I do think tolerance to noise can be relevant. I visit a friend who lives so far out in the sticks that you can barely see his neighbor's lights at night. That is with no trees or obstructions in the way. This might sound strange, but the lack of noise actually seems to almost hurt my hears. I think they are straining to hear something I think should be there.
i recently moved into the center of a fruit orchard. Very quiet and I really like it. I am now contemplating the purchase of propane refrigerator and freezer. With no moving parts they are silent.
So no, I don't think SPCR is too obsessive.

My new obsession is light. It seems that every new city person who moves to the country feels the need to put up yard lights, and not small ones but the street light type. I try to explain to them that these lights are not needed as they themselves know where everything is on their property and can find their way around at night. And their dogs don't need light to protect the property against intruders. They are just lighting the way for interlopers. Really pisses me off.

I for one am very grateful that this community exists.

I have sensitive hearing, but I had resigned myself to noise since I thought there was no alternative.
Once bought "quite" cpu fan some years ago, more damn noise than the old one -_-

Through this community and the work they have done I have managed to quiet down my computer so that I can actually stay around it longer than an hour before I give up on the noise.
My computer has it's own room, and before I silenced it down I had to close the door to the room so I wouldn't be bothered by the noise.
Which of course heated the room up and it got even more noisy.

Now I can keep the computer on 24/7 with the door open and my own bedroom door open as well and I don't notice it any more.

A lot of industries have wakened a little bit to noise control, but there is a lot to be done.

Noise pollution really tires me mentally and physically.
I work at an electronics store, and I've got noise all day long every day .
No wonder I want to take a hour nap right after work just to even myself out

Erelyes: Haven't listened to the clips yet, but I know what you're referring to... and I agree, putting a glass-pack muffler on your car because you want it to sound loud doesn't mean it'll sound good. I had a Magnaflow on a '91 Explorer for a while, and that was actually a lot quieter than I'd anticipated (possibly because I used properly sized intake/exhaust), but it still had a nice sound.

Funny you should mention the Datsun... I'm actually rebuilding a '70 Datsun 521, and the stock setup (with a glass-pack) sounded immense (it's now getting an engine swap). Maybe it was the exhaust setup, but it had that deep rumble and sounded more like my neighbour's Chevelle than my old '84 Civic (with no muffler), and that was with a 1300cc 4-cylinder.


Tim: I agree about the Xbox. I recently took apart the power brick to see if I could do something about the loud fan inside, but the internals are so packed in there, and I don't want to get electrocuted, so I decided to leave it. Still annoys me though.

And, as I've mentioned above, cars with coffee-can exhausts annoy me too, as with motorcycles (or scooters) without mufflers. I do enjoy a bit of loud music from time to time, but that's typically in the privacy of my own home (when the other people living in the building aren't around). Barking dogs I can handle, to an extent... a couple minutes is ok, thirty isn't. The dogs around here are pretty good though, and are usually only out during the day.

Why would anyone willingly accept stress inducers, i.e. sources of extra noise, into their home when it can as easily be avoided with a modest investment of effort and money? Only fools, only fools...

People didn't ask to have the noise of the modern world, it got pushed on everyone little by little - and now we're pushing back, be it silent PCs, noise-reducing asphalt or better acoustic design in buildings. SPCR is a valuable outpost of this movement and to SPCR I owe thanks for having created a stressless study and working environment (albeit it's taken some hair-pulling to get there).

Down with the noise! All that squealing, ticking and humming a person with silent parts notices is nothing but bad design, to be shunned and driven out! Even when it gets borderline obsessive, "silencing" in general is about making things better for everyone in the long run - suffer not the subpar!

Tis a possibility... I've just grown to hate my loud ass computer and decided to do something about it...

me too. well, i just take the battery out.

Since I became a member (A lurker, though) of SPCR, I've noticed this little thread, but never read through it. "Probably irrelevant to my interests". However, this thread caught my eye when I was browsing around the forums (looking for new silent case mods, heh). I was curious if I was becoming obsessed with noise, but from what I've read, I'm clearly only a mild case.

The situation is this: I'm a student in Leyden, Netherlands, and currently have a small room in the aforementioned city. Two months ago, I got a new housemate, who occupies the room next to mine. Before that, it was almost always empty, as the girl who used to live there had a very active life somewhere else. All was quiet, and I was a happy camper.
Now, this new guy has quite a collection of electronics, all hooked up to his TV and sattelite speakers. Whenever he wants to watch TV, play a game or play music, it is too loud for me to live with. I've complained numerous times, but he is just too much of an asshole to keep his volume down when I'm around. I started to question myself if I wasn't being a whiner, and then read the posts in this thread.

