than one just doing what you need. Plus, I have the vents in ceiling as opposed to walls or floors. Since I have oil hot water baseboard heat, the only vents are those for central air in the ceiling.

When I built the house, I discussed everything with the builder, even where the return vents should be placed--I opted for one single return vent and this is a two-story house with full basement, attic, three bedrooms, one exercise room (can be used as a bedroom), one family room/den, 2 1/2 bathrooms, dining room, kitchen, breakfast area, and a hall from front door.

I have had technicians over the house who are surprised at the size of my air compressor outside, as well as the size of my duct work; they say larger would have been their recommendation. I can tell you my unit works beautifully and keeps the house comfortably cool regardless of how hot it gets. Some may prefer a faster acting cooling system, faster in the sense of cooling the rooms, but I rather it run longer and be quieter while keeping humidity out. Of course, in Arizona, humidity wouldn't be a problem.

The key to making it work for me is setting the temperature at 71 degrees before the day gets very hot. If I know we are in for a hot spell, I keep the windows closed and central air on at 71 degrees. Since the thermostat for central air is upstairs, setting it at 71 makes downstairs even cooler by a degree, which is good since the computer/LCD heats up my den. All my thermostats don't let the temperature exceed the setting; they keep the temperature within one degree. For example, you will not see the temperature rise above the setting before central air goes on, neither will you see the temperature go down below the setting. If I set it at 71, then that is where it will maintain temperature.

In addition to what's been said above, and a lot has been said , I find the type of noise/frequency most important.

We don't hear a lot of gunshots around here. Your neighborhood sounds really dangerous.

I have to agree that among the posters in this thread, so far, "you're the clear winner in terms of anti-noise OC-behaviour."

As for any relationship between migraines and noise sensitivity, I haven't thought of that before. I've been subject to "classic" migraine attacks since my mid-20s (never one before then). Brought on by stress / fatigue (physical and/or mental) with some food triggers ( high sulphite content -- like many wines). Noise is not a trigger although once a migraine begins, all kinds of sensory inputs can be horrific -- sound, light, even smell. In the past year since the anechoic chamber was built, I've hid out in there /w/ the lights off a couple times at the onset of a migraine. The attacks don't come that often -- maybe 3-4 times a year -- and aren't anywhere close in intensity to what they used to be back in my 20s and 30s. The predisposition to migraine is apparently genetic; my mother started getting them in her mid-20s, too, her sisters as well, and my siblings have had the odd one here and there.

Devon, a once-prolific SPCR writer who still contributes from time to time, is also subject to migraines.

Some years ago, someone in the forums (or via email) suggested that I am probably a "highly sensitive person"... a category of people formulated presumably by HSPs. A web search for the term will get you lots of hits, including these:
http://www.highlysensitivepeople.com/index.shtml
http://www.hsperson.com/http://en.wikip ... ive_person

I bring this up because high aural sensitivity could well be an aspect of HSP.

It could just be an autism-spectrum condition. However, if it is, and if you're trying to live among neurotypicals and blend in with them, dwelling on the cause of your hypersensitivity isn't going to help you any.

Sure, I'm hypersensitive to noise, scents, textures, etc. I deal with it pretty well. I've made my home a comfortable place for me without making it intimidating to guests. This includes a silent PC, quiet appliances, simple decorations, the complete absence of perfumes, etc.

Outside the home, sometimes you can avoid excessive sensory stimulation, sometimes you can just suck it up, and other times, you tell the boss you're going to take a cigarrette break, and you go sit outside and eat an apple.

Just a story to emphasize the point - already made many times - that noise is always relative and is always personal. At the time this took place, I was in my mid 30's and could not hear above 13 kHz.

In the mid 70s I had to evaluate various alphanumeric CRT terminals - we were looking for something a little better than the 80 column by 20-odd line B&W terminal so typical of the period.

I had set up candidate terminals in a room, and asked various staff members to come in, one a a time, to test and offer comments on the terminal's features. At that time, there was no standard keyboard, and escape sequences did utterly different things on different terminals, so this was much more than just a beauty contest.

