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Where are you that you can't live in an apartment? If you're living in such a small town that there are no apartment complexes or condos, count yourself blessed.
I'm talking about an urban location at an affordable price where I don't need to own a car.
FYI: A subwoofer can be tamed by any number of methods. Acoustic insulation is one, especially if an air gap is included.
Bass frequencies appear to travel better through solid objects than the air. I would get annoyed by passing automobiles blasting their subwoofers (WHOOM WHOOM) when I worked in my basement. But when I went outside, to complain, the volume had dropped and was less aggravating. Or one might say that higher frequencies are better attenuated by heavy, solid objects.
An acoustic barrier wall may be thick, which increases cost, and thus be omitted from budget conscious builders, but they're not impossible to build. A combination of hard surface (to reflect), connected to a soft material like insulation, air gap (or other decoupling), more soft insulation material, hard surface, should block sound transmission in both directions. And if you then need to reduce reflections inside your room / house, add soft furnishings and wall hangings. A standard fiberglass filled stud wall is a good acoustic barrier - if you decouple the drywall (don't directly attach it to the wood / metal studs). Thus when the WHOOM wave hits the wall, it won't be transmitted through it. A DECOUPLED drop ceiling also works great to tame floor noise from above.
Anecdote. I was helping a friend run a cable through his insulated attic, and I can recall that I could barely hear him yelling from the open attic hatchway, due to the wide expanse of pink fiberglas. Very eerie.
That's all fine and dandy but it requires either the obnoxious neighbor recognize that their noise causes problems (which they will reliably deny - I have been told many times that I could not hear what I was telling them I could hear) - and/or the original building designers and construction firms required to spend extra money on construction for something that will not provide ROI in selling price or rent.
So why do you think anyone is going to do any of these noise mitigation actions?
That's all fine and dandy but it requires either the obnoxious neighbor recognize that their noise causes problems (which they will reliably deny - I have been told many times that I could not hear what I was telling them I could hear) - and/or the original building designers and construction firms required to spend extra money on construction for something that will not provide ROI in selling price or rent.
So why do you think anyone is going to do any of these noise mitigation actions?
One possible solution is for the irritated person to offer to buy acoustic isolation pads for the subwoofer in question to decouple it from the floor... which would also improve the frequency response (win-win).
If it's a wall, and the subwoofer is placed against it, moving it away should help.
FWIW - placing a subwoofer in a corner, may add 3 dB or more... in the room. So placing it in the far corner, away from a common wall, would make it sound louder, but not transmit as much energy through the wall / floor. Of course, subwoofer placement away from the main speakers will add distortion due to time delays.
One possible solution is for the irritated person to offer to buy acoustic isolation pads for the subwoofer in question to decouple it from the floor... which would also improve the frequency response (win-win).
If it's a wall, and the subwoofer is placed against it, moving it away should help.
FWIW - placing a subwoofer in a corner, may add 3 dB or more... in the room. So placing it in the far corner, away from a common wall, would make it sound louder, but not transmit as much energy through the wall / floor. Of course, subwoofer placement away from the main speakers will add distortion due to time delays.
A better solution is to avoid attached housing altogether - especially condominiums.
One possible solution is for the irritated person to offer to buy acoustic isolation pads for the subwoofer in question to decouple it from the floor... which would also improve the frequency response (win-win).
If it's a wall, and the subwoofer is placed against it, moving it away should help.
FWIW - placing a subwoofer in a corner, may add 3 dB or more... in the room. So placing it in the far corner, away from a common wall, would make it sound louder, but not transmit as much energy through the wall / floor. Of course, subwoofer placement away from the main speakers will add distortion due to time delays.
You've never been the one kept up all night by arseholes playing their thumping noise constantly, have you? That behavior is almost always part of a whole suite of oppositional-defiant behaviors, which will include both vehement denials that you can even hear anything, vehement accusations that anyone who complains is "just a whining SOB" and a threat to stuff your "acoustic isolation pads" where the sun don't shine.
It's all well and good to claim that living packed into sardine tins in giant apartment blocks would be just like heaven, if people would just behave, but the last 20,000 years of human history have made it pretty abundantly clear that people will not "just behave".
What they will do, is play loud thumping noise at all hours of the day and night, allow their children to have footraces around and around the apartment including leaps off the couch and subsequent loud thumping landings, leave garbage out so their unit (and, soon, yours) will be infested with cockroaches and rats, invite their no-count kleptomaniac cousin over to stay so he can figure out which apartments to burgle, have screaming fights at 3 am that result in police calls once a month, stop up their toilets so the overflow runs into your apartment and drips onto your bed from the ceiling, and on and on and on.
This kind of stuff is why most people, once they can put together the finances to do so, get the hell out of communal living and stop sharing walls.
I'll be all for urban walkable density as soon as y'all can re-engineer teh human species.
You've never been the one kept up all night by arseholes playing their thumping noise constantly, have you? That behavior is almost always part of a whole suite of oppositional-defiant behaviors, which will include both vehement denials that you can even hear anything, vehement accusations that anyone who complains is "just a whining SOB" and a threat to stuff your "acoustic isolation pads" where the sun don't shine.
