To mikerr, on the subject of noise on the Rohloff: I ride in a small town, on a few bits of smooth highway, and in dead quiet country lanes.
In town you can't hear the noise the Rohloff makes; the other noises drown it.
On smooth open highway (where I don't often ride because the cars travel at 110kph and the hard shoulder sometimes disappears) the small noise of the Schwalbe Big Apples on my bike drown out the gearbox noise.
In the quiet lanes you can hear and compare noises. The Rohloff under all conditions is quieter than the derailleur setups of the pedal pals. In all gears but 5-6-7 the general noise of tyres and the whoosh of air drowns out whatever noise a run-in Rohloff box makes, if any; even on the bench you have to listen to distinguish the mechanical noise in the other gears. The problem with the noise in the lower range, and especially in gear 7, is the quality of it rather than the volume of it. It is a sort of sighing sound that makes you think you're pedaling harder than you really are! I find that noise depressing, but others don't seem to attach any importance to it. I've become fitter (I spent yesterday with a cardiac specialist and on all kinds of machines to trace and view my heart, including a stress test) by switching out of 7 into 8 earlier and earlier... The noise does get less and less as the box runs in but my Rohloff has over 4000km on it and every 1000km when I make a subjective assessment it seems quieter still, so it may take a very long time and still not be as fully silent as, say, a Shimano Nexus 8 speed. But then, as the famous machinist Chalo Colina says, a Rohloff will be almost run-in roundabout the time you trash the first Nexus box and buy a second one.
Frankly, though I give you a full answer because you ask, I think this business about noise on the Rohloff is over-rated. First, a Rohloff isn't a commuting gearbox, or a comfort gearbox, or a luxury bike gearbox -- it is in fact intended to be an agricultural item indestructible in the hands of mudpluggers and guys who ride in sand on beaches. (Herr Rohloff designed it after sand wrecked his derailleur setup when he rode on the beach on his honeymoon...) Instead of going on about the little noise a Rohloff does make, we should wonder that something so agricultural makes so little noise! For the fact is that the Rohloff is objectively a silent gearbox in the same way that a Rolls of old was silent car (but you could get a big American Ford that cost less and was even more silent -- but would you want to be seen in it?). If the Rohloff cost two hundred quid instead of a thousand, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It is the elevated price that raises and distorts the expectation.
André Jute