The room was roughly square, perhaps 12 ft by 12 ft, with a single door in the northeast corner. The terminal under test was on an east-west table butted up against the north wall, with the terminal facing south; the terminal could not be seen until entering the room. The room was carpeted, and the walls and ceiling were pretty good office-quality, not particularly hard surfaces. The company, among other things, consulted in acoustics, and practiced what it preached.

I had one terminal that was substantially different from the others, with more characters on the line, and a higher horizontal scan frequency - 17 kHz, I think.

I had about 5 or 6 people from the computer staff through the process for this terminal, comments duly recorded, with no mention of noise. Then came a petit young woman who stopped outside the open door. She would not enter the room, but said "That's way too loud!", turned on her heel, and left, never having even seen the terminal.

I learned something about noise that day.

I have been around here for awhile, but not for a long time. Just had to check back in, and since I forgot everything about my previous login, well, here I am as capecodbackup.

Anyways, I can really relate to this site. i love nights because they are quiet. I keep telling my friends who think i am must, that eventually humanity will realize the part that excessive noise plays in disease, bad feelings, ear damage, and overall unhealthy stress levels.

The sad truth about most noise from all the machines, etc is that 70% of it is simply... UNNECESSARY! A few folks i know are lucky enough to have not only a dishwasher but a SILENT dishwasher. I have had to put my ear up to one that was on full blast to see if it was on. That was IMPRESSIVE.

I can relate to those that wear earplugs while vacuuming. I wear protection when I mow the lawn, and I have an electric lawnmower, bought for silence. Be aware, they are 50% quieter, but that is still PLENTY loud. Got to get the hand mower, or better still, no grass. I bought a Meile vacuum for its quietness. Pretty good, for a vacuum.

I am also aware of too much noise for my 2 cats and go out of my way to be aware of them and not many cats like noise. We should take another que from animals here

Anyways, it is always a pleasure to visit this site and be among like kind. Dave

On obsessive removal of non-PC related noise...

To sleep:
- mobile phone needs to be on the opposite side of the room, else I can hear it make some kind of noise
- stereo needs to be turned off at the wall, not just into its 'off' state
- laptop can not be charging, else the charger emits a high frequency buzz
- the stupid helicopter that flies past between 1am-2am every night can't be there (I can't understand how no one else in the local area wakes up each night when its around this area)

The idea of ear plugs to sleep sounds really good, would save the 10 minutes each night getting to all the plugs (I can't reposition them easily to more accessible locations, and lack some mobility these days - always sounds funny to say at age 21).

On the plus side, I have a very poor sense of smell which is one less thing to worry about.

I guess im one of those highly sensitive people too. .. or somewhat highly sensitive anyway.

It seems I was fortunate to grow up in a house where my parents kept things quiet because the only nightime noises that I remember were from spending the nite elsewhere. A ticking clock while regular, would keep me awake for hours, then about the time I got to where I could ignore it, the fridge would kick in -- and of course no place is totally dark at nite so there were those distractions.

I too ran into the "noisy monitor" syndrome - but this was with a high school computer lab full of Apple IIe pcs. once on they were bearable, but I found out the hard way, having to listen to 17 monitors all turn on at once gave me a splitting headache.

Fast forward to present day.. I moved from kansas out here to the silicon valley and immediately found the "acceptable" noise threshold was more than I could bear.
my new apartment was nexto a shopping center, which was great for convnient shopping and a morning walk to Starbucks.
but at nite around 12:30 the delivery trucks would show up.. with complete disregard to speed bumps. Then every wendsday starting at 2am they bring out the rideable vacuum cleaner to clean the parking lot, and seemingly every nite they also had a guy with leaf blower wandering around. Then to top it off on the last thursday of every month the pressure washer shows up toting a VERY loud water compressor.

When I complained to the apartment management about this, they looked at me like I had 3 eyes.. "what noise?" ... "we dont get any complaints"
Calls to the local Police got simmilar results. And if not for my discovery of cheap ear plugs, I would probably be writing this from a jail cell -- when you cant sleep, one gets very cranky.