It's all well and good to claim that living packed into sardine tins in giant apartment blocks would be just like heaven, if people would just behave, but the last 20,000 years of human history have made it pretty abundantly clear that people will not "just behave".
What they will do, is play loud thumping noise at all hours of the day and night, allow their children to have footraces around and around the apartment including leaps off the couch and subsequent loud thumping landings, leave garbage out so their unit (and, soon, yours) will be infested with cockroaches and rats, invite their no-count kleptomaniac cousin over to stay so he can figure out which apartments to burgle, have screaming fights at 3 am that result in police calls once a month, stop up their toilets so the overflow runs into your apartment and drips onto your bed from the ceiling, and on and on and on.
This kind of stuff is why most people, once they can put together the finances to do so, get the hell out of communal living and stop sharing walls.
I'll be all for urban walkable density as soon as y'all can re-engineer teh human species.
Most of us understand that there are more options than just "sardine cans" versus single family homes. There is a whole range of different options.
Maybe it was your own poor choices that allowed you to live in a place with noisy neighbors among cockroaches, rats, and garbage. I lived in a crappy apartment - once - I lived and learned and then moved to a different, decent apartment complex. It wasn't that hard, I just had to pay a little higher rent, and pick a better location. I had a responsible landlord, and responsible neighbors. I only moved away from the next apartment when my job location changed.
And let's not pretend that living in a single family home is always that great either - maintenance/repair can be expensive, taxes increase, and you can be stuck with bad neighbors for decades. I have plenty of stories of bad neighbors that I could share.
Last edited by RocketSci; 05-19-2020 at 03:34 PM..
Yeah, sure, it's my poor choices. It couldn't be the inherent nature of sharing walls with neighbors in a single building. Oh no, it's always the fault of the person who has the complaint.
This is the standard argument method of the "new urbanists" who want to force us into apartments as soon as possible, to satisfy their fantasies of multi-family multi-generation multi-cultural housing as represented in Norman Rockwell paintings of a time and place that never existed - as soon as you start pointing out the inherent negative facts of apartment living, they change the field of engagement and tell you it's all your fault because you didn't pay enough, or didn't select right, or whatever.
I will just point out one more thing - most nicer apartments require a one year lease. So in your scenario, if I get the upstairs neighbor from hell, I've got to endure a year, then pay moving costs, then try another year another place, then pay another set of moving costs, etc., etc., etc., till I find that magical unicorn apartment built to mitigate noise (rather than built to the lowest possible cost) adn where all the neighbors are quiet and considerate. Well, maybe that works OK for you, maybe you're 23 years old and everything you own could fit in the back of your car. I'm in my late fifities and it takes two men a day and a big truck and at least a couple thousand dollars just to move me across town. Plus multiple days and considerable labor to pack everything up before moving, plus multiple days and considerable labor to unpack everything and put it in place after moving. Don't forget all the things like window treatments, rugs, etc., that won't work in the new place so you've got to re-buy them; don't forget things like you've got to re-line all the drawers and shelves; don't forget that before you leave one apartment you've got to do a hard deep clean and fix stuff so you can get your deposity back. So in your scenario I'm doing all that every year till I do find that "great" (also means reallly expensive) apartment.
No thanks, I'm going to buy an actual house, that doesn't share walls or property with any other house. I'll take the chance of bad neighbors in a SFH neighborhood over the almost 100% certainty of constant noise and disturbance in an apartment.
Lol of all the crackpot conspiracy theories the “everyone is going to be forced out of single family and into apartments” remains one of the funniest.
Well, obviously I don't mean "by government decree". I mean, that if SFH zoning were to be abolished, the cheaper and more profitable type of housing, multi-unit - cheaper to build and more profitable because more units per acre- will graduallly take over from SFH in a lot of areas. That's what I mean.
The "New Urbanists" - while never saying they want to use government decrees - DO want to change laws to make it easier and more profitable to build apartments, duplexes, quads, etc., and to make it more difficult and less profitable to build SFH.
So while no direct government action is needed, if you move to a new location and the only kind of housing readily available in your price range is apartments, that's where you live. (Of course, many millions are already in that position.) Changes in zoning and tax laws can be an effective way to make that happen.
What I am saying is that the proposed ideal situation envisioned by these advocates, of cheerful happy multi-generational familes all sitting out on the stoops and balconies of their apartments while the children happily play stickball in the street and Hubby stops by the neighborhood pub for a cold one on his way walking home from the subway station, then stops in at the little bodega on the street run by the cheerful multi-culti mom and pop, to pick up a dozen eggs - all of that is a FANTASY and the reality of that life for most people is now and will be more like what I described above:
What they will do, is play loud thumping noise at all hours of the day and night, allow their children to have footraces around and around the apartment including leaps off the couch and subsequent loud thumping landings, leave garbage out so their unit (and, soon, yours) will be infested with cockroaches and rats, invite their no-count kleptomaniac cousin over to stay so he can figure out which apartments to burgle, have screaming fights at 3 am that result in police calls once a month, stop up their toilets so the overflow runs into your apartment and drips onto your bed from the ceiling, and on and on and on.
So don't be fooled into voting for measures or representatives who will try to sell you this bill of goods, based on a fantasy, a fantasy that will bear little or no relationship to the reality experienced by apartment dwellers.
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Subwoofin' sammy
