[Ennoch]

It's time to replace the pads/discs, and owing so several near misses with deer recently, and another not so near miss experience (think interference fit) my priorities have definitely changed from what they might have been. Now I know that going from old to new will always see an improvement, and that crusty inside faces of the discs won't be helping, but I'm not that blown away by the initial slowdown on the stock pads. These are the originals which will be coming up to 6 years old too so that must be kept in mind too. However, my understanding is that the 340mm brakes get standard pads and the 370mm brakes get 'performance pads', and if that understanding is correct this is likely also going to be contributing to the cold use lack of initial retardation. Maybe.

Basically the car is a daily and it's not going to get a hammering on backroads so therefore fade resistance from fifteen minutes of hooning it along tight roads is not particularly important (although I don't want the pads to become blocks of wood after two stops). While I'm willing to warm the pads up on my Impreza I am not even contemplating a pad like that for the BMW. What I'm after is something which works very well from cold. Dust doesn't bother me, that's easy to clean off. I noticed that TRW do a set of pads for the 340mm setup and another for the identical fitment 370mm setup which is what reminded me about the potential differing pads. If the best cold performance comes from BMW then I am more than happy to go with that, especially as they seem to last quite well (it's the discs that are corroded to oblivion after 36k rather than the pads being toast).

Oh, and I know Hawk get good reviews from the Americans but I'm not importing pads for this, I've dealt with enough importing issues for other things recently!

Cheers

[dizzy619]

Ds2500

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by dizzy619

Ds2500

Great pads but in all the cars I've fitted them to, cold bite is not what I would call their strong point. Otherwise they would be at the top of the list as a reliable, no nonsense performance pad. I'm specifically after something that does well when cold, for example on emergency stops when a pronged beast jumps out in front of you!

[dizzy619]

The only other pad i've used except for trackwork is EBC yellowstuff theu where better than oem.

[Ennoch]

Even from dead cold? I've used a lot of performance pads over the years and they all (IMO) give away something on that emergency stop from cold scenario. I've not used EBC Yellows, only Red/Blue/Orange but the first were unimpressive at all speeds and the latter pretty poor from cold (albeit acceptable in the Impreza where it's only taken out for a hood now).

[johnung]

Originally Posted by Ennoch

It's time to replace the pads/discs, and owing so several near misses with deer recently, and another not so near miss experience (think interference fit) my priorities have definitely changed from what they might have been. Now I know that going from old to new will always see an improvement, and that crusty inside faces of the discs won't be helping, but I'm not that blown away by the initial slowdown on the stock pads. These are the originals which will be coming up to 6 years old too so that must be kept in mind too. However, my understanding is that the 340mm brakes get standard pads and the 370mm brakes get 'performance pads', and if that understanding is correct this is likely also going to be contributing to the cold use lack of initial retardation. Maybe.

Basically the car is a daily and it's not going to get a hammering on backroads so therefore fade resistance from fifteen minutes of hooning it along tight roads is not particularly important (although I don't want the pads to become blocks of wood after two stops). While I'm willing to warm the pads up on my Impreza I am not even contemplating a pad like that for the BMW. What I'm after is something which works very well from cold. Dust doesn't bother me, that's easy to clean off. I noticed that TRW do a set of pads for the 340mm setup and another for the identical fitment 370mm setup which is what reminded me about the potential differing pads. If the best cold performance comes from BMW then I am more than happy to go with that, especially as they seem to last quite well (it's the discs that are corroded to oblivion after 36k rather than the pads being toast).

Oh, and I know Hawk get good reviews from the Americans but I'm not importing pads for this, I've dealt with enough importing issues for other things recently!

Cheers

The front pads for Brembo 340 and Brembo 370 brakes are identical. Same size and same part number. Rear 330 and rear 345 are different. BMW pads are no better than average, no matter which models they are designated for.

You sound pretty particular about your brake pads. I am too and I won't use anything but Hawk 5.0 on the street. Best bite, instant warm up and dust that's both light in volume and light in color. On the coldest mornings I tap them once and they're warmed up. We just had the coldest February in history and we couldn't have been safer with Hawk 5.0 pads.

If your only issue is the hassle of importing them, contact Dave Zeckhausen at Zeckhausen Racing in New Jersey. Dave exports Hawks all of the time. Last time I spoke to him he said that it's only taking 5 days to the UK.

https://www.zeckhausen.com/

Hope this helps!