Ive since moved out of that apartment to a quieter place, but found I liked the total silence the earplugs gave me.. so much so that i still cant sleep without them -- I can hear the pump in my cat's water dish, the cars driving by.. my upstairs neighbors walking around at nite, and then the fans on my PCs. The water pump and my PC fans are the only ones i can do something about.. so the earplugs stay in.

But the total silence is very addicting, so when I go back to visit my parents in their quiet house.. even the once per nite car driving by will wake me up, so I have to keep the earplugs in.

Amen, Amen, Amen. So true. Cops used to at least pretend to pull over noisy mufflers in the past. Not now. Too bad.

Glad I live in the countryside in Norway, not even planes pass over here often.. the noisiest thing around here at night is when the cat jumps down from a chair / bookshelf, or when the freezer downstairs kicks in... One exception tho, 18-19yearolds in their crap volvos with leaky exhaust or "aftermarket mufflers" that make a hell of a racket, a good way of ruining my sleep, meh.

I look at my 80mm vantec tornado fans like i look back at bad life choices from highschool...

First post here, been checking the site regularly to educate myself on Quiet Computing Solutions (tm)

I can give some insight on noise sensitivity as psychologist.

Current theory on noise perception suggests that our brain regulates the attention directed at the multitude of noise (sound) sources. When this works correctly only the sound that is of interest to us is heard (like the music we want to hear). All other sources are still processed but on a very basic level, so only a very small amount of cognitive capacity is used, all this is happening subconsciously. These sources are effectively below our attentional threshold.
Our brain can however bring the subdued sources to our attention again for conscious appraisal of the information, requiring much more of our cognitive resources. This happens when we suddenly hear our name (the cocktailparty effect) or when we hear the baby crying, etc.
There's evidence that this attentional regulation can be disfunctional. This can be due to trauma, but is also linked to personality disorders or genetic disposition. In practice this means a percentage of the population has problems filtering noise: trivial noises still get conscious attention leading to tiredness, headaches, lacking ability to concentrate on the task at hand, etc.
There is no workaround other than creating a quiet environment.

The other part of the equation is adaptation, when we silence one part, we quickly get used to it and soon enough we start hearing other sounds. This is a race you can't win, unless you can effectively silence everything below human perceptional threshold.

I`m not particularly sensitive to noise but I still find this site & forums particularly interesting. Like many mention, home appliances can be unecessarily loud and making them quieter can be appreciated even by average people. Pretty much everyone I know is interested in quieting their computers after a visit at my house.

As I side note, I don`t think I would like complete silence. Some pleasant background noises like a soft breeze are desirable. I also don`t mind the voices of (often drunk) people passing by late at night but I do mind when drivers are honking without good reason. That really gets me mad.

Just a note: I have my GPU fan on a zalman fanmate. When I game, I manually crank it up to 2500RPM to get some real air blowing over the thing.

When I'm done gaming, I often forget to bring the RPM back down to earth, so Ill be sitting there and about 10 min later think to myself..wtf is taht noise. It's really bothering me...OH WAIT...AHhhhhhhh

Nooooope! Cause Im dope. Are you dope? I have a very quiet pc because of these forums... thats why I'm dope. YEeeeeHAW!

Thats just funny woody! WOOOODEEEE.... you know Toy Story.

OHHHH i ABSOLUTELY HATE THAT! hate hate hate hearing a ticking clock when im trying to sleep. I have to take batteries out of them if they exist. I'm like Captain Hook from the first Peter Pan with clocks.

All the mentioned noises bother me like crazy. Except crows. Funny how sound is. Dave

PS Was crawling under a desk at a friend's office checking the noise level on his new Dell Optiplex 360. Man, that is one QUIET computer. Kudos to Dell for that one. I have a Optiplex 745 now with SSD. Also a nice quiet computer.

I think the answer to Mike's question, are we better served by quiet gear, is "within reason". As far as the quiet computer thing goes, my machine is quiet enough for me to hear the hum from my monitor. OTOH, the heating and AC system in parts of the house is loud. In retrospect, I wonder if some of the fan replacements were worth the effort, even though by SPCR standards they worked very well. There is no way that I would sacrifice performance, or spend big time just to achieve that last db.

