Guess the keyboard:
In no particular order, Filco brown, Topre variable, Sidewinder X6, Macally Icekey - one of the noisier decent desktop scissors due to it's scissor-mech clatter.
(Attachment Link) 23985[/ATTACH]
Topre, Macally, Sidewinder, Filco, in that order.
From that, I agree that, for your typing style, the Sidewinder is the quietest. Let me repeat that, in case it wasn't clear: FOR YOUR TYPING STYLE.
You call my last comment pure conjecture. Without units, and an apparent base average around 50, the blues on the BW are twice as loud as the scissors on the Lycosa, on average. Those are clearly not dBs, unless that guy lives in an intensely loud environment, but that only matters in that the units he was using are clearly linear, while dBs are logarithmic.
So that instance of blues are, on average, twice as loud as that instance of scissor switches. With me so far? Good.
Now, to my ear, blues are roughly twice as loud as browns from the same manufacture. Personally, browns sound stupid to me, but whatever. Most of that noise is actually due to bottoming out and topping out, as the brown switch itself is pretty close to silent (don't believe me? test it yourself, but do not bottom or top out the key).
Now, on any keyboard, bottoming and topping out are going to happen sometimes, if not always. For those who have installed landing pads or don't bottom out, you've eliminated at most half the sources of noise. But any keyboard, at all, is going to have top out noise. This is, in most cases, the majority of the noise that is associated with typing. Keycaps matter, how they are attached matters, and many other things that I'm likely not thinking of at the moment matter.
Scissor switches do mitigate this somewhat, in that the topping out is controlled by the scissoring action, and there is no hard plastic on hard plastic sound. But scissors vary greatly in quality. I won't claim that the quietest mech is quieter than the quietest scissor. What I do claim though is that, on average, the quieter mechs (topres, padded reds, padded clears -- for whatever reason, they seem quieter than browns to my ear) are in the same sound range as the average scissor switch keyboards. That word, average, is quite important to this discussion. I have 3 examples, currently within arms reach, that are actually louder than my HHKB, with the way I type. I have another that is quieter, regardless of how I type.
There are no hard and fast laws here. Some versions of a specific model are louder than others. There is a large amount of variability in any mechanical system, including keyboards of all varieties. That's just reality. Given that, all we can actually discuss are averages. Take that for what you will.
