Is this road noise normal?
 

I have been driving my 05 x5 for about two months now, and i've noticed kind of a weird road noise when im on smooth pavement.

During slow speed it kinda sounds like maybe a front tire is not straight...like uneven contact. Its not super loud but I can hear it more so when i let go of the gas and decelerate.

On a freshly paved freeway at high speeds, it just becomes like a light drone.

Is this normal? If not, do u think a tire is bent or a bearing is worn out? I'm assuming if i took this in, they dealership would just recommend an alignment, which I may need...but just wanted to see if this happened to anyone else

thanks!

Pat

Are your tires old? I had a dry set of falkens that sounded like a worned out bearing, and almost took it in to fix... but when I got new set of tires (Vredestein) the sound disapeared...
And an alignment can't hurt... it can very well be an alignment problem...

hmm, well its an 05, and it only had 42k on it when i bought it. I'm not entirely sure if the rubber has dried out, but the tread looks fine still.

It's not that bad, just slightly annoying noise, but i am a bit worried if its a bearing it may wear out more...good thing i have warranty :)

thanks!

I don't know if we have the same noise but I do have the drone noise at highway speeds. It has gotten worse since my tires have aged. From what I understand, the drone noise is coming from the rear tires which wear unequally due to the negative camber of the rear suspension. The more miles they roll, the more unequally they wear. This unequal wear causes a loud wear pattern in the tire almost like lugs on a mud tire that make all that noise on the highway. My tires are the Toyo Proxes. A cursory glance at my tires show that there is lots of tread left on them but if you were to look at the inside of my tires you can see the lugging wear pattern that I spoke about. Not much can be done to prevent this other than to remove/reduce the negative camber in the rear suspension. What kind of tires do you have because some tread patterns might not be as loud as others?