I'd have to agree with you reluctantly. Talking about my experience in Civic Turbo here.
I've never ever been really bothered about the hardness part - even to this day after 2 years and 22k kms they are reasonably soft. New BGs were reasonably quiet too. Of late they started making this roar which was hell obvious when I jumped from my Advan dB Accord to BG Turbo. It was literally painful. But after getting Goodyears in Accord, I'd have to say even new Goodyears are not too much quieter than the old BG - and EfficientGrip Performance are pretty quiet tires if you do a search on the web.
The grip part is something which I've never ever liked about BGs. It's a big deal of course in hard braking, but with my driving style I dont really push the grip too often.
Purely based upon the fact that BGs had become much noisier than when they were new, I wanted to change them out but having second thoughts of prolonging that based upon the fact that they are still soft. And even the noise, short of Advan dB, CC5/CC6 or Dunlop Veuro, you'd be hard pressed to find a tire that is day and night quieter.
