Better practices to improve surface properties and thus tire-pavement noise are really about establishing a higher order of control over the texture and other surface properties. It is not about designing or building "innovative" surfaces, but rather the control of conventional texturing techniques. There should be a renewed awareness of the impact that some of the subtle operational characteristics can have on the texture as constructed. Predictable tire-pavement noise levels are not about how the texture is imparted as much as they are about the recognition and management of the sources of variability. Regarding the concrete, noise levels have to do with the fact that the contractors are imparting texture into a material with inherent variability in both stiffness and plasticity. Concrete changes from batch-to-batch, and it changes within a batch. The wind and the sun play a major role, as does the timing of the concrete mixing, transport, placement, and (eventually) the texturing and curing (the latter being important for acoustical durability).