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Comment by Jonnax | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why they have to be so loud.

I recently bought a Miele vacuum cleaner, and compared to other cheap vacuums I've had before. It's significantly quieter whilst still having effective suction.

Is it cost cutting or is this the best kind of motors possible for hand dryers?

As a side note: I wonder what the testing conditions are like for these dryers. Like there's one of the Xcellerator driers at my local bouldering place's toilet.

It's a very small tilled room. I went once and the sound caused my ears to ring for hours.

I don't go in without my noise cancelling headphones now haha.

But I imagine if the room was a lot bigger that would not be an issue.

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Wild speculation: I wonder whether loudness is actually a design goal, to make the dryer appear more powerful. A sizable number of people are skeptical of electric vehicles, because they perceive an earth-shaking vroooom to be an essential part of the driving experience. Could someone with industry experience chime in?

There are car makers who now use DSPs to process exhaust noise to play INTO the interior of the car to make people feel like they're driving! I drive a turboed car, turbos are naturally sound dampening, I'm totally fine with it being quieter as long as its actually faster.

To the speed point though, I'd probably drive a P100D because they're ridiculously fast...

VW even did this mechanically before switching to an electronic version. At least that means it's easier to shut it up: https://www.carworklog.com/2016/07/02/guide-disableturn-down...

I didn't know about the tube, I def would've plugged that. I have a MKIIV Golf-R and you can absolutely hear the "Soundaktor in action, its so goofy...

This, frankly, is my favorite sound mod -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_owsz8Za_Y

Same here, it's a beast. I've done a slew of other VCDS mods if you're interested. 5 brake lights instead of 3, tighter lane keep (tesla-like), power windows after door open engine off, enable menus while driving, rest-of-world dynamic headlights, brighter blind spot indicators, hazards on skid, no seatbelt chime, the list goes on and on. And open that center console if it doesn't open!

Non-commercial vacuum cleaners are acoustically engineered to be loud for this reason. Other examples of intentional loudening include the opening of car doors and aluminum beverage cans.

I suspect that the loud "powerful" noise level was selected to be in line with Dyson's brand image.

One good thing the EU did was to end this pointless rat race with anti-noise and efficiency legislation. No single vendor could have done it, because consumers equal loudness with effectiveness in a vacuum cleaner.

> consumers equal loudness with effectiveness in a vacuum cleaner.

I wonder how many consumers believe this versus how many actively seek out quieter vacuums.

Loud machines are loud because loud is the easiest. It takes serious analysis and engineering to discover exactly where the noise comes from and/or is amplified and fix that. Sometimes you can cut a machine's noise level in half just by tightening a few screws or replacing some raster by a different material, but you don't know which one until you detect where the noise comes from.

Your Miele is less noisy because they (and their suppliers) invested lots of engineer hours in making it less noisy, both at the motor level and at the level of the entire vacuum cleaner.

I am pretty sure it is just cost; after all, places install them to save on consumables cost and staff to periodically refill towels and empty the trash.

A few days ago someone posted on hackernews about about noise canceling shapes I wonder if that can be used to muffle such sounds. Using architecture to expand or muffle sounds has been used for centuries but sadly we have stopped using them much because of easy availability of electronics.

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