Many around here mention noise sensitivity and sleep problems. I must be fortunate because I can sleep in very noisy places like jets. It seems strange to me that some complain PC noise interferes with sleep because it is next to their bed. Perhaps they should rearrange the furniture.

I will admit to cringing at the thought of listening to music on a bad sound system, but it has to be really bad, not just sub audiophile quality. It may have more to do with butchering the music than anything else.

Oh God...
Yesterday I caught myself thinking about the changing the direction of the airflow of my mother in law's mixer to reduce the noise while I was making cookies... And then I thought about posting this story here... this is B A D ...

I'd have to say that my opinion on the matter falls directly in line with this. My computers at home are "quiet enough" for my purposes. Of the three that I have (media center, server, workstation), the workstation is definitely the loudest, but is also my general purpose and gaming system so it gets a bit of leeway.

Is the system audible if you listen for it? Yes.
Is the noise intrusive? No.

I've made that system as quiet as possible without sacrificing performance. It's running a Q9550@3.4GHz and an ATI 4890 video card with the reference cooler (which inside the P182 is surprisingly not loud...). There's a Prolima Megahalems cooler on the CPU, and all but the top fan are Slipstream 1200RPM fans. The system is sitting on carpet and is under my desk. My measure of "too loud" might be higher than others, but the discussion is a personal matter.

On the other hand, my media center was built with the mentality of 'how much performance can I get while keeping it "silent"?'. It's got a fairly powerful AMD X2 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and two WD GP drives in RAID0, and a pair of Slipstream 500RPM fans. Have I ever noticed that it's on? Nope.

While working for Mike and reading the multitude of articles that have been written since I've never felt like any of them have been overly OCD about noise. It is in the title of the site after all.

If the computer you're using is getting "too quiet", simply add in another fan. This may sound like heresy to some, but a smooth sounding constant speed fan may drown out the more irritating coil whine of monitors or video cards.

I won't bore you with details, but I've had a fascination with audio equipment for about ten years, and I've "collected" a few pieces since then. In the beginning, I went for big and loud... more power and more drivers equals better sound, right? Then, about a year ago, I realized that wasn't the case, and I started downsizing to the (relatively) modest system I have now. It's still not perfect, and I can hear a bit of hiss from the speakers when it's quiet and I concentrate on it, but overall the "noise" is far lower than anything I've had thus far. It's good enough, for the time being, but I'm always playing with components and trying to make it even quieter.

Same applies for my PC... at first I paid little attention to the noise of the system, putting more stock in other aspects. When I realized it was too loud for an audio system, I started looking into noise reduction, which eventually lead me here. After reading several articles, and some careful consideration, I ended up buying a few products that have greatly reduced the noise coming from my PC. To be honest, it's now at an acceptable level... I wouldn't say it's cool at idle, but it's within safe temperatures, and the only real noise is a bit of turbulance and hum from case resonance. It's loud enough to hear when my place is quiet, but quiet enough to be drowned out by outside noise or the tv at low levels. Having said that, I'm kind of addicted... I'll probably keep working on it until A) I can't hear it from my seating position, or B) it becomes financial suicide.

As for other noise... my job involves heavy machinery (trucks and excavation equipment), which is by no means quiet, but that doesn't tend to bother me. Weed-whackers and gasoline-powered metal/concrete saws I can't stand, but that might be the pitch rather than the loudness. I like a bit of noise from my cars too... as someone mentioned above, Toyota Camry's are exceptionally quiet, but I don't always like that quality in a car. Before I got into computers, before I got into audio, I was (and still am) into cars, and there's just something about the deep, throaty growl of a classic car, or the slow rumble of a big diesel engine. You could quiet it, but to me that seems like the equivalent of taking a gorgeously assembled (and silenced) computer and sticking it in one of those standard, beige PC cases: Functionally, it's the same, but there's still something missing.

Sorry for the long post.

I just have to say how glad I am that this post got brought up so that I could read it.

