Until I was 15 I lived in a house in Brooklyn on a residential but busy street close to a major commercial intersection. To this day I actually find external city sounds soothing - ambient traffic sounds, even police and fire engine sirens.<p>But for a good part of my adult life I lived in apartment buildings. Except where I was lucky (for example, living for a year in a top-floor Chicago apartment sharing a wall with an absentee neighbor), I&#x27;ve had many problems with inside-building noises due to other residents. I know well the subwoofer-bass problem, the sounds of a television traveling from the ceiling or floor, the sounds of footsteps and chairs scraping across the floor above. All horrible. But external city noises have mostly not been a problem.