The most‐favored of traditional approaches to statutory regulation of excessive noise has been the subjective or qualitative statute. We present an analysis of the legal problems of qualitative municipal noise ordinances. While such an enactment is a valid exercise of a state or municipality's police powers, a case study of the Provincetown, Massachusetts, experience demonstrates the statute's vulnerability on constitutional grounds. In Provincetown, prosecution under the subjective “disturbing the peace” ordinance was used to silence an unpopular retailer's amplified music. A sound truck ordinance in Kovcas v. Cooper and an auto muffler statute in Smith v. Peterson have been upheld out of apparent necessity rather than constitutional soundness. By prohibiting noise described merely as “unnecessary” or “annoying,” authorities leave a citizen without notice of precisely what conduct is violative of the statute, as is required by due process guarantees of the 14th Amendment. At the same time, there are obvious dangers of discriminatory enforcement where one noise may be less popular than another at equal emission level if measured on an objective decibel scale. A quantitative noise statute permitting objective measurement according to widely recognized acoustical standards obviates the legal pitfalls.