I was raised in noise. My mother loved to have the TV on all day. I did not enjoy the noise. I like quiet. As I have gotten older that has grown on me. I used to be able to tune out the noise in my life but now I want more quiet. I have nice lute music to listen to and I enjoy it but seldom listen because I enjoy quiet. I never turn on a radio. I don't turn on the TV,

Quiet. As quiet as possible. I have hyperacusis. Sounds can hurt.

Amylou, I’m like you! I really do work better with voices going. So maybe a tv show or movie that doesn’t require my close attention, or a podcast, or an audiobook. When I was in school i liked the big open area of the library (still do), and even spent evenings doing homework at Denny’s late at night! I really need an audiobook for long drives. I see it as giving one side of my brain something to do while the other side sees to the task at hand.

DH needs quiet, or selected music. He can’t stand even hearing lawn mowers outside. wildchild, I wonder if DH has that, too? He is especially bothered by low noises. Who can he see for a proper diagnosis? Sometimes it is hard to escape sound and noise. What do you do when you can’t escape it?

Me, I thrive on hearing the sounds of life.

I rarely have quiet with DH retired. He turns on the TV in my office (stock market, sports) the minute he's up and dressed. He leaves. I turn it off. He returns, comes in and turns it back on. It's an all day thing. I can concentrate and am not particularly distracted by it, I just don't need it.

I don't play music like I used to. Never in my kitchen. Never ever in my garden. But - always when I'm driving. I have (and insist) on Sirius in my car and will typically listen to 60's, 70's, 80's music.

Funny though, Amy - we fall asleep to TV too. Usually late evening news, but also NatGeo or something else I'd actually like to watch since DH seems to control the TVs and we don't necessarily have the same taste in programming. I miss a TV in the bedroom if we happen to stay someplace there isn't one. DH may wake during the night and turn it off, or not.

I like quiet. The TV is never on during the day unless there is a newsworthy happening. I watch TV at night and rarely play the radio except in the car. We used to have Sirius but now Spotify or pandora playing all the good old rock from the 60's and 70's.

I need noise as well. It is very quiet where I live in the woods except for occasional wildlife and the sound is company. The TV is always on although it maybe muted if I am streaming something on my laptop. But the streaming requires focus and my attention so for just background noise while I am doing anything else - cooking, cleaning, etc. - it is the TV. Almost always the Animal Planet, Nat Geo or one of the DIY shows. And I also fall asleep to the TV and will wake up if it goes off....the silence can be deafening!!

I do listen to music as well but mostly in the car, sometimes while working. Oddly, I need no noise when outside. Gardening or walking the dog, etc. is done in silence or with just whatever ambient sound seems to be present. Right now it is the sound of nearby construction as they are building 2 new houses in my neighborhood but far enough away to just be background sound when outside.

I never could tolerate background music. The music of everyday life is fine though. I love to read, and I also love classical music, but cannot partake of both at the same time. Each deserves my full attention.

I have NPR on almost all the time, unless I want a quiet house; I'm a donating member, value many programs and could not bear listening to a station that had commercials. I also often listen to music. I have never owned a TV and absolutely detest being in anywhere that has a TV running as background.

I like it quiet. When I am home alone there is no TV or music. DH is a noisy person all the way around. He has TV on every second he is in the house. Cowboy movies. I often avoid that end of the house so I don't have to hear the screaming and gunfire. I sometimes put on the kitchen TV while cooking, often a sitcom where I don't have to concentrate on it. I always have Sirius radio on in my car. I like Yacht Rock in the summer or classic rock but never the oldies. I also like it loud. Teenager loud. I recall shocked looks on a couple teenagers faces when the cool car with the music blasting was being parked by an old lady. I laughed and said, You know, my generation invented rock and roll. They laughed too.

I have the news on. No quiet here.

Usually it is quiet in our house. Depending on what I'm doing and the concentration required, I like music on. Yesterday I was working on a sewing project, so I pulled up YouTube on the TV and blasted Cher videos. I will also do that when I'm cleaning house.

In the car it's usually NPR or 70s-80s music.

No TV in the bedroom.

