I think they made special boxes you could put the printer in to attenuate the noise it made though generally closing the door of the room it was in was sufficient (this was whatever printer we had with an apple 2gs... probably some sort of imagewriter)

and the print quality was relatively poor especially compared to laser

mostly my siblings used it as they are older than me - I was able to use an inkjet (!) in future years and now rarely print anything other than return labels...