Apparently my ears aren't nearly as sensitive as the ones of some SPCR users. When I go to sleep (and everything is quiet), I can't hear the ticking of clocks in the room, I can fall asleep with the hum of the heating system or the sounds of the trains screeching outside (the railroad is about 300m away from my house). As long as I know where the sound is coming from, and wether I know if I can stop it, I don't get bothered by it, most of the time. However, my samsung monitor has to be unplugged in order for it to stop screeching when turned off. I can hear the computer of my housemate running when I go to sleep. He recently bought a new 700-800 watt power supply, and it's fan is such a screamer that I can hear it through the wall. If I'm correct it was a Chieftec .
I don't have to sleep with earplugs in, though the sounds of the city force me to close the windows when the wind direction is wrong.
Good thing is I can't hear the broken fridge in the kitchen, one flight down. It's thermostat is broken, and the pump keeps on whirring all day long. You would probably go mad, but I can't hear it.
Just like another user said: I can't stand the sounds of some car brakes, train brakes (waaay too loud on the older models here!) and the hiss when trucks exhaust pressurised air scares me. Same goes for barking dogs.

This thread brings me relieve, as I can complain on the internet about my problem. And I've found out I'm not the only one with sensitive hearing.

Now to get out of this lousy room and find a place where it is quiet enough. I'll post some more later on.

Funny you should say that... I tend to be the same way: If it's something that I think is in my power to control, then a noise can bug me unbelievably. But if I perceived it as being beyond my control, then I just let go and relax. Case in point: Some years ago, in the fiercest wind storm I've ever experienced (in Vancouver, no less), gusts went up to 100mph all night, and a huge ~80' tall Acacia tree toppled in front of my house, grazing the front edge of the deck but miraculously not doing any damage. The noise all night was amazing. My wife didn't sleep a wink -- I slept through it all like a baby. It's out of my control, I can do nothing about the wind, so relax. I suspect it's some deeply embedded Taoist attitude -- shit happens.

It's not always the case, but under most circumstances I can ignore noise. During the day (when I'm at the lab or following courses), I don't mind the noise of the machines at the lab, or the talking of all the other students.
But as soon as I get home, everything has to be completely quiet.
My housemate has made me somewhat audio-paranoid. Each sound that I assume isn't coming from my headphones, causes me to pause the music and listen what is happening. However, most times it's just the spatial tricks my headphone plays on my ears.

And Mike, are you a deep sleeper? I've slept trough storms before, while the last stormy night kept waking me up every couple of hours. And next to that, there is nothing more relaxing than rain falling on the roof of my dormer and wind blowing past it. It creates a white noise (or pink, I don't know) that drowns out everything and has a very soothing character.
Personally, I wouldn't go with Taoism, more with apatheia. Shit happens, but when "you think it slight, you will make it slight".

Are we all obsessive-compulsive about pc noise? I vote HECK NO! Why should we have to listen to the annoying constant noise from fans and/or buzzing/irritating sounding PC's? If you spend a lot of time with computers (like me), it's much more bearable to rest your ears while using the computer as intended, ala a tool to accomplish a task.

I cannot stand PC noise at all and prefer to work with a computer that allows my hearing to rest from constant irritating noise frequencies. It also helps my concentration when reading/researching/studying text for long periods of time.

NO. no, no, nonono.. etc
If i can wade in with my 2p and my size 12s, I think it's a modifier/tweaker thing. I've been modifying/tweaking things up to alter something about them for 20 years, and I have come to the conclusion that there are two types of people in this world: those who are happy with 'just buying' something, and those who are not, require certain characteristics, or have the type of brain who can see a drawback of something or a way something can be improved, and then set out to do so. The first set of people would never even consider silencing a PC, or overclocking it, or modifying their car to handle better, or picking out specific components of a seperate stereo system to gain certain characteristics, and are incapable of understanding those of us who do, even disdaining us as OCD or nerds or mad or sad or lame or boring. Those of us who do all the above things are incapable of understanding, in most cases, why anyone would NOT do what we do.

I can't sleep with a noisy PC on, although i do get used to it eventually i have to be absolutely exhausted to sleep in a room with a noisy PC on. I also queue up certain tasks for my PC to do at night time. I don't believe in turning PCs o** (we do not say the word in this context in my home) and a PC which is not 24/7 stable needs fixing. My principle computer knowing friend doesn't get why I want an inaudible PC - his case has 6 120mm cheap fans in it just for the case, and i could not sleep in his pc room last time i was there.

My 'office' is my sanctuary. I have soundproofed walls, triple glazing, and a heavy fire check door for soundproofing. The room gets me away from the noise of the city I live in during the day, it is a peaceful environment. Except when my amplifier is on! I concentrate and focus in this room, I have ADHD so my focus has to be nurtured into my hyperfocus state and things which stop me from doing that are a constant high irritation and i get nothing done.

I maybe am a bit OCD about modifying things. I often am deciding on modifications to things before I have bought them, i haven't bought a piece of tech and not immediately taken the lid off to have a look (other than stuff like microwaves) in 20 years. If i see a way something can be improved, it will bug me until i do it. I refuse to buy certain tech items because in my opinion the devices are inherently flawed (smartphone anyone?) and cannot be made not so. Certain tech items i will not buy because i can do a better job myself for less money and then be able to fix said device if it ever goes wrong, or upgrade/augment it as and when i need to. My aforementioned amplifier is a classic example of this - 70UKP built me a SWEET little 2x20w gainclone amplifier using boutique components and with no manufacturing cheap-out compromises. There's something like 20 components in that amplifier, compared to hundreds in the worse sounding shop bought amplifier it replaced. I bought an old vehicle to take advantage of certain loopholes in UK tax law and then rebuilt it from the ground up to be better than new. It is already 40 years old and under my stewardship will last at least another 40 years - if we can still obtain diesel or a substitute in 2052.

