I loathe leaf blowers, so I often wonder what the acoustic design limits for a high speed air moving device are. How quiet could it be if the air source was impractically far away, and the business end was just a carefully engineered duct? Could the tone be changed into \
something more pleasant, like a loud woodwind instrument? I suspect the best answer is to change the question, and engineer better automated rakes and brooms instead of blowing things around.
@ID_AA_Carmack How much of the noise comes from the two-stroke engine rather than the air. Are electric leaf blowers significantly less noisy?
@ID_AA_Carmack Once you got the automated rake alternative perfected we can start raking people all over the country instead of sending putting them in tubes powered by noisy leaf blowers/jet engines
@ID_AA_Carmack I just bought a cheap one and took it apart for the electronics, they are definitely way to loud though, maybe i'll see if there is a method to make it a little more quiet without losing too much output.
@ID_AA_Carmack Interesting. Maybe a leaf vacuum where the backend dices and compacts the leaves into little cubes for easy disposal/use in composts etc.
@ID_AA_Carmack add it to the list of problems for the AGI to solve
@ID_AA_Carmack enormous fans could move a lot of air without making much noise
@ID_AA_Carmack The Dyson approach would probably work best. Just increase rotation speed until frequency is supersonic hence most of the noise is inaudible. Dyson hairdryer is pretty silent for its power (not silent silent, but not half as bad as most)
@ID_AA_Carmack I have an electric Makita leaf blower in vacuum mode and while loud the time I use it is far less than when blowing. I don't have much to keep tidy though.
@ID_AA_Carmack Not a fan either, but mostly because it seems inefficient.
@ID_AA_Carmack Just build bots and have them rake it up old school. I imagine the algorithm could find it pleasing to pick leaves up individually, optimising for minimum volume...