Tires: Tire noise, honda civic coupe, tire noise

Question
I have a '06 Honda Civic Coupe. I bought a set of tires from wal*Mart and they
are incredibly noisy. I took it to the dealer and he said that these cars need a
very specific type of tire due to the camber of the wheels, and the light rear
end. He suggested i put some weight in the trunk, but it really doesn't help. It
has gotten to the point where you can't talk in a normal voice and be heard
over the tire roar. Is this the tires or something else? They have checked the
struts, CVJ's (it seems to be louder in the rear though), etc and found
nothing. I would hate to have to buy a new set of tires, but I will if that is the
problem. Pls help!

Answer
Mark,

Tire noise is a function of 2 things:  The tire and the pavement.

Pavement has some inherent noise.  Even tires with no tread generate noise and the macrostructure of the pavement will change both the volume and the type of noise generated.

The same is true for the tires themselves.

Plus there is an interaction between the pavement and the tire that can completely change the rank order.  Put another way, if you were to rank order the noise of a group of different tires on one road surface and then rank order the same tires on a different road surface, you probably would not wind up with the same list.

So the first step would be to see if the noise changes based on the road surface.  If it doesn't than the problem is in the vehicle - and that could take some doing to find out exactly what it is.

If the noise changes depending on the road surface, particularly if the noise level was much lower before changing tires, then it is probably an interaction between the tire and the pavement and the only fix is to replace the tires.