Most of my friends and family cannot understand why i am like this, get angry at me when i talk about these things, call me nuts when i do these things. Me, i'm happy saving lots of money and getting better stuff than the 'just buy'ers. The whole 'just buy' thing actually quite annoys me when people say it to me being slightly trollish. In this vein i say NO SPCR is not OCD, SPCR are innovators, the naysayers are not. Who's better?

Where noise is a symptom of failure, to me at least, it is intolerable. I built a new pc recently, and on eof the two including case fans started whining horribly, as it was connected to the CPU fan header, it would not slow below a 1000RPM. I have a Gemin installed on an A8-3870, even with no fans, it runs cool. So out come the WD40, plus switched the fan to run off a case fan header, so I could slow it down. Now it still makes noise, and I prefer it to make some amount of noise, so I know my computer is running. It is the type of noise that can be a pain.

The noise was the sound of bearing wear, and if I ignored it, it would have got steadily worse, and the fan eventually might fail. So I'm not obsessed with the noise as such, rather the cause it is a symptom of. I'm sure others here can relate.

To clarify, it is noise that bothers me, not sound. So the sound of a fan at high speed can be tolerable, when it is not noisy, especially when it fills a useful function cooling the computer.

Silence is unobtrusive, as opposed to completely soundless, and in that sense, some amount of sound can be desirable, even satisfying.

SPCR is about "silent PC's." It wouldn't be doing its job if it wasn't OCD about noise.

Seriously, though, I've been very impressed with MikeC's approach. He's done an excellent job of accommodating users with a wide variety of expectations and requirements. Kudos to you, sir!

On the flip side, I would argue that some of SPCR's users are OCD. I suffer from an unfortunate combination of excellent hearing, unusually high auditory awareness, and chronic sleep disorders, so I'm well aware of the fact that "silence" is a relative term, but the placebo effect is a common affliction in all audio-related pursuits. I suspect that in our typical listening environment, very few of us could distinguish between a fanless system and a merely quiet one in a blind A/B test.

I remember reading a study about how sensitive people are to noise. It was done to determine how airport design affects people living near airports.

I read it a very long time ago, so I hope I remember the details correctly.

In the study, they were surprised to find a far greater range in sensitivity than expected. The reason for this great range was partly explained when they graphed the percentage of people for each different level of sensitivity. The graph had TWO peaks! This means that there are two groups of people and the people in one group are much more sensitive to noise than the people in the other group.

When this was studied in more detail it was found that people in one group had a much lower pain threshold, and a much lower threshold for permanent hearing loss, than the people in the other group.

Irrelevant you are so damn right there, nothing wrong with being a bit OCD about noises in a friendly way heh :-)

after all theres nothing more annoying like just wanting to sit down and write a nice long email only to be a bit distracted by a somewhat loud humming coming from close to where you are at at the keyboard :-/

I completely agree 1000 times! I also hate extra light at night. So useless.

I've always had issues with loud noises. Even when I was a kid, I actively sought out quite places, and when my brother got a drum set... well, that was a nightmarish experience. No amount of distance within the house would silence those.

This extends to being a light sleeper, and when I got a job that involved moving to the big city, things did not turn out well (major health problems from lack of sleep caused by noise). I try to limit my jobs to mid-sized cities and smaller and have to be *extremely* careful when choosing a place to stay.

I'm not yet in a position to own a house, so I end up renting rooms but making sure that there's distance from loud things like other people's TVs and the walls are sufficient to block conversations and other racket. When I watch movies, I generally have to turn the volume down to where the sound effects are tolerable, and turn on captions so that I can still understand what they're saying.

This started before the tinnitus and migraines set in, which made finding quiet places even more important. 50db of white noise can make my tinnitus turn into a roar.

Work can be kind of hard, too... I've resigned myself to having to wear big noise-blocking headphones at the office. My noise tolerance for the day is already greatly exceeded by the time I get home from work, so I need things as quiet there as possible.

...Yeah, it's a pain.

If/when I start driving again. I'll be left to pickup where I left off in looking at buying my own tractor and focusing on ways to make it operate more silently. Unlike many of my fellow drivers around me when I was on the road, I like hearing my surroundings when I drive and this is even the case when driving a normal vehicle. I actually had installed dampening foam in about all of the panels in my VW Jetta a couple years ago in an attempt to quiet it down on top of spending extra to install a higher end front and rear muffler.

I think anyone that takes the time to look for the info via Google or another search engine that would lead them here wouldn't really consider the extent some of us go in the pursuit of silence, insane. If anything, since joining, I have found this site a vital stepping stone that I never would have even known existed which is leading me slowly to a more peaceful safe haven from the noise of every day life that makes Wayne Brady wanna choke a beach.