[Alscoob]

^^^ Good selection on that site, thanks for the heads up.

[Alscoob]

Originally Posted by Ennoch

Great pads but in all the cars I've fitted them to, cold bite is not what I would call their strong point. Otherwise they would be at the top of the list as a reliable, no nonsense performance pad. I'm specifically after something that does well when cold, for example on emergency stops when a pronged beast jumps out in front of you!

Have you considered M3 / M4 standard pads, believe that they have a better bite? Tengocity has some in his F31 I believe, maybe he could comment?

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by johnung

The front pads for Brembo 340 and Brembo 370 brakes are identical. Same size and same part number. Rear 330 and rear 345 are different. BMW pads are no better than average, no matter which models they are designated for.

You sound pretty particular about your brake pads. I am too and I won't use anything but Hawk 5.0 on the street. Best bite, instant warm up and dust that's both light in volume and light in color. On the coldest mornings I tap them once and they're warmed up. We just had the coldest February in history and we couldn't have been safer with Hawk 5.0 pads.

If your only issue is the hassle of importing them, contact Dave Zeckhausen at Zeckhausen Racing in New Jersey. Dave exports Hawks all of the time. Last time I spoke to him he said that it's only taking 5 days to the UK.

https://www.zeckhausen.com/

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the link, and I appreciate the recommendation of the Hawk pads. But, you do say you need to tap them once. This is the thing I've got an issue with; I don't use the brakes that often on this car, even on backroads at reasonable speeds. Instead I prefer to flow down the road (having a rag in the Impreza is a very different story). This means that if something jumps out in front of me (a very real issue in Scotland because the deer population isn't kept under control) I want a pad that instantly grabs and slows. To get this I'm willing to deal with a trade off of 130mph+ performance because I don't track it, and fade from hard use because again I don't use the brakes that hard repeatedly. The car just doesn't suit that. My experience with every uprated pad I can think of is that if stock bite from cold is a 5/10, the performance pads are at best 4/10. So no matter that their performance when warm is 7/10 or better, that's no use to me. So are the Hawks more than equal than stock from that first hit of the brakes from 60/70/80mph having not been used in several minutes? If so, then sold, importing aside. If they're 4.5/10 then they're still not going to be for me.

My understanding of BMW OEM pads were that there are three different compounds used across the same pad shape (I was going by the different third party parts catalogues); grey caliper 340mm M Sport, blue caliper 370mm 'plus pack', and then the M spec pads. Is this not right?

Thanks Alscoob, Tengocity are you able to jump in? Do the M spec pads bite better from cold?

As to other pads I've used over the years and across a number of reasonably performance cars (there are others I've forgotten about I'm sure);
- EBC Reds (terrible),
- EBC Blues. Fell off a cliff on the Impreza after fifteen minutes of very hard driving in the stock 294mm calipers. Like seriously, they turned into smoking blocks of wood. They weren't great cold either.
- EBC Oranges. The first batch I had in the AP's were amazing, the current batch I have fitted are terrible and are about to be replaced after 1500 miles because they don't work cold and just won't hold their bed in at road temperatures (gentle driving seems to scrub the bed in layer off the disc quite quickly. They used to have a price advantage too (unless you're a millionaire, price always comes into the decision), but not any more.
- Ferodo DS2500. A great all round fast road pad. Not much cold bite but doesn't take much to get them into their window, and they don't seem to be too fussy about gentle driving in between hard thrashes.
- Mintex M1155. Great pad, very similar to the DS2500.
- Mintex M1166. Absolutely outstanding. Good modulation, but needs temperature to work effectively. My set delaminated after 3000 miles so probably wouldn't go back to them tbh!
- CL RC5+. These were absolutely outstanding in the OEM Subaru 4 pot calipers although they did need a few squeezes to get rid of the 'blocks of wood' feeling. Very, very performance stable across all road speeds/driving though with fade a gradual thing rather than cliff edge like the bluestuff's. I swapped away from these when I fitted the AP's as they were something like £270 a set for them, and the package came stock with DS2500's.

