well we need more info on your problem to be able to give you a fairly good answer. is it a tapping sound,knocking sound. where does the sound comes from top or bottom of engine. just listen to it and try to determine where you hear that sound the most. trust me it may be nothing expensive.
As the previous user suggested we need more info. A source of noise can be the combustion itself. The phenomenon sometimes responsible for noise inside engine is called combustion instability. This phenomena is caused by coupling between the acoustics (caused by the injection system, fluid flow etc) and the combustion itself. When this two couple and the excess energy can't be dissipated the perturbations inside the combustion chamber grow and the entire combustion process becomes unstable. The engine becomes very noisy and you can see a lot of vibrations. On a side note, combustion instability is a phenomena very important in rocket engines. That's actually the reason why USA won the space race to the moon against Russia. Russia was not capable to solve the stability of combustion in large engines as US did.
How much oil is "missing"?
the engine the engine
Check the belts. The most common cause of squealing is a worn or loose belt on the front of the engine.
check if your battery is low than usual ..might be alternator problem
Engine running hotter then 220 degrees can cause valvetrain noise. Bad fuel can also cause valve noise / PINGING sound. Ignition timing to high / Advanced to far, can also cause engine noise.
A bad harmonic balancer can cause a knocking noise. The harmonic balancer doesn't actually produce the noise, but it can cause the noise in the engine.
cold engine
No
A bad compressor belt can cause a whistling noise while running the air conditioner. A bad engine can also cause this noise.
A tapping noise might come into the engine because of heat damage to the lifters of the motor. You might also hear a tapping sound if the engine has been damaged due to a blown head gasket.
Perhaps a bug on windshield.
Probably