Quiet your Xbox 360

I love my Xbox 360. But I’ll be the first to admit that if I try to do anything more complicated than changing the sound options in Geometry Wars, it makes sounds like an AV-8 Harrier jet is taking off in my living room. My cats go apes–t when I try to play Oblivion.

So it’s a good thing the folks over at Extreme Tech are nerdy enough to try to tweak the system. In just three hundred and fourteen easy steps (give or take), you too can quiet your Xbox 360 … by about 4 decibels (dB). As a frame of a reference, human breathing is roughly 10 dB (10 feet from the subject). 4 dB? Roughly as loud as an ant fart.

Bottom line — not worth the trouble. You want a quieter console? I hear the PS3 or even two Wii systems, side by side, are pretty quiet.