Hehe, I replaced the same one you have a year ago.

Just get slower speeds. 8-10x is the best imo when it comes to finding a good match between speed and noise. Hell, even a 4x drive should be fast enough for any game as far as I know.

here is your answer: CDBeQuiet!

CDBeQuiet! (aka CDBQ) is a tool for slowing down optical disk drives under a real DOS environment. This can be useful, if you h […]
Show full quote

CDBeQuiet! (aka CDBQ) is a tool for slowing down optical disk drives under
a real DOS environment. This can be useful, if you have a relatively fast drive that can
produce unwanted noise during operation.

The tool allows you to set a desired speed by specifying a command-line parameter.

http://cdbq.dosforum.de

just try it before changing drives, I've been using it for ~2 years now and never failed me on the DVD-ROM drives I have 😀

edit: there is a thread about it here: Throttle CD-ROM drive speed in DOS?

keropi wrote:

here is your answer: CDBeQuiet! […]
Show full quote

here is your answer: CDBeQuiet!

CDBeQuiet! (aka CDBQ) is a tool for slowing down optical disk drives under a real DOS environment. This can be useful, if you h […]
Show full quote

CDBeQuiet! (aka CDBQ) is a tool for slowing down optical disk drives under
a real DOS environment. This can be useful, if you have a relatively fast drive that can
produce unwanted noise during operation.

The tool allows you to set a desired speed by specifying a command-line parameter.

http://cdbq.dosforum.de

just try it before changing drives, I've been using it for ~2 years now and never failed me on the DVD-ROM drives I have 😀

edit: there is a thread about it here: Throttle CD-ROM drive speed in DOS?

thanks keropi, I use another tool called CDSPEED, and indeed it slows down the CD-ROM driver up to 6x, but it is still quite noisy! I think that the LG 52x is particularly noisy.

Ok, changed to 4x, and noise is gone! What a difference between 4x and 6x!!!

keropi wrote:

here is your answer: CDBeQuiet! […]
Show full quote

here is your answer: CDBeQuiet!

CDBeQuiet! (aka CDBQ) is a tool for slowing down optical disk drives under a real DOS environment. This can be useful, if you h […]
Show full quote

CDBeQuiet! (aka CDBQ) is a tool for slowing down optical disk drives under
a real DOS environment. This can be useful, if you have a relatively fast drive that can
produce unwanted noise during operation.

The tool allows you to set a desired speed by specifying a command-line parameter.

http://cdbq.dosforum.de

just try it before changing drives, I've been using it for ~2 years now and never failed me on the DVD-ROM drives I have 😀

edit: there is a thread about it here: Throttle CD-ROM drive speed in DOS?

NOICE! 🤣
Now I have a DOS counterpart for Nero DriveSpeed 😁
Thanks man!

Another way to make your CD drive quiet is to just rip your CDs to ISO and mount them on a virtual drive 😉

Pingaloka wrote:

Ok, changed to 4x, and noise is gone! What a difference between 4x and 6x!!!

Oh nice, got to try this out, this looks cool!

I used a TEAC driver for a while. It has an option in the driver to set the speed but for some reason I switched to the Toshiba driver and I can't remember why 😒

Well, there was a Toshiba driver known for having a low memory footprint.

I am sensitive to 'noise'
especially fans and things like that.
I always go for the double or quad speed cdroms.
Dead-Silent operation.

I am keen to try an 8 speed but have yet to do so.

Digging through my memory cells, I believe up to 4x the drive would constantly spin at a constant speed. This changed with 6x and faster with the driving spinning up and down.

So yea, I believe 4x is the "best" setting for old DOS games.

I remember getting a creative infra 52 speed

Oh god that thing was terrible - incredibly loud.

Really ruins the gaming experience when your chillin to some MT-32 tunes and the cd drive starts to spin up and vibrate.

I was wondering what the hell the designers were thinking sacrificing silence for speed.

After the quad speed cdrom all other cdroms became loud.

4x

ASUS Quiet Track. Believe me, I know what I am talking about. Had 2 of them, a 52x ten years ago and a 50x now, which is inserted in my Voodoo system.
The Quiet Track name is not just a marketing gimmick.

I took the trouble to get actual 4X and 6X CD-ROM drives.

Most sub-8X drives are quiet. Some 10X drives are quiet too, according to what type of mechanism they use, especially the CAV/CLV methods used (Constant Angular Velocity or Constant Linear Velocity).

I'm currently running a TEAC CD-56E drive which is a 6-speed drive in my PII machine. Ultra-quiet. My 486 is running a Panasonic(Matshita) 2X drive. I think it is more than 2 decades now but it still works like charm.

Newer drives have spin down times and even though they are quick to spin back up, it's this quick spinning up that contributes to the max noise heard. With newer drives too, you might notice a short pause when the drives spin back up before reading while playing DOS games, which can be distracting, especially games that frequently access the drive, and it gets annoying in CD adventure games, where the speech is usually stored in the CD.

Most of the older CD-ROM drives use the Constant Linear Velocity, where the drive keeps spinning at a low speed even when not reading. This helps in older games which make use of the CD as the main media while playing - data can be read as soon as it is required. This prevents the lag or pause in the said games.

Older drives also benefit from "quick ready" time. New drives take quite some time from the time a CD or DVD is inserted till the time the drive gets ready to be accessed.

I haven't tried the above slowdown software though, and I do not know if these can maintain the drive spinning at the low 4X or 6X speed.

The TEAC CD-56E driver has an option to set the running speed to 6x, and this dos driver can be used even on newer DVD drives.

One downside of using older drives is that most of these older drives can't read CD-RW discs, and CD-R's written at high speed.

For the new DVD writers, I find some models of the new Samsung and Pioneer drives to be relatively quiet.

The trick in getting these new drives to work quietly, is to set them to read at very low speeds, rathers than the now-default 52X or so. Otherwise, these drives spin to max before they start reading.

I have a Plextor PX-130A IDE DVD-ROM (16x DVD, 50x CD). Very quiet. Got it used for $7 few months ago.

I also have an ASUS QuieTrack CB-5216A IDE DVD-ROM (16x DVD, 52x CD), but it is very loud. Same with NEC CD-3002A.

Wow, never knew people are this bothered with the noise of CD Drives. Mine can sound like a grinder i wouldn't mind 🤣

I have found that setting the CD speed to 4x completely removes noise:

C:\CDSPEED 4x

does the trick.

Pingaloka wrote:

I have found that setting the CD speed to 4x completely removes noise:

C:\CDSPEED 4x

does the trick.

What CD-ROM driver to you use this with?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Pingaloka wrote:

I have found that setting the CD speed to 4x completely removes noise:

C:\CDSPEED 4x

does the trick.

What CD-ROM driver to you use this with?

I'm using SHCDX33F.COM and UIDE.SYS
Sometimes I have to boot the computer twice with a CD inside the driver so speed is set right.