Incidentally I can get EBC's cheap at the moment but I'm reluctant to fit them to this car (price has it's limits!) given my poor experience. They've sent me some Blues to try out on the Impreza FOC as a replacement to the Oranges. If they work better on the current braking setup then great, but if not then no loss, and I'll go back to RC5+. But again, my requirements for that car are very different to the BMW!

[johnung]

Originally Posted by Ennoch

Thanks for the link, and I appreciate the recommendation of the Hawk pads. But, you do say you need to tap them once. This is the thing I've got an issue with; I don't use the brakes that often on this car, even on backroads at reasonable speeds. Instead I prefer to flow down the road (having a rag in the Impreza is a very different story). This means that if something jumps out in front of me (a very real issue in Scotland because the deer population isn't kept under control) I want a pad that instantly grabs and slows. To get this I'm willing to deal with a trade off of 130mph+ performance because I don't track it, and fade from hard use because again I don't use the brakes that hard repeatedly. The car just doesn't suit that. My experience with every uprated pad I can think of is that if stock bite from cold is a 5/10, the performance pads are at best 4/10. So no matter that their performance when warm is 7/10 or better, that's no use to me. So are the Hawks more than equal than stock from that first hit of the brakes from 60/70/80mph having not been used in several minutes? If so, then sold, importing aside. If they're 4.5/10 then they're still not going to be for me.

My understanding of BMW OEM pads were that there are three different compounds used across the same pad shape (I was going by the different third party parts catalogues); grey caliper 340mm M Sport, blue caliper 370mm 'plus pack', and then the M spec pads. Is this not right?

Thanks Alscoob, Tengocity are you able to jump in? Do the M spec pads bite better from cold?

As to other pads I've used over the years and across a number of reasonably performance cars (there are others I've forgotten about I'm sure);
- EBC Reds (terrible),
- EBC Blues. Fell off a cliff on the Impreza after fifteen minutes of very hard driving in the stock 294mm calipers. Like seriously, they turned into smoking blocks of wood. They weren't great cold either.
- EBC Oranges. The first batch I had in the AP's were amazing, the current batch I have fitted are terrible and are about to be replaced after 1500 miles because they don't work cold and just won't hold their bed in at road temperatures (gentle driving seems to scrub the bed in layer off the disc quite quickly. They used to have a price advantage too (unless you're a millionaire, price always comes into the decision), but not any more.
- Ferodo DS2500. A great all round fast road pad. Not much cold bite but doesn't take much to get them into their window, and they don't seem to be too fussy about gentle driving in between hard thrashes.
- Mintex M1155. Great pad, very similar to the DS2500.
- Mintex M1166. Absolutely outstanding. Good modulation, but needs temperature to work effectively. My set delaminated after 3000 miles so probably wouldn't go back to them tbh!
- CL RC5+. These were absolutely outstanding in the OEM Subaru 4 pot calipers although they did need a few squeezes to get rid of the 'blocks of wood' feeling. Very, very performance stable across all road speeds/driving though with fade a gradual thing rather than cliff edge like the bluestuff's. I swapped away from these when I fitted the AP's as they were something like £270 a set for them, and the package came stock with DS2500's.

Incidentally I can get EBC's cheap at the moment but I'm reluctant to fit them to this car (price has it's limits!) given my poor experience. They've sent me some Blues to try out on the Impreza FOC as a replacement to the Oranges. If they work better on the current braking setup then great, but if not then no loss, and I'll go back to RC5+. But again, my requirements for that car are very different to the BMW!

"Tap them once" does not mean every time that you want to stop! "Tap them once" means when you first start the car and start moving when it's like 20 degrees outside. The first time you touch the brakes the Hawk 5.0 pads are ice cold so maybe they work at 80% the very first time that you touch them, then they warm up instantly. Then they are at 100% for the remainder of your drive until you park again for hours and hours in sub freezing temperatures. Nothing about this is unusual for any brake pads when they have been sitting over night at 20 degrees

[Eddamoo]

If you want B-Road blast brakes that will stop you dead in an emergency, some well branded stock pads surely cannot be beaten. Brembo, Jurid, Textar, Febi Bilstein, Bosch are my goto's.

Every single fast road pad ive ever tried has always been completely crap when cold, and was just a question of 'how much' warmup you needed to get them working! As Ennoch says tho, Mintex and Ferodo are great for that provided you add a little heat. The Mintex emit disgusting brown dust like crazy.

