Sound is really a pretty subjective issue. If we published a hard number, how would that even apply? You'd need some very sensitive sound measurement tool that works in different environments with different types of sound. We really don't have an answer that can directly satisfy your question.

What I'm looking for is, from your personal and extensive experience working on and around these drives, should owners of the DB35 expect their drive to be quieter than the S3 factory drive? Before I purchased my first DB35 500GB drive, WK sales told me to expect the DB35 to be "75% quieter". Yet I found the DB35 to be a bit louder than my S3 factory drive. So I bought another drive, believing my first drive to be faulty. So, I'm not looking for a hard number (dBs, for example). I simply want to know what to expect with my second DB35 drive.

Examples of the type of answers I'm looking for are:

- My colleague is absolutely looney - the DB35's are not even close to producing only 25% of the noise of a factory S3. I'd say the DB35's are about half as loud as a factory S3.
- I see. If I was to estimate, I would say the DB35's put out about 25-50% of the noise of a factory S3.
- If I were to put you in 2 identically controlled environments, you would not be able to tell me which was the factory S3 drive, and which was the DB35 drive.

None of these statements require a sensitive sound measurement tool, but they all set my expectation and are relative to the factory S3. Thank you!

We find it to be about the same level of noise as the stock drive in a TiVo Series3.

We find it to be substantially quieter than non-DB35 drives that some people have used to replace their stock drives.

This is very helpful, Michael. Thank you.

WK sales must have understood I intended to replace a non-DB35, non-factory S3 drive with a DB35. That may be why he said I could expect a 75% reduction in noise output.

So knowing the DB35's produce about the same amount of noise as a factory S3 (as is so w/ my current DB35), should I even go through the efforts of replacing my first DB35 w/ the second that is to arrive later this week? Do noise levels of DB35's vary much from unit to unit? If they are pretty consistent, I won't replace mine. If you find they can vary a bit from unit to unit, I'll replace mine on the chance the 2nd DB35 may be a bit quieter.

100% of the reason I bought the DB35 was for a quieter drive. Increased capacity was really not needed. Thanks again for your time and help. - Ron

You might as well try it since it'll be there. Then report back and tell us what you find.

Yeah, might as well. If I don't, I always wonder!! OK, the drive comes in Friday, so I expect to get back with my results by end of the weekend.

The drive came in Wed, and I was able to swap DB35's Thu late afternoon. Very interesting. The 2nd DB35 500GB is indeed noticeably quieter than the first DB35 500GB drive. My wife, who is much less sensitive to such things, proactively commented on it, as well. I've never studied how drives are developed, so I don't know if drives should vary that much from unit to unit, but in this case it does. I am very very happy I took the extra time to again swap drives, and again setup my S3. I shipped the original DB35 to WeaKnees today.

So I believe the current drive is a very small amount quieter than my factory S3 drive, or at worst no louder. My original objective was to get a drive that was 75% quieter than the factory S3 (per WeaKnees sales), but that didn't quite happen. I still need to take measures to mitigate the noise, as it is waaaay too loud when I want to do some music listening, especially at night when ambient noise is at a minimum. But my TiVo capacity has doubled, and my drive is no louder, and may be a bit quieter, so that is a nice system upgrade. My only disappointment from this entire experience came from WeaKnees falsely setting my expectations. I think if WeaKnees sales had not told me to expect a drive 75% quieter than my factory S3 drive, I would have had a smooth experience from beginning to end. But, as it turns out, I am a happy WeaKnees customer, and will recommend your service/products. Thank you.