As a Nomad owner, I think that all else equal (e.g. tools, feeds and speeds) Carvey will be quieter because:
- It has a much tighter enclosure. The Nomad enclosure has gaps between the plastic cover and the sides of the machine that a lot of noise gets out through.
- It’s nearly twice as heavy.
- The Nomad still uses this horrible Aluminium composite material for the top of the machine and the folded piece that makes the front of the machine and goes under the bed. This material, in my experience, only ever acts like an amplifier for sound, making the machine several times louder than it should be.
However I would not recommend buying either machine with the expectation that it will be sufficiently quiet. If you need quiet, I wouldn’t recommend buying a CNC mill unless you can either test one yourself and make sure it’s quiet enough for you, or accept that you might need to build an enclosure later.
Technically, it is possible to make the machine cut just about anything (even Aluminium) quietly but to do so means slowing everything down to a crawl. Unless you’re working on really tiny stuff, I don’t think it’s viable.
I think just about everyone on this forum who has needed quiet has ended up building an enclosure in the end.
Once you have an enclosure, I don’t think it makes much difference which machine you should buy, in terms of noise, so I’d go for the Nomad for the better spindle and ongoing support.
@WillAdams: while I would have expected you to be right, @TonyDangerCoiro experimentally found otherwise. When he replaced his spindle, he decreased the volume from 86dB to 75dB.