Wouldnt touch EBC with a barge pole. Bought several cars with them and seen many where the pad material has separated or disintegrated.

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by johnung

"Tap them once" does not mean every time that you want to stop! "Tap them once" means when you first start the car and start moving when it's like 20 degrees outside. The first time you touch the brakes the Hawk 5.0 pads are ice cold so maybe they work at 80% the very first time that you touch them, then they warm up instantly. Then they are at 100% for the remainder of your drive until you park again for hours and hours in sub freezing temperatures. Nothing about this is unusual for any brake pads when they have been sitting over night at 20 degrees

Most performance pads need to be at least warm before they equal stock pads for bite in my experience, which is why I'm asking the question. I actually found the friction/temp chart for Hawk pads after you posted and from what I can see the 5.0 are very much not the pads for me, with the friction rating below 50c of c0.2 being virtually useless, in line with most ceramic pads. In fact the HP Plus would appear to be the best they offer for cold bite. Now granted, the 5.0 does improve rapidly with temperature but that's still not what I want in this car. In another car they may be the perfect pad but absolute stone cold performance is what I need. Performance brake pads are fantastic, but if you've barely touched the brakes in five miles then they are going to be cold. Maybe not 5c, but they're certainly not going to be 100c, and that's where performance pads start to work better.

Now what I would be interested in is some charts showing friction of OEM pads from cold (rather than the performance pad charts which frequently start at 100+c) as they're frequently touted as 0.3-0.4 but given there's no quantification of this data it's hard to know whether they're talking about the pads from a Nissan Micra or a Nissan Skyline!

Originally Posted by Eddamoo

If you want B-Road blast brakes that will stop you dead in an emergency, some well branded stock pads surely cannot be beaten. Brembo, Jurid, Textar, Febi Bilstein, Bosch are my goto's.

Every single fast road pad ive ever tried has always been completely crap when cold, and was just a question of 'how much' warmup you needed to get them working! As Ennoch says tho, Mintex and Ferodo are great for that provided you add a little heat. The Mintex emit disgusting brown dust like crazy.

Wouldnt touch EBC with a barge pole. Bought several cars with them and seen many where the pad material has separated or disintegrated.

Yup, I'm with you on EBC. The reason I went for another set of Oranges on the Impreza when I rebuilt the brakes a few years ago with new seals etc was because the first set was brilliant. And the reason I had them was they were so cheap they were worth the risk. I'll try the blues but I still suspect I'll be going elsewhere. Their biggest issue is consistency.

I had actually forgotten about how bad the dust was on the Mintex, I had the 1155's in the AP's on my Vectra years ago and that thing had white wheels.

Ultimately I think the problem is that as soon as soon as you start talking about braking performance everyone goes on about back road hoons and smoking brakes. I simply don't care about that type of driving in this car, I have another for that. Don't get me wrong, this car still gets driven quickly but it simply doesn't suit being last of the late brakers and so I can drive around deficiencies in areas like fade and autobahn speed stops. I reckon a set of stock OEM spec Ferodo's may be getting ordered here. If they're worse than OEM then I'll reconsider my options but it does seem that my prior experience of fast road pads has been confirmed and that if you want greater high speed friction you need to put up with less when cool. And I'm not willing to put up with that on this car. At the end of the day every user has slightly different requirements, and in any case the biggest thing with this brake change will be getting fresh stuff on the front axle to replace the crusty mess on there just now.

[Alscoob]

[QUOTE=Ennoch;27320760]

Thanks Alscoob, Tengocity are you able to jump in? Do the M spec pads bite better from cold?

/QUOTE]

Sorry I haven't used them so no experience, only going by what I heard. Maybe PM Tengocity?

I also used EBC pads once in my impreza, never again, they trashed the discs and themselves in a very short space of time. Replaced them with DBA discs & DS2500 vast improvement.

[KRS_SN]

My humble opinion is that if your brakes are 6 years old just get oem discs and pads £500 odd each for front or back. Should last another 6 years without worry?

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by KRS_SN

My humble opinion is that if your brakes are 6 years old just get oem discs and pads £500 odd each for front or back. Should last another 6 years without worry?

Very true, it's a valid opinion! I've not long had the car so once we get freedom to get away climbing every weekend the annual mileage will be a lot closer to 20k.

