I read an article years ago claiming that how loud your neighbours hear your stereo can be greatly reduced without ruining your own enjoyment. Choice of speaker stands were claimed to reduced how loud a stereo sounds from outside the room (or from next door). Also curtain choice was mentioned as important.

What are your opinions and expereinces of these things?

Step one, talk to your neighbors. Ask them to let you know if your music bothers
them, and when they say it does turn it down. Treat them like
you would like to be treated.
Try to play loud when they are not home
Do you live in a house or apartment? If you have downstairs neighbors then
speaker stands can help. If in a house, closing windows tight, and heavy curtains
will help. If you have a newer house with drywall, adding a second layer
of drywall can help. So can double pane windows. Sometimes just
moving the speakers can make a big difference.
Turn your stereo up, then walk your property line and see if the volume
would bother you (pretend you are playing music you do not like).
Some people just like to bitch, if your sound level is not louder
than say somebody driving down the street, or talking in the driveway,
or, if you want to make
trouble a lawnmower, then tell them to leave you alone and be
thankfull you do not turn it up more.
The best solution I've found is to crank when they are gone, and,
if they are home limit how long I have it turned up.
My issue now is not neighbors but wife and kids - the only solution for that
seems to be headphones...
Be considerate of your neighbors, but, don't let them rule your life.

In the UK, repeat offenders have their hi-fi removed...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/threecounties/news/20...eighbours.shtml



I'm glad I don't live next door to you!

I think if your neighbours can hear your music, it's too loud. It's as simple as that.

Being more reasonable, it's OK occasionally, but not regularly.


However, blasting it when you know they're out (or if you know they're deaf ) is fine.


If it's a problem, I'd suggest spending money on good headphones instead. You can enjoy a better sound, guilt free! It's a pity you can't -feel- the bass this way though - and headphones+sub (which can sound great) rather defeats the object of the exercise!


Keeping speakers (especially subs) away from party walls (i.e. where your house/flat/apartment joins the next one) is a good idea. Cushioning speakers/stands works quite well. A dedicated listening room with a total room-within-a-room construction and careful insulation is the best. It also stays cool in summer and warm in winter!

Whatever - don't deafen yourself or damage your hearing.

Cheers,
David.

I guess as a newcomer, I need to learn how to properly quote previous
posts. But here goes anyway.

> I'm glad I don't live next door to you!

Why? If you object to my music whether by phone or in person,
I'd turn it down right away - no questions asked.

I can hear my neighbors kid cry and moan, perfectly normal,
should their kid be taken away from them? Hell no! Should
the yahoo down the street who likes to drive around with
an ineffectual muffler be forced to install something better - maybe.
If my stereo breaks laws, then take it away from me after
reasonable warning, but don't expect me to be happy. Fortunately
I know it's not likely to get to this stage becuase my neighbors
will talk to me before they complain to the officials.

Headphones are a good solution, but you loose that viseral
connection to the music. Sometimes I have to hear and feel
my music. I take care to be considerate of people in and out
of my home.

I'm guessing if we were neighbors everything would be fine.
I'd crank my tunes when it didn't bother you. You'd crank
your tunes when it didn't bother me. We'd talk, and if there
was a problem we'd work it out.

The question was about how to reduce the impact on your neighbors.
Do you have anything to add on that?

regards,
another David

I'm not going to post here again until I learn how to quote posts, and, edit
what I've posted (sometimes I hit post without carefully looking at what I
wrote - after all this is a hobby not a job). I'm familiar with most forums, but this seems to be
different than most I have used in the past. Anyway...

I see that the other David did give usefull advice about how to stop music (noise?)
transmisions. This is what we need to focus on. Being a good neighbor, or not,
is up to you and your neighbors.

Curtains = very ineffective for anything other than very high frequencies, unless your curtains are very thick velvet (as an example)

Stands = these can (if properly designed for vibration damping, such as sand filled stands with composite outer shell) reduce the vibration from your loudspeakers to your floor. They will not reduce air borne vibration (i.e. what we call sound) at all.

Other things you might consider:

Very thick carpets (the thicker the better). Please do note that as a rule of thumb in acoustic engineering sound absorption material needs to have a minimum thickness of c. 1/4th the length of the wavelength (of the frequency) that you want to damp.

