I don’t really need silence to read, but I much prefer it.

Getting really good noise cancelling headphones was one of my best qol improvement in the last years. I often wear them without even listing to anything.

This isn’t quite what you’ve asked, but I’ve found two things over the years:

• Familiarity matters. I remember that as a kid, I didn’t listen to music when doing homework. I couldn’t understand how people could manage. Later, I used music on headphones in a work environment to drown out noise that was more-distracting, and it wasn’t an issue once I got used to it, could write software without problems with music. I remember reading that some people say that they can’t concentrate when it’s too quiet, if they’re accustomed to being in a noisy environment, because the silence becomes a distraction.

• The type of noise matters. I don’t require white noise, but in terms of how-distracting something is, I’d say that my ranking is something like silence > white-noise-type stuff > “ambient” sounds like waves or wind > lyric-free music > music with lyrics > speech > half of a conversation.

  By “half of a conversation”, I mean a conversation in the background where I can only hear one end. This usually comes up when someone is talking on a cell phone in a public place in the background. I think that what’s going on here is something like that we’ve trained ourselves so that if someone says something and then there’s no response, it means that they’re talking to us, and so we’ll say “huh?” and look up. It’s good that that happens. Unfortunately, that’s also the effect one gets when one can only hear one side of a cell phone conversation. Just a constant series of attention-grabbing events for me. I’d rather have two people talking to each other near me than one person on a phone, even though it’s technically more speech.

  Generally, I prefer “lyric-free music or better” when doing something that requires concentration, but can live with music with lyrics.

I need complete silence for stuff that require precision and concentration, working and reading are the main ones. I could read manga or something in a not so quiet environment but that’s it.

Not complete, but fairly close. Any background talking makes it difficult.

How else would I hear the narrator in my head?

I have an album associated with nearly every book I have read. Music is a must while reading.

Uh, really depends on the type of book, what kind of noise it is, and how concentrated I am. I don’t think I can do it early in the morning or after a long day. I have some amount of tolerance when my brain is still well off. But there’s certainly a limit. And it’s different on each train. The people who commute to and from work are often considerate. But once I’m directly in between a group of people who talk to each other, I put away my book and switch to music, or doom-scrolling on my phone. But I’ve read quite some things at various places and on the train. So it can’t be too hard for me.

Yes. And even then I struggle to concentrate. This is what modern life has done to us.

It might be auditory processing disorder. The second more than one person is talking (and books count) I begin to crave death.

I love listening to solo piano or ambient music while reading. Any other type of music is too much for my brain to handle.

It’s an adjustment I had to make when everyone started working from home in 2020, and I find it works well on transit too. Might just be that I’ve trained my brain to go into focus mode when I hear that type of music.

I need silence to read, or at least consistent noise, like the sound of a vent. The same applies if I’m trying to sleep. My mind isn’t very vivid, so I guess speech overrides it easily.

I need white noise or I need to listen to the audio book while I read along

No. I would read on the bus. I can read in the most crazy of spaces…

The Expanse was something I was absolutely absorbed with. Each new book was magic to my imagination.

I rode public transit and had to walk a lot to get to work, through downtown Seattle

I would read and walk, I knew the best/optimal path that would have the least traffic and still get me to work on time. My bosses boss found me one day reading and waiting for the crosswalk and then crossing in rush hour traffic and it blew her mind. I was listening to the world around me but I was in that book!

Actually, I can’t even read a book unless I have an audio version to read it to me while I follow along. (Even then, I stuggle to pay attention, which is why I rarely read books. Thank internet 🙃)

But if you mean background noise, yea of course I can’t deal with that (except like really nice calm instrumental music)

it was easier to read outside before the portable Bluetooth speakers