Riding in my car was driving me (and my passengers) crazy.  At highway speeds I had trouble understanding voices and hearing the radio clearly.  The culprit was noise. Wind, engine and road noise all combined to overwhelm my hearing aids.

I measured the sound inside the car and it averaged about 82 decibels at 60mph/100kph.  That’s pretty loud.

But it wasn’t simply the loudness that was causing me grief.  It was also the fact that many of these sounds were in roughly the same frequency range as the human voice making it very hard for me to discern what people were saying.

I started hunting for some relief by looking for ways to make the interior of my car quieter.

There’s not much you can do about wind and engine noise except have a body shop line the inside of the doors, floor and trunk with sound deadening insulation which is a rather expensive option.

I also learned that the biggest single source of cabin noise is where the rubber meets the road.  I shouldn’t have been surprised because one day I was driving with a friend who asked me if I still had my snow tires on.  It was July, and I didn’t.  In fact, I recalled that my snow tires were actually quieter that my summer tires.

I had identified the four culprits and began the hunt for a quieter quartet.  I discovered that I am not the only one who values a quiet ride.  There are several tire rating and review sites out there that test for tire noise.

That includes Tire Reviews  which publishes the Top Ten Quietest Tires .  At the top of their list for 2018 is Bridgestone’s Turanza Serenity Plus and I was certainly looking for some serenity.

It’s one of the few tires that’s designed specifically to reduce road noise.  It features what the company calls, RENOA.  An acronym for Resonance Noise Attenuated silencer grooves.

They are a key feature of a tread pattern that’s designed to trap sound in grooves that are closed off at either end.  In effect, the idea is to capture and absorb road noise.

Did they make a difference?

I had a set installed and hit the road.  This time I got a reading of about 78 decibels which by itself is a pretty significant reduction from 82.  But perhaps more importantly the frequencies produced by the new Bridgestones were noticeably lower than my old tires’ higher pitch which meant that there wasn’t as much sound competing in the same frequency range as voices.

It’s not perfect, but I am now much better able to understand speech and I can hear my radio more clearly.

I should point out that the Turanza line is for “premium luxury sedans” which my Honda Accord is definitely not.  So they’re a little more expensive than other tires but sometimes it’s worth paying out some hush money.