Vibrators
Quiet vibrators: the surface makes more noise than the motor
Almost every toy sold as whisper quiet is quiet in the hand and audible on a bedside table. The difference is not the motor. It is what the toy is resting against.
A vibrating motor radiates very little sound into the air by itself. It makes noise by shaking whatever it touches, and a large flat surface shakes air far more efficiently than a small object does. A toy held in a hand, surrounded by soft tissue, is damped. The same toy set down on a wooden table becomes a loudspeaker with the table as its cone.
That is why the number on the box predicts so little. It is measured with the toy suspended or on foam, at a distance, in a quiet room, at a setting the manufacturer chose. Nothing about that configuration resembles a bedroom in a flat with thin walls.
What genuinely changes how loud it is
- What it rests on. A hard chair, a table or a headboard turns a quiet toy into an audible one. A bed with a mattress between the toy and the frame does the opposite.
- Motor type. Small spinning-weight motors are high-pitched, and high pitch travels through thin walls and under doors better than low rumble does. A deeper toy is often perceived as quieter at the same sound level.
- Whether the body is hollow. A rigid plastic shell with an air gap behind the motor resonates. Silicone over a solid core does not. This is audible by tapping the toy with a fingernail before switching it on.
- The seal, for air-pulse toys. Sealed against the body, these are among the quietest things in the market. Lifted off, most of them are abruptly loud, which is why models that stop when contact breaks are a real feature.
- Intensity, nonlinearly. Many toys are quiet through most of their range and then jump at the top two settings, where the motor leaves its comfortable band. The usable quiet setting is often the fourth of six, not the first.
Testing a toy for your own room
Test it where it will be used
On the bed, under a duvet, with the door closed. A measurement made holding the toy in the air tells you nothing about what a flatmate hears.
Listen from the other side of the wall
Run it at each setting while someone stands where the listener would be, or record on a phone left in the next room. The pitch that carries is rarely the one that sounds loudest up close.
Find the setting that jumps
Step through every level. Most toys have one step where the noise rises sharply. Everything below it is your usable range.
Change the surface before changing the toy
A folded towel under the hips, or simply not resting the toy against a frame, cuts more noise than replacing the toy would.
Questions people ask
- Which type of toy is quietest?
- Air-pulse toys with a good seal, and silicone-bodied toys with a solid core and a low-frequency motor. The loudest are hollow plastic shells and anything resting on furniture.
- Are expensive toys quieter?
- Often, but not because of the price. They tend to use better-damped bodies and lower-frequency motors, both of which cost money. A cheap toy with a solid silicone body can beat an expensive hollow one.
- Does a wearable worn in public get heard?
- Through clothing in a normally noisy room, rarely. On a hard chair, yes, because the seat becomes the sounding board. Testing on the kind of chair you will sit on is the only test that matters.
- What about the whisper quiet claim on the box?
- It is a marketing phrase with no standard behind it. Where a number accompanies it, the measurement conditions are almost never stated, which makes the number untransferable to your room.