pandemic 

During the coronavirus quarantine, quiet fell across much of New York City. The sounds that make up a city—the voices, the honking horns, the subway dancers, construction—faded away, replaced by the sort of silence that many wouldn’t have thought possible a few months earlier. And without those sounds, some of the pieces that make city living unique began falling out of place. It may not be whale calls or the whisper of a gentle breeze through the trees, but New York’s natural soundscape is just as vital. And when it’s not there, it’s missed. To help replace the sounds of silence, in early May, the New York Public Library released Missing Sounds of New York, “a collection of audio landscapes that evoke some of the sounds of New York City,” which the NYPL called a “love letter” to the city... 

https://daily.jstor.org/recalling-city-sounds-during-a-quarantine/