All tyres give a lot of road noise when twoards the end of their life and tend not to take the road surface bumps as well as new. New tyres are always quiet in comparison and give nice ride. The XF gives quite a lot of road noise anyway due to back wheels being very close to driver, very little noise insulation, and made worse by very large contact area between tyre tread and road surface. I have a double layer of mats in the back which helps a little but there is lots of scope for placing insulation material in the big emty spaces over the rear wheel arches - check it out by removing the rear lamp panel in the boot.