Terrible? It's amazing. Often warm and welcoming, a murmur of conversation and you're not having to raise your voice to speak to your friends or family. You don't go to the quiet ones for a raging night out, but for catchups with friends or a dinner with family. Really it's a delight.

That's a particular type of pub and one that is often hard to find in a town center.

Many pubs don't play music or if they do it's very quiet and I don't notice. They are normally loud enough with the sound of conversation

That's probably true of pubs, but if you want to go somewhere with a good cocktail or whisky selection, for example, it's very hard to find somewhere with low volume music.

It depends where you are. In Scotland it's hard to find a pub without a good whisky selection and in any UK city a pub will be able to make a wide range of cocktails. Having said that, some play loud music and some don't.

A pub may have the ingredients to make a wide range of cocktails, but most of them won't have staff who actually know how to do so well. If you're lucky someone will have had some training in making cocktails and be able to make something passable. If you're unlucky they'll grab the bottle of premix from under the bar.

Cocktail bars are a distinct thing, and have staff who actually know what they're doing, unfortunately they usually have exactly the same problems described in this article of being uncomfortably loud.

Well that's not really a focus of British culture traditionally. The main people who want to drink cocktails are people going out clubbing. The main traditional drinking places (pubs) serve mainly beer, cider, and wine. The situation is similar in Germany. That said, in the UK with the "plastic pubs" it is now way more common to be able to get (bad) cocktails anywhere.

Though one experience I will never forget going into a fancy bar that opened in my mum's small town and asking for a martini and the bartender looking confused at me and serving me a shot of pure unchilled vermouth in a near-empty tall glass...

We now have a couple of vermouth bars in Copenhagen, and I even noticed one of them had a "pop up bar" at the metal festival.

The bar you visited was just ahead of its time.

We have both kinds, for different occasions and audiences. Many pubs have no music, or quiet background, and are decent places for conversation. Most bars have pretty loud music as part of the atmosphere. There's a relatively fuzzy line at the loud and late opening end between bars and clubs, for which music and dancing is the whole point.

"in the UK" is a little broad.

Bars in the city of of London, in the hours after work, are far from quiet.

A suburban or village pub may be different. You get to know which one in your local area suits your needs. e.g. I could point you to a local pub with craft beer and a quiet cosy corner, and suggest to avoid the one with the loud sports TV always on.

In the actual City area, with the tall buildings, the quiet kind will be nearly impossible to find at 6pm on a Friday.

That's absolutely not the case for the most part, depending on the bar and the time. Go out to a city centre on an evening, especially Friday or Saturday. Most bars and pubs will be busy, noisy, and definitely playing music.

There are absolutely quieter pubs available, but you need to know where to go.

Avoid karaoke night (really, unless you're certain age and want to sing), and generally sport pubs.

Good traditiona oubsl, even the family friendly, are usually quiet.