This article investigates how urban spaces and its noises are approached by radio reporters in the first decades of public radio production in Denmark. Focusing on the period before reel tape was incorporated in production by early 1950es, I ask how urban space and urban sounds are heard, contextualized and conceptualized in an era of transmission. Observing that urban sounds until late 1930es are rarely heard in Danish radio compared to German and English broadcasting, I argue that an urban and auditory aesthetics incorporating noise, heterogeneity and unpredictability did not really develop in Danish radio until early post-war years. Yet I trace early attempts at managing noisy urban conditions in a collection of 22 archived reportages from 1931-1949 and demonstrate how reporters experimented with available technological repositories and developed techniques in order to make sense in and through urban environments. Inspired by Michel Serres idea of the parasite I analyse such techniques as ways of distinguishing between noise and meaningful sounds, and ultimately identify three different types of urban sonic environments in the period: the extraordinary, the everyday and the socially foreign.