Quiet DVD/CD - Why?

[Vicotnik]

Every now and again people are asking for these things and I cannot understand why. The way I use my DVD-R it doesn't matter if it's quiet or not, since I burn perhaps a couple of DVDs a month at most.

You people who are asking for quiet optical drives, what are you using the drive for?

[tehfire]

A time I could see it really coming in handy is in an HTPC setup. Granted, many times ambient noise levels will drain out the noise of the DVD player, but at nighttime when I'm watching a movie and don't want to disturb other people, a quiet DVD drive could come in handy.

[FartingBob]

Every now and again people are asking for these things and I cannot understand why.

We have a 14 page discussion(stickied as well!) about quiet mice and keyboards!

[FartingBob]

Every now and again people are asking for these things and I cannot understand why.

That nothing! We have a 14 page discussion(stickied as well!) about quiet mice and keyboards!

[Nick Geraedts]

Chances are though - if you're running a simple DVD/BR disc, you can easily lower the max running speed using Nero.

I've never really understood why people want the quietest optical drives either. I'd much rather have a drive that's reliable than quiet, since that way I only have to deal with the sounds once.

[Vicotnik]

We have a 14 page discussion(stickied as well!) about quiet mice and keyboards!

Yeah, but those things I use more often. If my gf is sleeping and I'm still up posting on SPCR it's nice if I don't make so much noise.
Writing/reading from an optical media is something I do very seldom. I store data on HDDs and incoming data arrives via ethernet most of the time. For me the DVD is almost going the way of the floppy.

Silent is always nice of course, but I just don't see noise level a factor at all when it comes to choosing a burner. I'll go with the noisy one if it costs less than the quiet one, or if it's better looking.

[Das_Saunamies]

Let's see...

Two drives, one loud, one quiet - both read and write as reliably and cost roughly the same. I think I'll pick the one that doesn't sound like an ambulance eating buzzsaws through the exhaust, thanks.

This is SPCR. If it can be made quiet, why not do it?

And to answer OP's question: I use mine to read game discs mostly, which means the disc will stay in the drive for long periods of time. Old Samsung sounded like it was tearing itself apart when I booted or accessed My Computer with my Battlefield 2142 disc in - new Pioneer does nothing of the sort. Again: suffer not from what you can avoid.

[krille]

Every now and again people are asking for these things and I cannot understand why.

We have a 14 page discussion(stickied as well!) about quiet mice and keyboards!

You don't use your mouse and keyboard anymore than your DVD Burner?

Seriously man, I have an MX-518 right now. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known of it's constant screeching. Same goes for my monitor. These are constant pains. Loud DVD burners, for most people (me included), are rare and highly temporary pains.

I don't really have much problem with the clicking and tapping sounds of the mouse and keyboard by the way. I can very much see other people having issues with this though.

[Nick Geraedts]

Seriously man, I have an MX-518 right now. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known of it's constant screeching.

Not to hijack this thread... but a screeching MX-518 mouse? I've got two of those, and I've never had that kind of problem with either...

[dhanson865]

I have a MX-510 and I've never noticed a peep from it.

[krille]

Seriously man, I have an MX-518 right now. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known of it's constant screeching.

Not to hijack this thread... but a screeching MX-518 mouse? I've got two of those, and I've never had that kind of problem with either...

Put your ear next to the bottom of the mouse. You're bound to hear it. If you don't, it's probably too high-pitched for you and you can consider yourself a blessed person.

I'm hypersensitive to noise though, so my tolerance for noise is way below average.

I wouldn't know about the MX510.

[Aris]

And to answer OP's question: I use mine to read game discs mostly, which means the disc will stay in the drive for long periods of time.

You can get a NOCD crack for virtually every game. Ive got one for COD4, works like a champ with no cd in the drive.

I have stopped using internal optical drives, and use a single slim external optical drive for every computer i own. It usually only get used about once or twice a year though when i install something that i cant download.

About the only reason i can see to want a quiet drive is for HTPC use.

But honestly, the reason they are loud is because they spin so fast. You slow them down to minimum required to play a dvd and all of them are quiet. So just get a quality, reliable one, and use software to slow them down, and BLAM! its quiet.

[Nick Geraedts]

But honestly, the reason they are loud is because they spin so fast. You slow them down to minimum required to play a dvd and all of them are quiet. So just get a quality, reliable one, and use software to slow them down, and BLAM! its quiet.

