I think you have pretty much answered your own question. An attic dipole would have worked a lot better 20 or 30 years ago than today. We all fill our houses with small RF emitters, and the effect is cumulative. Of course your roof materials make a difference, obviously metal roofs or foil backed insulation does not help matters, but I think the noise levels from our houses are the worse culprit.
And why dont hams clean up their own home of RFI generators? One answer is that it can be a lot of work. Another answer is the ferrites needed can get expensive when starting from scratch. Actual work and spending money is not in some hams DNA. Some consumer products are so leaky they need to be wrapped in tin foil such as switching supply wall warts; be sure they dont overheat excessively, a little heat is OK going by the up to 10 years some of mine have been wrapped.
Buying all new linear versions is also $$$ especially when outputting a DC voltage. Used ones may need the electrolytic cap replaced.
RF sniff
all cables in and out of your ham radios and also at the main AC panel as one noise source can propagate all the way back to the panel and then all thru the house and drive you crazy trying to locate it.
One good suggestion made by many over the decades is to shut off the AC power and listen on a battery receiver, even a pocket size one for the AM BCB is better than nothing. I use an old Ray Jefferson 630 multi band direction finder that was $20 at a yard sale a few decades ago. It covers LF, BCB, CB, and VHF from 145-175 MHz, all on AM plus the regular FM band. There were several other models and suppliers as they were popular, even required Ive heard, on small pleasure boats.
An attic antenna can be configured several ways and be useable. Mine is 34' long along the 10' high joists in the attic, it then goes out a small hole at the attic end I drilled and insulated with a small piece or Teflon tubing. Then it slants down and tied off to a low branch on a crab apple tree then a ground rod and a couple random radials complete the package. Some RG-6 and a CM choke at the feed point and into the house. The bedroom rig is a TS-130S I picked up from a CBer who had it posted at the Salem NH HRO, turns out it was from his SK uncle and had the PS-30 PS, the DFC-230 remote VFO, and AT-130 ATU, the 500 Hz CW filter was already installed.
With the house almost noise free it hears very well and loads on all bands with the tuner. I never measured the vertical wire but since the roof peak is at 30' Im guesstimating another 50' of wire for 84' total +/- Just reading up now tonight that 84' appears to be a magic length according to this article:
://udel.edu/~mm/ham/randomWire/
Im not using a counterpoise but suspect the radials and ground rod does OK since the actual ground is a laugh here on this rocky granite hilltop as Ive mentioned several times.
Anyway KISS comes thru again.
Carl