Well, I still might give it a shot, I have lots of spare wheelsets, so I'll just pick a car that's easy to slip a new one into if I don't like it.
FWIW, the Vision Line Cars had a pretty decent sounding flat wheel sound, and you could trigger it only when you wanted to from the remote. Why they do these annoying "always on" things when they've been able to do command stuff for 10+ years escapes me.