That... and slower burns often come out as higher quality and im my experience - last longer. DVD-R's are not permanent storage, no matter what people tell you. The chemicals in the discs degrade over time (5-ish years), even when stored in cool, dark places.

The slower the burn, the longer the disc lasts. For backing up data, this part becomes critical.

[Cryoburner]

Seriously man, I have an MX-518 right now. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known of it's constant screeching. Same goes for my monitor. These are constant pains. Loud DVD burners, for most people (me included), are rare and highly temporary pains.

I don't really have much problem with the clicking and tapping sounds of the mouse and keyboard by the way. I can very much see other people having issues with this though.

I don't usually notice the sound of my MX500, but it does emit a high frequency noise that can be audible under quiet conditions. My VX Revolution is quieter, and the sound is of a lower frequency. I also have a Wacom Graphire4 tablet, which is slightly more audible than the MX500. With the pen in range of the surface, it becomes quieter, though that just makes the sound more noticeable when you pull it away. The monitors on my desk are almost inaudible, and the electronics in my gamepad and keyboard are completely silent. The system itself is pretty quiet as far as high frequency noise goes, with primarily just lower frequency sound from fans. As for the clicking of keyboards and mice, it's there in part to provide auditory feedback, so it's good to have. I can see how it might be best to have quiet keys if someone's trying to sleep in the same room though. : )

It might actually be possible to silence the whine coming from your mouse, if you're willing to modify it. I noticed that the high frequency noise emitted by my MX500 can be blocked simply by laying a thin, flexible mouse pad with a rubberized backing over it. If you were to open it up, you should be able to affix a similar material to the interior of the upper shell. It might void your mouse's warranty though, as it will be noticeable that you've opening it by the disturbed stickers covering the screws. I've already opened my MX500 to remove its weight though, and the mouse is over five years old, so I might try that just to see how well it works. : )

[yefi]

... I cannot understand why...

The truth is, if we could eliminate the cosmic background radiation we would because it has an irritating white noise.

[Vicotnik]

Put your ear next to the bottom of the mouse. You're bound to hear it. If you don't, it's probably too high-pitched for you and you can consider yourself a blessed person.

If there's a sound coming from my RX250 I cannot hear it.

My TFT is a pita though, constant low and high pitch humming at the same time if brightness is not set to 100%. I wish there was a way to fix that. If it's caused by sub-par components perhaps it's possible to mod the thing.

The truth is, if we could eliminate the cosmic background radiation we would because it has an irritating white noise.

Also it causes cancer. Besides, cosmic background radiation is constant. Use of the optical drive is not. The original queston was not "why are people bothered by this small noise?" but "in what way are people using the drive?". I'm curious since I don't use my optical drive in a way that its noise is an issue. I don't use it for movies or music other than when I copy the disc to my HDD. Same with games, like Aris I do a full install and uses a nocd-patch to get rid of the irritating disc checks.

[Nick Geraedts]

Put your ear next to the bottom of the mouse. You're bound to hear it. If you don't, it's probably too high-pitched for you and you can consider yourself a blessed person.

Huh... I can hear it, but only when the mouse is within ~10cm of my ear. Holding the mouse right in front of my eyes (i.e. equidistant to both ears) gave no sound.

I've got a total of 3 DVD burners in my two systems (used to be 4) for the purpose of ripping DVDs to my hard drive. Even with rip-lock features removed from the firmware, and the discs spinning at 12x speeds and higher, I've never had that "rattling" sound that some burners experience. One of the worst causes for the noises from the burner itself is the disc itself (anyone remember the articles regarding noisy first-generation high-speed CD-ROM drives?). IIRC, the actual rotational speed of DVDs today is still lower than what 52x CD-ROMs run - a maximum limit put in place because of the physical stresses on the discs.

[Das_Saunamies]

So just get a quality, reliable one, and use software to slow them down, and BLAM! its quiet.

Oh I did with the Samsung, and it failed gloriously. Software doesn't kick in until you're in the OS, and by that time the buzzsaw was already up and running at full tilt. Due to outright stupid firmware, the spindown time was two full minutes, un-down-turnable via Nero Drivespeed - not that it mattered if the drive spun up before loading OS, as Nero wouldn't know.

No-CD cracks complicate game updates (rare as they might be), and why would I want one when the Pioneer DVR-215 is so quiet in every situation that I don't even need to consider taking the discs out?

