Do-it-yourself soundproofing. Photo: www.g4noise.com

by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 2 November 2003.

It begins with a slow cycling noise, the heavy drone of massive turbines gearing up to complete some Herculean task. This sonic undertow – insistent and full of ominous bottom-end harmonics – ensures that writing my notes is a horrendous, teeth-gnashing exercise. Disorienting stress extends to nausea at the root of my stomach as the turbines whip into regular peaks and troughs. At their loudest – a piercing, invasive whine that could be used as a “smart” weapon of war – I’m driven from the room to take refuge at the end of the building, where the hideous banshee wail is still nightmarishly audible.

Am I in the engine room of some mighty ship of war? Am I in the subterranean workspace of a secret government facility? Or am I standing perilously close to the engine of a super-duper jet plane? Well, actually, I’m in my study at home, working on my new Apple Macintosh G4, one of the “Mirrored Door Drive” (MDD) models released late last year. The noise is simply the Mac’s power supply and cooling fans going about their business.

When I first used the machine, I deluded myself that the situation was acceptable, although I needed to play music while I worked in order to mask that “slow cycling noise” at the edge of consciousness. Then, during summer as my G4 heated up, the “piercing, invasive whine” kicked in, my stress levels increased and my productivity decreased – I could only work with earplugs, or with even louder music to drown the sound. I even experimented with putting the G4 inside a cupboard, power leads and extensions snaking to the safety of my desk.

This was clearly a serious design flaw – I was positive that Apple would be aware of it and that they would be doing everything in their power to rectify the fault (thereby maintaining their reputation as a feel-good company “for the people”). This was not the case. Not only did Apple refuse to acknowledge the MDD models over-the-top noise levels, but they were deleting threads on their official discussion forums that dared to even mention the issue. Suddenly, the gap between Microsoft and Apple didn’t seem so great anymore.

In my quest for solutions, I came across G4noise.com, an American Internet discussion group and forum designed to provide support for those who had bought MDD G4s, had experienced the problem and were getting no joy from Apple. Methodically collating information from hundreds of affected users, G4noise.com calmly and patiently applied a blowtorch to Apple’s corporate policy, backed by incontrovertible reams of hard data, analyses, petitions and testimonials. Eventually, Apple admitted the problem – largely prodded, it would seem, by G4noise.com’s agitation – and offered to replace the flawed power supplies with quieter versions. But here in Australia (or at least, in Melbourne), we are still waiting to receive our replacement power supplies. Time, then, to revisit the intriguing history of G4noise.com…

+ Read the rest at the Sleepy Brain archives.