I've gone for TRW blank discs and Ferodo standard pads to see how they go as there isn't really any info I could find that gave much info on stone cold (or at least not warm) bite. Currently the brakes don't bite amazingly, albeit I am not looking for over-servo'd Audi here, but I don't know how much of that is down to the setup of the brakes from the factory and how much is down to the disc condition. If the Ferodo pads give sufficient performance then I'll stick with them, and if not then I'll look at some of the uprated options again. I'm going to hold off fitting though until my mileage goes back up as there's no point fitting them only to sit on the street corroding through lack of use.

[Tengocity]

Sorry, the mentions of me were not coming through to me, I just happened to click in on this thread.

My tuppence worth on pads:

On my F3x cars, I've used Stock pads, M3/M4 pads, EBC Yellow stuff, Ferodo DS2500, Pagid RS29s, and I've also used an Alcon Big brake kit!

I think stock pads are just about ok for a 320d, but I think they should be better for someone who drives a 6 cylinder car quite spritedly. I currently have my old M3/M4 pads on my F31 340 and they're a bit better, and absolutely fine for road use. They've got good initial bite, are great from cold, don't make any noise. I don't think they're that great though, so if you do a big stop, say like an emergency stop on a motorway, I think they'd get worse than you expected compared to the initial bite.

I think DS2500 are pretty good, and I run them as rear pads on my M4 and my Exige. They're a good step up from stock pads (or the stock M3/M4 pads), and they're quiet, and they work great from cold for me, and better than stock for sure. If you did that same "big emergency stop", then they'd feel pretty reassuring, and can certainly handle a bit of heat in them. They do produce a fair bit of dust when used hard though. They can handle a track day up to a point if you manage them.

RS29s give you "hand of god" retardation.. The kind that can make you feel your eyballs! That kind of braking performance makes me feel a lot more comfortable with driving quickly. They can be noisy though, especially on the rear, hence why I use DS2500 on the rear and RS29 on the fronts. If you drive hard enough regularly enough then that keeps them quiet for me. The problem is this kind of braking performance creates a lot of heat quickly and standard discs won't cope that well with it. So it will help on track, up to point. For the road they'd be great, but potentially noisy.

I haven't used EBC yellows for ages, but they were great from cold, and very similar to the DS2500. Great for road use.

The EBC pads I didn't like were red stuff. Dangerously poor cold bite, but this was over 10 years ago back when I had a MX5 track car.

Hope that helps, and happy to try and answer more specific questions.

I've got sets of all these in my garage (except the yellow stuffs) and will probably fit the DS2500 again.

[Ennoch]

Hey Tengocity, many thanks for all that! I've already ordered 'stock' Ferodo Premier Eco pads as these seem to have a reasonable cold friction coefficient of 0.42. However, this is because the rear face of my front discs are actually beginning to delaminate so therefore had to do something and these seemed the best of the OEM spec stuff. So I'll give them a try to see if they markedly improve things.

As to uprated performance stuff, these may well come. My major concern with uprated pads was the true cold performance as most of the performance pad graphs start at 100c+ so look fantastic but in reality, aren't any good for 95% of my driving. As I said the Impreza is a very different story. The other issue is that I having not tried different pads on these brakes I have nothing to compare stock to, so don't know if any of these unbitey (it's a technical term) performance pads are in fact better than OEM when cold, or are utterly woeful or, as is my experience with most, or as I suspect, somewhere in between. The other thing to consider (for me) is that the BMW is 400ish kg heavier than the Impreza so something that doesn't warm up quick enough on the Impreza might be absolutely spot on on the heavier Bavarian machine! My concern isn't so much when you're having a proper drive and the brakes are warm but more you're doing between 40-50mph in the highlands because you know there are so many deer about and one jumps out from nowhere in front of you. This is my main scenario that's important, especially as it's where my car seems to struggle (possibly because of the aforementioned crusty front brakes).

Reds are ceramic which might have unfairly soured me against anything labelled ceramic as my experience match yours. I've never actually used yellows, but have used blue (terrible when cold) and orange. Would you say they're a true equal to the DS2500's then? And a logical extension of that, would you say true cold bite at 50mph (as a rudimentary example) on the DS2500 is better than OEM pads (even M3/4 pads)? Or are the M3/4 ones better than DS2500 when truly cold?

