I totally get what you're saying, but there's some contradiction which I don't understand: you say a decade ago it was 'dead silence' but also that it ended when 'busses started announcing' which seems to imply the busses were there already before. So with 'dead silence' do you mean 'all the usual traffic noise' or ... ?
The Roman philosopher Seneca made a similar point about non-continuous noise.
"Among the noises that sound around me but do not distract me, I count passing carriages, a carpenter somewhere in the building, a nearby saw grinder, and that fellow who demonstrates flutes and trumpets near the Meta Sudans, not so much playing them as bellowing. Even now I find noises that recur at intervals more bothersome than a continuous drone."
You can find more of his thoughts on the matter including his wonderful description of living above a bathhouse in Letter 56 to Lucilius.
That’s not strange at all. Most of the new noises you listed were specifically designed to catch your attention, while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible.
>while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible.
And before anyone sails on in to try and win some free virtue points about how OEMs slap excessively loud exhausts on stuff because buyers prefer that I would just like to point out that we have had ever tightening standards for idle, drive-by and wide open acceleration noise a vehicle can make since the 1980s.
Buyers generally want their cars to make "some" discernible change in engine noise when they floor it but that's about it. Excessive noise is fatiguing whether people realize it or not and OEMs likewise try to avoid it because it makes ownership less pleasant. For this reason when they do slap "performance" exhausts on their sportier models it's a case of "how quiet can we get away with" (and many automakers use resonance tubes, engine sounds over speakers and other tricks in order to be quiet yet still provide noise when the driver floors it). The people designing tire treads, mirrors, the wheel well opening all have reducing noise as a priority. Reducing noise makes for an all around less fatiguing experience and has really turned into an arms race among the OEMs since the mid '00s or so.
You're right. There were cars passing and pedestrians, but their noise didn't penetrate into the apartment. By "dead silence" I meant what's being heard from inside the house.
