I can't afford silence. Part of that may be that I'm more sensitive to what "silence" really means but I know that even out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing, I hear wind in trees, insects in grass, aircraft in sky. My uncle's house, in suburban Seattle, was one of the quietest places I've known. The walls and windows were thick and it was well off the flightpath of any airport. In the basement it was quiet enough to hear the blood in your ears. That sort of silence is difficult to find unless you've spent an awful lot of money. As I've mentioned, I've been in truly quiet places. My sister, an architect, called me down to help her office determine how to make their conference room quieter - they were occupying a former bank. I asked them where the vault was - that's where they'd chosen to put the printer for some dumb reason. You couldn't even close the door because the CAT5 cable from the print server would be severed if you tried. I got them to unplug it just so we could see - and yeah, it was quiet. Most people can't afford to build a bank vault. My condo is within the DNL65 contour of LAX - in lay terms, that means the FAA shelled out to give me some dope-ass windows and doors. My unit is well outside of the DNL65 contour, though, so I got the bitchin' doors even without all the aircraft noise (and, by the way, it's far louder 100 yards from a 4-lane, 35mph street than it is a mile from an international airport). My sliding glass door has two panes of double-laminated 1/4" glass with 3/4" of argon in between - sucker weighs an easy 200lbs. And right now, I hear: - the refridgerator - the ice maker ticking - the Seth Thomas - the aquarium percolating (a very pleasant sound) - hard drives in the entertainment system ticking over - the cooling fan on the projector Get rid of all those, and I'll hear the ballast on the LCD and the hum of a wall wart back in the rack somewhere. Silence is expensive. At night, though, when the planes turn around and we have landings rather than take-offs, when the entire world is asleep, and when the air inverts... we actually hear the ocean crashing on the shore, a full mile away. I might not be able to afford silence, but the sounds I can afford can be amazingly pleasant.