An example: suppose you wanted to reduce sounds near 3 kHz, which is close to the most sensitive region of human hearing. This frequency sound has a wavelength of c. 11.5 centimeters (in air). This means you'd need to have a carpet with a thickness of c. 3 cm to start to have any useful effect in damping. Materials for damping also play into this, so not all materials are equal. Really solid, rigid materials (say metals) don't damp a lot, they mostly work as barriers by reflecting sound back. Moro porous materials will damp more (closed foam polyurethane for example).

You can also build resonators that are wall sized. This will also help you damp some sounds and in addition you can tune your bass frequencies with resonators, if you have problematic room modes (i.e. standing waves, which exist in all rooms).

All in all I agree that the best cure is nevertheless the volume knob.

Listen less loud and if possible, consider also the choice of using headphones late at night. Headphone listening rarely bothers neighbours

Regarding not letting your neighbors hear any of your music, that's simply not possible in an apartment in the US. I live in a fairly nice apartment community, but the walls are still thin enough that I can hear televisions at quite normal volumes in other apartments in my building. (I've been in neighboring apartments with my TV left on even what I'd consider a low volume, and I could still hear it somewhat in the adjoining apartment.)

The way my apartment building is constructed, I share only one wall (in my master bedroom) with a neighbor, but my ceiling is also shared (I'm on the first floor of a three-story building). My speakers are nowhere near a shared wall, so my biggest concern is my upstairs neighbor. His stomping around (probably normal walking, it just sounds like stomping through my ceiling) is much more annoying than either of our music-playing habits.

Occasionally, he'll turn up his stereo to the point I can clearly recognize what's playing, but it's still not at a level I'd complain about. I do the same occasionally. As long as it's during reasonable hours (after 8am and before 10pm), then some sounds up to a limit are quite acceptable. It's simply the nature of apartment living. You're going to hear your neighbors. The only solution to avoid this entirely is to not live with shared walls or ceilings. Or perhaps everyone using headphones every time they're watching TV or listening to music, but this isn't feasible either.

My home receiver has adjustable dynamic range compression, so at night I turn it to max, which makes a big difference in the audio at lower volumes. It also has 10 settings between "Off" and "Max", so I can tweak it as desired to get the balance between sound quality and avoiding "neighborly disturbance". With compression turned up and the volume just below what I consider "normal listening volume", I can hear voices just fine when watching DVDs (the widest dynamic range sources I have). Otherwise I'd have to turn the volume up to hear voices adequately. This is desirable during the day, to get the full intended dynamic range of the movie, but may cause a disturbance for neighbors when I watch movies late at night (not uncommon for me on weekends).

So setting a goal of letting your neighbors hear nothing from your apartment when you're playing music isn't feasible, here at least. But everyone setting a reasonable audible threshold and notifying the offending neighbor when it's surpassed is "normal operating procedure" at all apartments I've lived in.

try this:
http://www.soundproofing.org/infopages/faqs.htm

OK - I guess it depends on the building!

At university, in a 1905 accomodation hall, it was very different to make your stereo audible in the next room. And we tried

Out in normal housing, where one room had often been cheaply partitioned into two (to allow twice the number of students in an old house) you could hear all kinds of things you didn't want to from next door!

Cheers,
David.

To quote somebody simply click on the "quote" button on the top, right hand side of their post inside of the reply button at the bottom of the page. There should be a text box below the one which you enter your post into. This lower one is the quote which can be edited by deleting bits you don't what.

Thanks for the replies.

Back in college there were 25 narrow flats in a row with rather thick walls. But they had a long pipe connecting the radiator in every room. A lot of sound was transmitted through the radiators/pipe. Some of us put a lot of foam rubber between wall and radiator - helped a lot.

I live in a 75 year old residence with solid, thick doors and triple brick walls. You really have to crank it to make it audible next door. With the door and windows closed, if you make it loud enough to make out the song in the next room, it's unbearable in the room with the speakers.

So - blame it on the person who built your house.

This is a topic which is interesting... and one since an early age has made me swear: "I WILL make enough money in my life to be able to afford a detached house at some point."