Hi Chet
For me the 7000 in a noisier machine than the 5000. 2 different beasts and I nearly wrapped it round a tree when I first got mine. I have actually upped my threshold to around the 27 after running it lower for a while. Northeast raises a good point with the volume settings. 'Noise' control has a lot to do with the audio settings rather than the threshold. With the visuals you have posted I wonder if you are looking at the peaks (the blue mountain tops for want of a better dedcription) rather than the horizontal line drawn through the diagrams which represents the threshold level. You see the height of the line corresponds with the threshold level.
J.
