For me, the sound isn't the problem. It's all the movement in the corner of my vision that distracts me. No amount of noise cancelling head phones will help that.
An office on the other hand means that no coworkers can distract me, unless it's intentional
Absolutely this. I must be one of the few who cannot stand movement in my line-of-sight, but it breaks my concentration every time. I share an office with one other person and I resort to positioning my head behind my double monitors so that he's out of my field of vision. The same goes for sound actually. I just cannot filter out extraneous signals. I'm fine with "white noise" though, more than most even. I wonder if this is a recognized condition.
An office on the other hand means that no coworkers can distract me, unless it's intentional