My job requires focus and concentration, so when I’m working, silence. At all other times, noise. Cooking or folding laundry, etc. = music! Exercising = music! And I’m pretty sure my car doesn’t operate without the radio on - I can’t even imagine driving without music 😱!

Quiet, out here is the country I can hear the cows, a rooster, songbirds and a mule.

For workouts, music helps distract me while the rhythm encourages me to keep pushing myself.

Around the house, normally I would have silence, but through covid, the rest of my family liked having the tv on (whether they were watching or not!). And I'd get concentrating on something (and not be able to hear) and then turn around to find some strange soap opera or something blathering at me -- surprise! Unexpectedly, it's taken me a little while to get used to silence again (DH goes into the office 1-2 days a week now). So if I'm missing the random noise, I'll put on NPR radio, or something more benign (golf match, sports event) in the background.

I do love music and listen to it more in the car than in the house.

I like to listen to current...happy music. ie: Maroon 5/Moves Like Jagger or Billie Elish Bad Guy silly music with a beat. I have a "like" list with Alexa or just say "Play music". We also have whole house stereo....I like to listen to The Bob & Tom Show, with Christy. I used to listen to "The Howard Stern Show"....got tired of him & cancelled sirius xm.

I have tinnitus. I keep the tv on most of the time, or I-Heart on my phone, since radio reception is so bad here. Sometimes I turn it down when I am ready to go to sleep

I have tinnitus, and so the ringing in my ears is quite disturbing when it is very quiet, especially when I was at my parents' house in the country.

I like to have background music if it is too quiet, but I do not like having the TV on when I am not watching it. I always mute all commercials, and I have to be watching it in order to do that.

I have saved a lot of music videos from YouTube onto a thumb drive, and I can put those on the TV for listening to instead of a TV show. I'm okay with having PBS on, since it does not have commercials.

Unless I'm actively listening or watching, I vote for silence -- that is, no electronic noise. Plenty of other things to hear if they're not drowned out.

Definitely quiet. I can’t stand most of what’s on tv, so that is turned on for some news in the morning then off the rest of the day. Quiet can be hard to come by in my neighborhood between lawn mowers and barking dogs. I enjoy podcasts but have to give them my full attention so I don’t listen while doing other things. Mostly I listen in bed to help me drift off.

I do some of my best thinking when i am out for a walk, so no music or podcasts then.

I hate outdoor speaker also. In Venice, an old German man moved into the house across the street from our back yard, and so his back yard was opposite our back yard. He set up speakers in his back yard that were directed toward our back yard and would play lout Oompah music on his record players. He also had a Perry Como record that would get stuck, and that irritated me no end. It was useless to try to talk to him about it.

In Cathedral City, there used to be a 12 year old (my estimate) girl that would visit her grandfather (who owned the house next door) on a regular basis and bring friends with her who would play outside, screaming constantly at the top of their lungs. Sometimes they would come screaming into my front yard, and I would go outside to chase them off. I told them that my front yard was not a playground, and so the girl stole all of my outdoor landscape lighting the night after I told her this. She did not play in my yard after this, possibly because she may (or may not) have felt guilty.

My work environment was very noisy, with alarms and bells going off constantly, so at home I wanted quiet. But, when I was working as a researcher, most of my day (after rounding on my patients) was spent in a quiet office doing paperwork, and in that period (and now, in retirement) I liked having music on while doing housework.

I have my bedside radio tuned into the local classical music station, and will frequently put it on sleep mode to have it play for 30-60 minutes when I go to bed.

When I am working out on my elliptical, though, it helps me to have a workout video playing to pace me through changing levels of effort - and mark my progress through the time. I use some that are meant for ellipticals, or bikes, or other tabata/HIIT type workouts.

Fortunately, both DH and I prefer quiet. I will turn on NPR when doing boring chores in a single location -- like ironing. The 'background music' in stores irritates me. I'm comfortable with my own thoughts; don't need to be 'distracted' from them. That might change if I lived alone. I can see how silence 24/7 could be oppressive.

