Hello,

I recently moved into a new apartment, and i like to play my music no too loud, but at a decent volume. But my neighbor has this crazy idea that I play my music too "loud", but hey, what do they know?

Anyway, i was looking into dampening the wall between her an i's apartment, but it's a pretty big wall. I remember when i was younger a friend of mine who played bass put cardborad egg cartons all along his wall, and that worked for him.

Does anyone know any other materials that might also work, cause otherwise i'm gonna need to eat a lot of eggs... and a key factor is CHEAPNESS! lol

THanks

Well if you actually want egg cartons, you could go to the nearest shop selling eggs, and ask them not to discard theirs.

How about buying earplugs for your neighbour?

Egg cartons won't help. This is a common misconception. By using absorbing materials like that, you will decrease the sound level in *your* room (and also will improve sound quality because you will have less reverberation). Of course, decreasing the dBs on your room will make your neighbor's room more quiet.

So the use of absorbing materials would be a neat solution IF the sound level would remain constant, like in a room with some noisy machinery working 24h for example. But the problem is that the sound level of your room will be determined by *your* perception. Meaning that you will probably feel that the music is too quiet and pump up the volume (starting the problem with your neighbor all over again).

It's common to see cases like that with disco's, pub's and the like. Neighbors protest, owner of the disco-nightclub-whatever pays good money to a dumb engineer/installer to fix the problem and then, the next night after the "repair" is done, the DJ just goes there and pumps up the volume. Voilà! Wasted money.

The fact is that the cheaper solution to your problem is a pair of good headphones.



Enjoy!

you say it's a big wall... is it thick?

it may help matters if something were attached to the wall (like shelves) to prevent resonances. in my house i have a sh*tty pair of old speakers attached to a wall, and they sound too loud from the other side even at low volumes. conversely, my good pair of speakers (in the same room) will not give this effect.

if something were fixed to the wall in an off-centre position it might just prevent the wall vibrating to the extent it does.

test it by leaning against it and feeling the vibrations, seeing if they are significantly affected by pressure on certain spots... this may be barking up the wrong tree of course...

of course, if you're listening to the music at reasonable hours, then they have absolutely nothing to complain about unless they are a special case (like they work nights and have to sleep during the day, or they hold Transcendental meditation classes in there and the noise breaks their concentration...).

of course, if you are unlucky enough to just have a neighbor who is fond of complaining, you have my permission to crank it to ear pulping levels

http://www.bash.org/?55341

Realistically, there is nothing you can do, except maybe move your stereo into a different room (or at least the speakers to another part of the room).

Oh, and manusate:

AGRHRGHRHG. I do hate Neighbours that protest. Its like
"Hey, why is this house £200, and the rest of the houses in this neighbourhood are £125,000? That sounds like a bargain, lets move in. Never mind this GREAT BIG BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY A NIGHTCLUB building right next to it"

Stupidity knows no bounds.

Not only are egg cartons no good for sound proofing but they are a big fire hazard.

First priniples of niose control is to prevent the noise from happening in the first place, not an option in this case. Second principle, remove the source of the niose, not an option in terms of location, but possibely in terms of time. Can you find a time to listen to your music when it doesn't bother your neighbour?

Well that's the free options..now to the more costly ones....

You need to consider how the sound is getting through to your neighbours apartment. Obviously through the wall, but also through the floor and other walls. the sound can travel through any common beams etc. that you share with your neighbour (these are called flanking paths), if you haven't already I would suggest isolating you speakers form the floor. this would help prevent the sound traveling through the floor beams ( and should improve the sound of your system).

Other flanking paths can occur if you have both have windows near each other. It would pay to keep these closed.

There are two main things to think about when you want to have a soundproof wall, mass (the heavier the better) and completeness (no holes, ideally it should be air tight). Check to see if there are any gaps for air to get through and fill them up. You could also try adding mass to the wall by attaching another piece of plasterboard to your side of the wall.

Check out 'The master handbook of acoustics' by F. alton everest.

Also, Noise is a very subjective thing, if your neighbour knows that you are taking him/her seriously and trying to find a solution they may not find the music/noise so annoying.

good luck

-Iain

Get some nice headphones!

head-fi.org is the site to go to for suggestions on what type