Last night RTE screened a beautifully moody documentary: North circular.
At some point someone, a pipe major in a Dublin pipeband, says ‘the hardest thing about the pipes.. is listening to them’ . In fairness, he was talking about the noisy big Highland variety. A quote for the ages. 
Many years ago, when I lived in Australia, I was visiting my Highland piper friend in Melbourne. One evening he took me to his piper’s club, this was in a church hall or club house. On entering we could see a highland piper standing on one leg in the middle of the room, contentedly playing whilst wearing a pair of ear defenders. I asked if this was common practice " What? Standing on one leg ?.. no he is just a bit odd “. … " Oh, the defenders ? That’s for the noise”! I asked if the piper had brought a pair for everyone in the audience, to which someone suggested "we should all bring our own next time for sure "!
I don’t understand the snobbery many Highland pipers, and many uilleann pipers, have towards any sort of bagpipe besides the one they themselves play.
I’ve done tons of listening to a wide variety of bagpipes (Latvian, Greek, Hungarian, Low Countries, not to mention more common types like Central French, Bulgarian, Asturian, Galician, etc etc) and the truth is that any species of bagpipe in the hands of a good player is perfectly in tune and capable of playing sophisticated music.
I think the snobbery mainly comes from lack of exposure, lack of in-depth listening to the best players.
Do you see that snobbery here on this thread, Richard?
FWIW I don’t and I suspect you didn’t quite grasp the tongue in cheek intention of quoting the line.
Was it a pipe band rehearsal? At these the pipers generally wear hearing protection when the drum corps joins the rehearsal, but often not when only the pipe corps is playing.
One snare drum is as loud as four to six Highland bagpipes.
About the volume of the Highland pipes, what’s strange is how loud they are in an enclosed space, but how poorly the sound travels out of doors.
I was up in the stands at a football match when on the field was playing a brass band and a pipe band.
At one point one of the trumpet players did a solo part, and it could clearly be heard over the half-dozen bagpipes also playing at that time. I don’t think a dozen pipers could have drowned out that trumpet. The grass swallowed up the sound of the pipes but not of the brass instruments.
Characterising the sound of an instrument as “noise” is patently pejorative.
I said noisy. It speaks to volume, I could just as easily have said ‘loud’, which they are.
Reminds me of the quote sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”
Nick Whitmer
ithaca NY
I heard recently that Mark Twain did use it in a commencement address, but attributed it to a music critic of the day, assuring the audience that he himself had no expertise in music.