I have the OEM Hardtop on my S and even with HKS exhaust, on the highway it is almost silent in the car. I can almost whisper and the passenger can hear me. HUGE difference vs. the soft top

 

OMFG difference is like night and day. ht for the win.

 

I actually didn't seem to notice much of a difference and I just went 2 days without my hardtop and now it's back on again. Maybe it's because my exhaust is loud and I generally have my stereo on, either way it seemed negligible.

 

if only i had somewhere to store a hard top...and could afford it...and didn't have nice top down weather most of the year.

 

Windnoise is much less with the hardtop. HOWEVER, over time, you will develop NEW noises with a hardtop. Latch/striker will squeak after a while. Also wind might start seeping through the hardtop through the window seals and/or the windshield seal.....which is way worse than soft top wind noise.

This is true for all hardtops...doesn't matter which one you get. There is a guy in the s2000 racing forums though that developed a hardware kit that will eliminate all this hardtop noise

 

The HT greatly reduces overall wind noise, and because of this the engine seems to be louder, which is fine with me...

I like to joke about the HT being faster. You see many people develop a speed to noise relationship in their head. Many times when the HT has been on I have looked at the speedo and been shocked by how fast I was going, it's so much quieter I keep going faster because my mind tells me I must be going slow because it is so quiet.

See, HT's are faster...