In my own system, my hard drive is the loudest component. If I turn off my hard drive by going into standby mode, all I can hear is a soft whoosh of air that is actually very therapeutic. :lol: This therapeutic property is actually very important to what I'm suggesting.
What I'm talking about is the subjective ability of us to focus on specific sounds and identify where they're coming from. Let's say the human brain is some RAM in a computer (simplified for my analogy). If you have 8 fans sounding the same, the brain is only running 1 process and 8 threads. If you have 4 fans and 1 hard drive or more fairly if you have 6 fans and 1 hard drive, the brain is running 2 processes: 6 threads in one process and 1 thread in the other process. Now this needs scientific evidence of course, but until then we can share subjective opinions: does processing for sound differentiation require more brain power than processing for distinguishing volume? My answer in my own opinion/experience is yes. And more brain power means would mean that it's more tiring to listen to. I'm theorizing that it's better to listen to 8 fans of the same type than it is to listen to 6 fans of the same type and 1 hard drive.
To put this in perspective, ask yourself why does a sleeve bearing fan that runs out of oil bother you? Imagine if you have 6 sleeve bearing 80mm DC fans running at once on medium speed. Now imagine just one of those suddenly starts losing oil and makes slight scratching sounds. Why does this bother you? Again, my theory is that the human brain was not made for volume as much as it was made for noise pitch and differentiation. Ask yourself too, when listening to a wide orientation of sounds, why does a person become disoriented? If you were to suddenly be drowned by noise in the next 5 seconds, would it be more disorienting to listen to 8 of the same exact sounds totaling 40dBA or 8 different sounds totaling 40dBA? (All of these scenarios require the noise levels to be the same so they do not apply to computers where the noise level is so high that noises drown out other noises i.e. fans that drown out hard drive noise - referring to your system, phtsstpok, but no harm intended.)
Part of my "experience" as I describe it above comes from playing in orchestras and symphonies, where you learn that sounds can be pleasant and also wretched. I have played in 4-violin concertos as well. When too many instruments are playing different sounds at once, it's very easy to become confused. This can happen when you have 4 violins all playing with different length, pitch, variation (vibrato), and bow speed. The opposite is when these same 4 violins play exactly the same tune at once, which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a professional symphony or philharmonic orchestra. Orchestras where the 1st violins all play the same way sound better than orchestras where the 1st violins are all trying to solo and stand out from one another. So already we can see evidence that duplicate sounds are more pleasing to the ear than sounds that are different or even varied in minute ways. How sensitive the brain is to this I won't even get into. 😎
Here's another thing to ponder. Often I have had to tune my violin. Question: How do humans tune violins, pianos, and other string instruments? Answer: We do this by harmonizing--playing two strings both at once and adjusting the string's tightness until they "agree". On a violin it would be A first then AE together, AD together, and DG, instead of just A, E, D, G. Remember in music class where your teacher taught you chords and how in medieval times they called some chords "good" and some "evil"? I'm suggesting that computer noise needs to harmonize, and that the easiest way to do that is to eliminate the number of different noises. For example if you have the chance to use a total of 6 fans, you wouldn't use 3 panaflos and 3 enermaxes. You'd use 6 panaflos or 6 enermaxes.
When quieting down our systems, we should be paying more attention to just dBA. We should be paying attention to the number of different sounds we are creating in our computer. Finally, as I said in another post, there is currently no standardized test for sound pressure (vibration energy), only sound power, and maybe we need a standard.
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Anyone care to try?
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