As to RS29's, these are the alternative to the CL RC5+ on the Impreza when the Bluestuff's inevitably disappoint me and I go and buy some new pads because I know they've got a pretty outstanding reputation as a fast road pad. Again, sounding like a broken record, are these seriously better than stock BMW pads when properly cold?! I suspect these are way too much for the BMW but are tempting for it's Japanese stablemate.

So yeah, DS2500 are better than stock for cold performance, and then obviously much better warm performance?

Thanks again, I suspect your brain works similarly to mine for stuff like this!

[Tengocity]

DS2500 are great from cold. You will drive them and after a few minutes all concerns about cold bite will disappear. I think you've a bit of hangover from previous experience, that I promise you you don't need to worry about.

I used my 335d for ski trips and winter hillwalking trips, Christmas in Poland, with the yellow stuffs and Ferodos and never any issues.

RS29 are in a different league, even cold. You have to readjust your pedal pressure, or you'll have cars behind you hitting you.

I did an emergency stop soon after fitting them and very nearly caused an accident with just how quickly I stopped compared to what anyone behind would have been expecting.

[Ennoch]

Interesting, I do wonder how much of an impact the car weight has on initial bite with these performance pads as my experience with DS2500 is they take a few reasonable stops to start working properly every time I've used them, albeit not on a car as heavy as the BMW.

The RS29 I suspect may be overkill on the BMW but I'll see how these Blues go on the Impreza and if they're no good I'll add RS29 to the list of potential replacements. I hadn't really considered them as an option but they may be worthwhile. How did you find they lasted/treated discs?

[Ennoch]

An update is that the stuff from Autodoc turned up and got fitted today. I went for Zimmerman blanks and Ferodo Eco Premier pads which seemed to have good reviews and cold bite curves. They worked out at £40 a set and seemed a good option to get some pads in there. Hopefully they're an improvement over what was in there. Surprisingly, after 36k the pads were still 2/3 good and the discs had no discernible lip to them. Quite amazing but also testament to the fact the car seems to have been treated pretty well over the last six years. I'm about to get the rotors from the Impreza skimmed to get some surface corrosion off them so I'm actually tempted to get these ones done at the same time to get the corrosion off them and keep them as spares. It's only about £50 to get them done so for that it's worth a go. If the corrosion is too deep rooted then I'll tell them not to do the second disc but they have less actual wear on them than my 5000 mile AP rotors on the scoob!

As to uprated pads I suspect I'll still go for something but I wanted to have some benchmark to go with, as well as needing a pad while being indecisive. It's much easier to compare new with new to be objective than it is to be objective with going from old OEM to new uprated and say 'yuss, theeez are da best, they iz awesom' because you've gone from worn out to fresh.

The actual fitting process is easy - the hardest part was getting the damned disc bolt out which seemed well stuck. It took a fair amount of whacking with the impact wrench to get it off on both sides. I reckon I'd have had both sides done under an hour quite easily but I was teaching my mate's daughter how to work on cars as a consolation prize to having not been able to do practical engineering at school this year. Therefore it was a good few hours. Not that I mind, people helped me out when I started working on cars so it's only fair to pay that on. She definitely needs to get stronger to undo and redo some bolts though!

[KRS_SN]

Well done. Im a complete nobody when it comes to my cars. Maximum I have done is hunt down rattles mercilessly like my life depends on it so much so that my cars are chambers of quiet that I drive with stereo off!.

[Ennoch]

I started that way, but as I had cars at uni I couldn't afford to run unless I maintained them myself I just learned out of necessity (a few alfa's, a Vectra ST200, Carlos Sainz GT4 etc). My neighbour at the time was an ex mechanic so he'd either inspect after I'd finished or give me a hand and show me some tricks. It helped that by 15 I was able to rebuild shocks and retune forks on the bike so that carried over to working on cars quite well. Since then I've shell swapped a few Imprezas, spannered for my mate at a few rallies and done a fair amount of stuff on classics. With the exception of electronics on modern cars they're basically all big Meccano sets!

As to rattles...gah, I hate working on interiors, give me mechanical stuff every day! Actually the BMW is so far okay and the Impreza is loud enough that you end up with tinnitus at the end of a long drive anyway so rattles get quieter as you go!