Whenever I start my 02 in the garage with the door open, I hear a loud noise too, but that is because I am in the garage. I barely hear anything when I start it outside. In addition, I left it idling in Neutral for 10 minutes before while talking on the phone with a friend because it was so quite that I didn't realize it was on. I just stood next to it running my mouth.

Do you still have a warranty? Mine came with the extended 7/75k miles warranty.

By the way, your Accord is on the recall list for the tranmission problem. I think Honda has been recalling about 2 millions vehicles with defect problem ranging from 98-01 Accord, 00-02 TL, CL and a few other model. Not all vehicles in those years are screwed, just 2% of them have bad tranmission because somet poor material was used by facility in the US. Because of this, all of those vehicles will receive a free transmission checkup and replacement, if needed, in addition to a 7 years/ 100k miles warranty for the transmission, regardless of condition.

You can do a search on tranmission and find that I have been postings sites to news letter from US Today regarding this recall. Apparently, many dealerships are not honoring this recall.