Back to amy's comment/question - whether I'm listening to an audio book (which I find time to do daily) or music, I pay close attention to the sound. I can't do it if there's even a small iota of something consuming I need to think about. I can't do it when cooking but I can when driving.

Music has to be of high enough digital quality and loud enough to hear the constituent parts with good definition. Digital files from my music collection, on thumb drives or SD cards (depends on the car) are played in my cars. The sound quality of FM radio and Sirius are poor and I can't tolerate them.

"Background music" gives me a headache.

Quiet please!

Two noise atrocities that make me grit my teeth: DH listening to talk radio and golfers playing while their Bose speakers are blasting. I have to leave the area in both cases.

I have tinnitus as well and I hear it now when I'm on the trail because of the absolute silence in the woods.

My favorite sounds are produced by nature, birds singing, the wind and rain, coyotes. crickets etc., when those sounds aren't around I prefer peace and quiet. Living in the country by myself it can be very quiet!

Blissful silence for me most of the time. Music when I have time to enjoy it. I, too, have tinnitus but I've had it for most of my many adult years and long ago learned not to "hear" it. Unless...it changes its tonal range and then I need a few hours to activate ignoring it.

No TV so that eliminates that source of noise.

I like public radio for the lack of commercials (turned off during fund drives -- why should contributers have to suffer through the pleading for money). I listen to the discussions in the morning -- lots of information on local and state issues. If I'm doing something in the house, I may play CDs, depending on my mood. No radio or music when I'm reading, or falling asleep.

When I’m on my ipad, crocheting or puttering around the house, I prefer the quiet. When I’m working, I like to play a channel I have on my Pandora app for a musician named Emancipator. His music and others in the same janra are mostly instrumental and very calming to work to. I’m a political news junkie but it’s gotten so upsetting that I’ve been forcing myself to cut back on it, so tv noise is very limited lately. I have tinnitus as well, though ti’s usually not bad enough to be annoying, (knocking on wood).

I am amused as to some peoples idea of quiet.

I also have a retired DH at home and he will keep the TV on all day and half the night but we do have some headphones things that he can use and mute the TV. If I cant zone out the sound that is what we do. He did watch news all day but now he is streaming TV shows. He would love me to be involved but I don't have his need for mayhem and havoc. I like quiet. He keeps the radio on in his car but not mine. I have a radio that is practically virgin. It is there if I need news. I dont often need news.

For someone like me who likes quiet , that changes at night when I have TWO sound machines roaring every night.

I used to love quiet during the day. I found it really hard when my cousin and brother moved in with me. My brother has been here for 3 years, he is pretty quiet except when he is in the basement wood working. He works during the week and if he is home he is either in the basement or his room. My cousin is here most of the time. She likes to have the radio on during the day. haha I love it when they are both gone for a few hours. If I am working on an online jigsaw puzzle at night I will put my headphones on and listen to podcasts or some kind of documentary on Youtube. Other than that I relish silence.

At work, I would always listen to music while designing furniture, building furniture models, or doing CAD drawings. However, I would not listen to music while writing computer code, back in the 1990s before Windows, and for DOS computers. I was very good at dBase programming, but this was not appreciated by other people at work because they did not understand it. They did like the results, however.

I also listen to music while driving, sewing, and sometimes cooking, but generally not while eating.

At the lunchroom at work, there was a TV, and people would watch Jerry Springer, which I hated, and so I would go home for lunch. My commute was only 4 minutes, and so this was easy.

The absolute worst background sound that I can think of is football or basketball games on TV. I hate the sound of the announcers, and I hate the sound of the crowd. Obviously I never go to any of these games in person either, or watch them on TV. I don't like baseball, hockey, or soccer either.

I grew up in a large family and one major revelation I had when I first moved into my own apartment is that I could choose a quiet environment. What a luxury! I watch very little TV and the TV is muted most of the time. DH has a hearing loss so he wears headphones when watching TV in order to have a sufficiently loud volume. However, I always listen to audiobooks or music when I'm walking or cooking. Unlike Lars, I find sports, especially baseball, to be a very soothing background noise. I have no interest in the game itself so it fades into a repetitious "wallpaper."

Silence, seldom have the television on in the day time.

Sue