It was just a case of the Samsung drive being crap and the Pioneer drive being everything I ever wanted, hence buying the (truly) silent drive makes acute sense. Again, why suffer from something you can avoid at no extra cost?

[Xuestor]

Seriously man, I have an MX-518 right now. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known of it's constant screeching.

Not to hijack this thread... but a screeching MX-518 mouse? I've got two of those, and I've never had that kind of problem with either...

Put your ear next to the bottom of the mouse. You're bound to hear it. If you don't, it's probably too high-pitched for you and you can consider yourself a blessed person.

I'm hypersensitive to noise though, so my tolerance for noise is way below average.

I wouldn't know about the MX510.

haha, you are the only person that have noticed this! I've been telling it to all my friends and they just look at me as I where sick or something. The mx510 does indeed also have this screeching high pitched sound. Although mine aint that bad, as I have to be 2-3- inches from the mouse to hear it.

[Fungi]

Nuts, I had no idea this mouse whined. But yeah, you have to get RIGHT up to it to hear it. Definitely not something to discount the mouse for.

[Cryoburner]

It was just a case of the Samsung drive being crap and the Pioneer drive being everything I ever wanted, hence buying the (truly) silent drive makes acute sense. Again, why suffer from something you can avoid at no extra cost? :)

Of course, one might also point out the that the Pioneer offers a lower max read speed of 40x vs. 48x, a lower dual layer write speed of 10x vs. 12x, and a lack of support for writing DVD-RAM discs. Also, the price of the drive at Newegg including shipping is currently 40% more than the Samsung 203B here in the US. : )

I suppose it might be nice to not have the drive spin discs up to full speed at bootup, but that's only an issue if you regularly leave discs in. I'm with those who can't be bothered hunting down the disc just to play a game, and regularly patch games to remove their CD checks. Updating usually isn't a problem, since you can keep a copy of the original files to restore if needed.

I can certainly see the merit in having a quiet optical drive though. I have a computer from back in 2000 that came with two drives. One was a 32x CD burner, while the other a 40x CD-Rom drive. I rarely used the 40x drive, as it was far louder than the 32x, while only offering negligibly faster read speeds.

Huh... I can hear it, but only when the mouse is within ~10cm of my ear. Holding the mouse right in front of my eyes (i.e. equidistant to both ears) gave no sound.

That's because high-frequency sound waves are highly directional, and don't easily pass around and through objects. Unless the source is aligned with your ear, you're not going to hear it very well. It should be audible from further away, but it needs to be positioned at an angle where the sound has a relatively direct path into your ear.

[halcyon]

Reasons:

1. Not all drives respond to DriveSpeed (Nero) or CD-Bremse or other sw utilities to throttle down the drive speed.

2. When the software works, it only works after the software is loaded (old Plextors and Pioneers being exceptions to this as they saved the settings in firmware)

3. Some of us do NOT need 16-22x rotational speeds. Those speeds only cause worse quality burns, worse quality reading quality and lower MTBF.

4. There are noisy drives and there are obnoxiously noisy drives. Even if I used my drive only once a month, I'd rather use a one that doesn't sound like a jet airplane taking off.

There might be other reasons, those are what matter to me.

[tartin]

[quote="Cryoburner"]
Of course, one might also point out the that the Pioneer offers a lower max read speed of 40x vs. 48x, a lower dual layer write speed of 10x vs. 12x, and a lack of support for writing DVD-RAM discs.
[/quote]
Das_Saunamies's Pioneer DVR-215BK SATA has both Read & Write support for DVD-RAM, it is the PATA DVR-115D that has only Read support for DVD-RAM.

[aztec]

Seriously man, I have an MX-518 right now. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known of it's constant screeching.

Not to hijack this thread... but a screeching MX-518 mouse? I've got two of those, and I've never had that kind of problem with either...

Put your ear next to the bottom of the mouse. You're bound to hear it. If you don't, it's probably too high-pitched for you and you can consider yourself a blessed person.

I'm hypersensitive to noise though, so my tolerance for noise is way below average.

I wouldn't know about the MX510.

Out of curiosity, I tried this on my corldess G7. There is a whine/screech coming from the bottom.

I'm not sensitive enough to notice it on normal use though.

[Sendorm]

Every single dvd drive can be easily quitened with nero. So no need to add a new parameter to my dvd-drive selection mechanism.

The most important parameter for me is the writing reliability of the drive, correctable and uncorrectable write errors on different medias.