I did a student project for server room HVAC fans being annoying back in uni, targeted reduction in those annoying or peak frequencies was a totally acceptable outcome as to not disturb operators (was for a simulated patient in the attached hospital). I'm not an acoustic engineer, so obviously take what I'm saying with a grain of salt (did do a lot of safety and risk work though), making things less annoying is perfectly valid if they're not already harmful to your hearing in the first place.

What's cool to me is that it's just printable, so in theory super accessible and anyone could iterate on it if they desired (assuming it gets open sourced)

Agreed. Being in the house and having the shrill component of the blower removed would greatly be appreciated.

but it doesn’t deserve all the hate it’s getting here either.

I'm not sure I said anything hateful here... I cited facts from the actual paper and described discontent with the articles, specifically the headlines.

The hate is for making a pretty obviously false claim about no power loss. Increasing or even decreasing the exhaust length will affect performance. So for them to add 8” and claim there is no loss of power is quite frankly an outright lie. So it’s being called out, and yet people are defending the asinine claim, it’s hilarious and very concerning as well.

People are also focusing on the wrong information, the total db was reduced by a paltry 2db, not 12db like what’s being talked about.

So they provide sound data that is misleading, and make a claim about power and not provide the data. This just reads marketing piece instead of anything on the actual tech.