I bought a $3,000 65" 4K HDR TV 4 years ago. When it was delivered, it had 4 "bright" corners that I later found out were likely caused by the panel being pinched by improper shipping or shipping materials. I told Samsung that this defect was unacceptable and they needed to replace or repair the TV under warranty. They told me that it was "within spec". For their top-end $3000 tv. Yeah, right.
Luckily, I purchased the TV from a local retailer, who exchanged it for me (with one we opened and tested at the store). Sadly, that retailer has since been driven out of business by Amazon.
Similar issue to you, went through 4 TVs then got a refund. A friend had the same TV and those bright corners developed after a couple of years. Luckily Australia has great consumer laws and he got a refund and got a Sony TV.
Alternating heavy, light, dense, sparse materials cause reflections backwards which helps the sound get converted into heat.
Unfortunately small gaps lead to large amounts of sound getting out.
But if I have the same risk of a super loud compressor on a replacement, I definitely don't want the repair. Ideally I'd be able to find a place that needs a fridge but is noise tolerant. That I can donate an otherwise working product to, so it just doesn't go to waste.
But until then, I can't in good conscience just toss this thing, so my family has gotten used to it, and it's only guests that suffer.
Never going to buy Samsung again, I guess.
The newer ultra-high-speed compressors are supposed to be more efficient, but looking up some historical data on refrigerator energy consumption, I'm not so sure if that's true in general.
For instance I have a Dell 2U server in my home office. It’s pretty quiet all things considered, but I wanted to lower the fan speeds manually (possible with ipmi tool) to make it quieter at the expense of maybe a warmer system. You’d think the lowest possible RPM would be best... but actually increasing it slightly from the baseline was the most pleasing sound, despite it being a tiny bit louder volume wise than the lowest RPM setting. At the absolute lowest speed the fans created this cacophony as they went in and out of sync, making a vibration sound. A little bit higher, that individual sound dissipated and I was left with soft white noise that was more enjoyable.
Purchase of consumer products is so difficult, especially with the huge variety of model numbers. Though I'm fairly unsatisfied with the latest iteration of Apple laptops, I do appreciated the very limited number of models, which at least allows fuller evaluation.
Something like a block of scrap iron hanging off the side of the compressor housing affixed with a tightly fitted robust hose clamp.
I've seen numerous differential housings on automobiles over the years with such sinks hanging off their mounts to eliminate some harmonics or other harshness that would otherwise enter the cabin.
Most of the ones I tried suck - they might not be loud, but they were very irritating and frequently running. At least old fridges ran less often and had a more plesant engine-like noise.
The exception is ammonia absorption which doesn't require a compressor or fan. They are mostly used in RVs and hotel rooms, but can be used at home too.
There were few experimental solid state ones that worked on exotic work fluids like hydrogen or ammonia, but nothing consumer grade is on the horizon.
Midea with Haier are two big funders of the research.
Worst part is... it’s well within “spec”. I had lots of ear problems as a kid culminating w/ surgery and ironically my hearing is hyper sensitive, as opposed to being worse off. My wife thinks I’m nuts to be so annoyed by the sound (she hears it, though) and technicians who come out say the same.
Fuck I hate this fridge.