Whine or drone noise while driving

Please can someone help me with a problem I have with my golf? The car whines/drones as I drive. It sounds as if I'd got tractor tyres fitted. The noise is constant and just increases/decreases in pitch according to speed. It makes no difference if i'm in neutral or in gear apart from the fact I can hear it better when in neutral. I've also tested it going around corners and that seems to make no difference either.
Today I chocked the wheels and spun each one in turn to see if I could hear grinding bearings. They all seem ok to me, not that I'm a mechanic or anything. There was no grinding though. I also tested moving both front wheels forward and backwards. On the drivers side there seemed little or no play at all but on the passenger side there does seem to be quite a lot more play. I have no experience to know if this is acceptable or not though.
Another symptom is a judder at certain speeds and I know that it isn't balancing as I had two new tyres just a week ago and had them all balanced. At high speed the judder is quite bad (70+).
From my unexperienced perspective I think it might be the drive shaft. Could anyone else shed and light on this for me?
Thankyou.
Golf GT 170 2008 70K miles

Surely not the gearbox if it does it out of gear altogether??!

Do you mean the wheel hub nuts?

Cheers

I have a similar noise in my 2009 JSW, but it gets worse when I slow down almost like the discs are warped and rough. I even changed the discs front and rear I was so sure it was related to them, but no difference.
I have since come of the opinion that the inner CV joints might be making the noise.
The Raxle guy said that on the JSW TDI the inner joints were the weak link.
I have no idea why the noise is worse slow unless the joints tend to run in a different spot at higher speeds.
Any other ideas?

Or wheel bearing! My tires were getting worn and starting to groan/howl, so I put on a complete set of tires. Quieter but the noise was still there. Replaced the rear bears noise gone.

CV joints usually click or vibrate when near death.

Sounds like a wheel bearing. But usually this would change when hard cornering either left or right.

If you felt a good bit of play on passenger side wheel when jacked up, then wheel bearing is likely pooped.

gearbox noise

hi guys, am driving golf 5 tdi 2005 (280,000km). there is a serious noise coming from the gearbox as I advised from vw dealership that it was a clutch and a flywheel, they where both changed with a slave cylinder but there's a still a noise when idling and when on gear 1,2 and 3 then it disappears. any solution to the problem?

thanks
thobz