[murrayhenson]

Agreed!

My wife and I are building a home at the moment and, when it came time to consider appliances, noise of a given appliance was a factor and something we took into consideration. For example, we chose a very quiet vent hood to go over the hob/stovetop since it's an open plan kitchen/living area. Vent hoods can be very noisy (65+ dB) when running maximum.

However, given that there are tractors in fields nearby, dogs, chickens, and other "sounds of rural life" ... we made sure to put in a LOT of insulation and also went for triple-paned windows. While the house isn't yet complete, we hear almost no outside sounds when we are inside.

When we compare that to our current location - on a side street, but a moderately busy one - with sometimes couriers on loud motorcycles, lorries, police/fire vehicles (sirens), and the occasional person with a car that has an exhaust tuned to be loud ...the difference is really quite remarkable.