Question: What's louder than a jackhammer but quieter than a jet engine?

Answer: The thrumming of super-charged car stereos on Burlington streets.

We've all heard them, these car stereos on steroids.

It's a drumming that resonates not so much in your ears as in your chest, a thumping music that announces another young motorist on the prowl.

Burlington police are right to crack down on noise complaints related to these cars.

Not that there's anything criminal about listening to thud music. It's just the volume and the amount of time police have to spend responding to Burlingtonians who are being blasted off their front porches.

Residents fed up with noise are calling police in near-record numbers.

Consider this: In the first 20 days of this month, police received more than one noise-related call a day. That's at a time when the city's armies of potentially noisy college students have mostly moved away for the summer.

Cities are, by nature, noisy. You don't expect to hear wood thrushes singing in the cool of the evening on the typical Burlington sidewalk.

You do expect to hear the intermittent roar of buses and cars, snatches of conversation, children's laughter, the chatter of a radio or melody from a stereo. What you shouldn't have to endure is the bass notes of an overly loud car stereo.

In the tight living that makes for a city, civility is all-important. You can't live cheek-by-jowl with your neighbors unless you come to some agreement on what makes for an orderly, safe place to live.

Burlington residents have been registering their opinions on what makes for order by calling in complaints to police. Residents have also registered their frustrations with the Burlington City Council.

The news that councilmen were getting complaints helped spur Burlington police to try a proactive approach to loud cars. Starting July 1, police will ticket cars audible from more than 25 feet away, even if there's no resident complaint.

Part of the job of a police force is to maintain civil order. Some social theorists think this is the critical first step in controlling overall crime rates and making neighborhoods safer. It's the 20-year-old ''broken window'' theory, the idea that broken windows left unrepaired signals to criminals no one in the community cares.

That's the logic behind community policing.

By enforcing nuisance laws like the noise ordinance, the message a community sends is this: We live here, we work here, and we all want to live peaceably.