I've noticed these new tunzes of mine and near silent however when they get over about 65% the noise increases significantly. Are the vortechs always audible or are they silent when moving less volume?

I guess everything is relative but I find Vortechs to be pretty silent when running any lower than 50%

I don't like the fact that Vortechs are not aimable. I hate having the 'footballs' in my tank too but I didn't want straight water flow in my tank
At least the Koralias are silent

I thought the same way when they first came out but the flow is so significantly different from tunze that I don't miss the aim ability. In fact when I put my tunze back in the tank I hated the strong force of water directly in front of the powerhead and the deadspots in the rest of the tank

True they are not aimable but the stream is wide spread and not a jet stream in one spot. I also find they draw a lot of water up the glass causing a nice movement behind the rocks. I also fund them silent under 60%.

*what Marie said lol*

Just a thought, if you want the Tunze to have a similar wide wave spread like the Vortech, you can modify the output nozzle and the wave will be much wider. I saw off the output nozzle back almost completely, leaving just an 1/8" and the wave is much wider and more gentle. Love it.

Or just buy a vortech and voila its good..
just sayin

I prefer Tunze's myself. Had a first gen MP20 for awhile and I hated it. It was noisy at anything over 60% and it had problems staying coupled through thick glas unless it was perfectly mounted. Also I wasn't really happy with the "wide flow" in my tank. 2 feet away the flow was gone. With my 6095's you still feel it on the other side of my 6' tank! Just get a 7096 controller and you can get 90% of the control ability of the vortech. Plus my tank is totally silent except for a litle splashing from the wavebox waves hitting the eurobrace. :)

You can also modify it like this, it will give you stronger flow too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvM4-omJiXM

I think it's mostly market share, from what I've seen here in Edmonton, it's like 80% ecotech and 20% tunze, so of course you see more ecotechs for sale, I agree they hum but it's never been much of an issue unless the owner didn't know how to set the spacing properly and prematurely wore out the magnets.... Come to the store if you wanna see what I mean.... Lol anyone that has been in knows what I'm talking about lol.....

Steve