Going through it I could help but to feel:
1) included. I don't know what started it, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of noise in general. Being a recent member here, I just can't go away from the forums anymore. There's a serious convergence of expertise in many fields here (as can be seen from the above posts) which allow me and others to make the proper decisions on computer hardware. That's one less loud thing to worry about then

2) relieved. Living with my parents (who are now becoming increasingly "hearing handicapped") I have to put up with loud TV noises when I'm studying (should be doing that just now!), reading, listening to music, etc etc. There's also loud talking and basicly loud everything. So I try to cope with much of it, and frankly really make it a "stubborning matter", because I know wherever we are noise pollution is a part of the world today. Having said that, I do sleep with my head "sandwiched" between pillows and the windows open (I live in the suburbs so it quiet most of the time). And I do have to turn off most things at the plug (like the laptops charger, or my bleeping old HP printer that does this noise whenever its plugged in). But I haven't got to the point where I need to completly soundproof my hears (which some of you must have already thought of, I'm sure!) so I'm quite relieved!

3) amused. Some of your experiences are amusing, although I appreciate how much psychological and physical pain they cause you, and sympathize with your efforts.

4) glad. Obviously glad this precious source of information (and this great community, I might add) exist.

5) Addicted. Which is something I would tend to regard as a failure, but given the sanity and otherwise health benefits it brings, I won't get too stressed over it

Cheers,
nwbdan

I think you've hit it on the head pope_face, with frequency. I'm a fan of cars too, and there are some loud cars I love the sound of, and some I can't stand.

I think any Toyota Altezza (4cyl) with an exhaust sounds terrible. Listen to this clip, around ~23s and ~30s you can hear a buzzing/rasp which I find terrible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sYuZExKyec

Yet I don't mind the sound of a Mivec mirage (also 4cyl). It still has a rough parts of the range, but seems to have more 'growl' to it, which I find pleasant.

And strangely, the 6cyl Hakosuka GTR has a 'rasp' to it, yet I love the sound of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAXGuD_f3Kw

Similarly with the 6cyl Datsun 240K http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuosXDMjOy4

One of my favourites is the group A R32 GTR (6cyl twinturbo)... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn_n1Jc3uzE

Perhaps with the rasp, there are different resonant frequencies for the different motors, and hence a 4cyl rasp sounds worse to me than a 6cyl rasp.

A funny aside about frequency and sensitivity - I can't stand the sound of a seagull makes. My mother-in-law cannot hear seagulls whatsoever - she only found out that they made noise in her 40s when someone else complained about them! She has certain frequencies completely missing from her range - a curse and a blessing perhaps?

(apologies for the longwinded post)

I'm definitely not as paranoid about noise as some of the others here, but I get ticked off by unnecessary or gratuitous noise.

- Xbox 360. I don't have one, but some buddies do. There is no good reason why these things are that loud. In 2005, people knew that noise pollution by computing devices is an issue and how to prevent it. Apparently it just wasn't a high enough priority for the engineers.

- Loud cars. A$$hole people. You don't live on a vacated island dipsh*t, there are other people too and most of them don't care for the noise of you freakin' car!
Electric cars FTW! I know, people associate car noise with power or whatnot, but they'll just have to get over it. It is noise pollution and it must end.

- Loud music. I ALWAYS wear headphones. If it's late and I want to listen to loud music, films or video games, I go out of my way not to bother others. Why is that favor not returned?

- String trimmers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_trimmer)
These bloody things are meant to trim edges, not to mow your whole freakin' lawn. I happen to have hillbilly neighbours (think Cletus from the Simpsons) and they just love loud things. They also chainsaw something every other day. I hate them deeply.

- Artificial excitement. I'm coming home about 2 hours after Germany defeated England in the World Cup and people were still driving around honking, shouting, yelling. There is NO WAY IN HELL that they were still genuinely excited about the outcome of a Final 16 game. They were just waiting for an excuse to be obnoxious in public.

- Barking dogs. For 10 years I've lived next to what can only be called the loudest dog in the world. A Rottweiler. Now barking dogs are almost always the owner's fault. Not schooling it right when it's young or caring for it improperly or whatnot. But I don't care. For me, dogs are things. Not unlike cars or string trimmers. Nobody has the right to own a loud dog. If you can't get it to shut up, you have to get rid of it.