It just depends on the particular chicken. You might hear that certain breeds are quieter than others, but don't depend on that. I have a hatchery Silver Laced Wyandotte hen. SLWs are supposed to be fairly quiet, but she is definitely the loudest out of my 25 chickens other than the roosters.
About half of my chickens are bantams or half bantam, and I have found them to quieter mostly because they have more high-pitched "voices". Any chicken will be loud when startled. But really, as I said before, it just depends on the particular hen; some of my chickens I rarely hear a peep out of and some, like the SLW, "talk" loudly all day long.
If it is not allowed in your neighborhood, ask your neighbors if they mind the chickens. If they don't mind, you should be okay, but if they
have no soul dislike chickens, they'll find out anyway and report you or something.
I used to live in the city and I
think that I wasn't supposed to have roosters there, but one of my neighbors had a rooster so when I ended up with two roosters, I thought it would be okay. It turned out the elderly couple who lived next to us actually enjoyed hearing the crowing
Out of curiosity, what breeds did you get?
