Winter tire excessive noise

I have a 2006 Mazda 3 sport, with the 2.3l engine. For a guy who lives in Canada, I am ashamed to say that this is the first time I have put winter tires on a car (mostly due to the fact that this Mazda 3 is brutal in the snow with the standard 205/50R17 Goodyear's it came with).

I went to Canadian Tire, and they sold me some Goodyear Nordic tires (205/55R16's) on steel rims. They said the 16" tire is listed as an option for that car in their system, and it saved me some cash, so I agreed. However, the road noise is terrible- hit 60Km/h and higher, and you feel like you have the brake on and the road noise is really bad. So I had them check them- they rebalanced all wheels and rotated them, and said all should be fine- but I still am getting a lot of noise.

This is the first time I have driven with winter tires. Is it normal to have so much noise and sluggishness with them? I put the Nordics on my wife's Dodge minivan at the same time, and it doesn't have nearly as much noise on the road.

yeah winter tires deffinatly are noisier then what your stock would be... as long as your not feeling any vibrations your probably fine... as far as the sluggish feeling it could be just the different handling characteristics of the winter tires (which as bad as the good years were are deffinatly worse due to the seasonal tread requirements)

There's a simple solution for loud tires - turn up the radio.

I have been back to Canadian Tire twice since putting them on- was worried that the 16" rim might be too small for the big brakes on the front. They took them off, showed me the brakes and the clearance around them from the rim (which is about 1-1.5 inches), took a test drive with me. I was pretty impressed with the level of service (at no cost to me). Essentially, they said that the tread pattern is very aggressive on the Nordic's, and is directional, which means the noise will be a lot greater than the A/S tires and even some other winter tires. It will get better as they wear a bit, but I feel a lot better now knowing that they aren't damaging the car at all.

Turning up the radio now...