You should always wait a bit… in case of trouble Apple will pull / fix the update, so let others give their feedback first.

The trick is, 90% of all your messages are probably with the same 1-3 persons. (spouse, friend, family or whatever.)

So just install the Signal app for these 1-3 persons on their phones, and you already have most of your communication going via Signal 👌🏼

and doesn’t actually block out any noises I’d want it to.

Exactly, I’m experiencing the same thing. Too much noise is coming through… my first instinct was to turn it off.

Hopefully they will finetune it in the next versions.