anyone who's had more than one cherry blue board from different companies know if the actual keyboard build itself can cause the board to be significantly louder/softer than others?
Absolutely it makes a difference. Everything from what the switches are mounted on, to the overall build quality of the chassis.
For an analogy, it's like tapping a glass with a spoon. The tone of the note it gives off is going to differ dependant on the amount of liquid in the glass (what it's mounted to) or how thick the glass is (quality of the chassis).
Then of course there's the surrounding environment and whether the note will echo and reverberate. Which is dependant on what your keyboard is sitting on and what particular things your room is made from and everything in it.
The difference in the quality of the material the desktop is made out of will make a difference to the sound that is produced. The rigidity of the desk. Etcetera etcetera. I have a 1600mm wide desk that causes a duller thudding when bottoming out to a desk that is 980mm. The 980mm desk also has a lot more metal bracing and the metal causes a slight "clang" in the tone of a bottoming out note as opposed to the "thunk" of the wider wooden braced desk.
It's why you see in recording studios they'll have foam on the walls, but if they have desk mounted speakers, more often than not they'll use foam isolation pads to lift the speakers of the desk so the "muddying" of the sound the desk might make doesn't happen.
