Noise pollution/reducing volume for neighbours

[skevin]

Hello all,

You lot seem to be pretty on the ball so I have come to you all for some help...

My neighbours in the flat below hate me. Well, they hate me because I DJ. I need to find a way to reduce the noise going downstairs without turning the volume down so low that I cant hear anything. Although I feel the volume I play at isn't THAT loud the grumpy old woman downstairs does not agree.

Here is a picture of my setup (dont laugh, im not a professional and dont intend to be).



My only thought is that the bass is going down through the desk, then the floor and then spurting out of the neighbours ceiling. Would putting he speakers on the wall help ? I have no idea.

Help me production forum, you're my only hope!

[legend4ry]

some speaker stands would help yeah - Maybe fit a blanket or something under the shelfing you have or something.

Or just turn down the bass?

[skevin]

some speaker stands would help yeah - Maybe fit a blanket or something under the shelfing you have or something.

Or just turn down the bass?

The bass is already as low as I can put it without it disappearing completely (and besides, need bass for dubstep).

I've seen soundproof sheeting you can buy and I was thinking of putting it underneath the shelving, I suppose I just need confirmation that this is causing the problem.

Cheers dude.

[legend4ry]

some speaker stands would help yeah - Maybe fit a blanket or something under the shelfing you have or something.

Or just turn down the bass?

The bass is already as low as I can put it without it disappearing completely (and besides, need bass for dubstep).

I've seen soundproof sheeting you can buy and I was thinking of putting it underneath the shelving, I suppose I just need confirmation that this is causing the problem.

Cheers dude.

Well, I would raise the speakers for starters, I think that attaching them to the wall will just give you more problems (though i'd like to hear someone elses opinion) so speaker stands would be ideal (plus will give a better stereo field if placed right. Maybe get some damping sheets if there is still a problem after that, I notice you don't have a sub so it shouldn't be extreme hard to treat - though sound does have amazing capibilties to travel hehe.

Or maybe you could sort out an agreement with this lady, buy her a bottle of wine and be like "hey, if you give me 2 hours a day at reasonable hours playing music, I won't have it up loud any other time - unless I tell you first" - might be a little to late but people generally are ok after you do the initial peace offering haha.

[Depone]

You could get some foam pads for your speakers, it will help absorb some of the vibration traveling thru your desk. Not only will it sound tighter, it will not travel so far below. You could try moving the setup to like a room you know is like above their bathroom or something?

[skevin]

You could get some foam pads for your speakers, it will help absorb some of the vibration traveling thru your desk. Not only will it sound tighter, it will not travel so far below. You could try moving the setup to like a room you know is like above their bathroom or something?

The flats are laid out in the same way which is a bit annoying. I'm looking at moving this year to a ground floor flat with another bedroom so this sort of problem is reduced.

I think making an agreement with the woman is out of the question, she's never complained until recently where she went fucking mental and reeled off loads of times the music has been loud (again, I personally feel its not THAT loud) but I don't really know what she can hear.

Think I might have to go with getting something to go under the speakers and underneath the shelving just to help minimise it and see if that helps.

Cheers for the advise guys, if anyone else has any other ideas then holla!

[futures_untold]

I can empathise with both sides of this arguement. My friends and I have been djing for years, and have had regular run ins with neighbours too. The flipside came when I moved into a flat in which my upstairs neighbour had shindigs each weekend playing heavy metal (not my favourite music ever). Having been with him in the room, I know it wasn't actually playing that loudly, but sound travels amazingly through solids.

Your neighbours can most likely hear the bass, even if it has been turned down.

Solutions:

Buy some speaker spikes for starters. These stop as much energy travelling through to the floor.

You could go all out and build a raised floor too. In the cavities between the raising blocks, you could put old blankets or pillow foam from an offcuts & scraps store. Raising the floor need not be a permenant fixture, so don't worry about your landlord too much.

Buy as many absorbing materials as possible and place around your room. Old matresses are easy to source locally for free and can be covered with sheets to look less skaggy.

The aim of the game here is to reduce the vibrations/energy transfer into the actual structure of the property. The more objects you have available in your room to dissipate that energy the better. By raising the floor, les energy will transfer directly into the floor and surrounding walls.

At the end of the day, no one likes to be disturbed by loud noise. Whether it is traffic outside, your housemates TV or a neighbour DJing, be respectful and ask them how they wish to deal with the matter.

[Sharmaji]

2 things-- you need to absorb as much of the sound as you can inside your space, especially via bass traps; and you need to de-couple your speakers from anything that can transmit energy to the floor below.

if you have the budget, build some bass traps--they'll contain the sound and cut down on the amount that bounces around and gets sent through the building's structure. look them up on youtube, there's a great tutorial.

to decouple, yes, get your speakers on stands. those little monitor pads won't do fuckall for you in this situation. the best thing you could do is set the stands on a 4" block of 703 fiberglass, or even better-- build a wooden box and put the rockwool inside it (a la one of ethan weiner's bass traps).

[skevin]

Thanks for the advice guys.

I cant really do much with my setup due to lack of space so the speakers can't really be put on stands (unless the stands sit on top of the shelves).

I could build something to put on top of the shelves (some sort of box filled with rockwool like Sharmaji stated) and then put everything on top of that (and also put the speakers on those spikes). Given that the only place I can put the speakers is on top of the shelves does this seem like the best option ?

[futures_untold]

By all means build bass traps and buy spikes etc. Anything you do to lessen the energy transfer into the structure of the property will be good. Don't worry to much about it, just ensure it feel solid for those speakers to balance on.

Is it possible to move the drawers elsewhere so your decks can be more central in the room? My guess is that taking the right speaker out of the corner will also improve the sound you hear.

[macc]

Sorry man - despite the everything everyone has said there's really very very little you can do.

If they are downstairs you have precisely zero chance of doing anything effective/meaningful, unless you can rip the floor up and rebuild it out of solid concrete/lead/titanium. You need MASS to isolate/soundproof, not acoustic treatment. Don't get me wrong, some absorption will help a bit, but that's a tiny little bit of a bit. Problem being that at the wavelengths/freqs causing the trouble (bass), you'd need a preposterous amount of treatment to make any significant difference at all, to the point where you might not even fit in the room. It will just go right through it. Even if it is attenuated, it won't be enough to stop your neighbours getting pissed off.

Speaker stand spikes will not help and serve only to couple the stand to the floor, NOT to isolate it. You'll put MORE energy into the floor, not less. To copy a post from someone else, on Gearslutz;

'Rest a 75lb speaker on your palm without a spike, then place the same speaker on your palm with the spike.

Which feels more "coupled?"

Hint: Stigmata hand wins.'

Always makes me laugh, that post. The point of speaker stand spikes is to couple the stand to the floor, in order to lower the resonant frequency of the system/transmit energy away into the floor which is made out of something of heavy mass. Except yours isn't. You'd do better to get something to isolate (sorbothane is best) but even then you're only dealing with the tiny %ge of energy being transmitted directly by conduction through the stand, and nothing about the bass flying around - and out of - the room.

My suggestion would be to speak directly to them, in a friendly way, find out what times are cool for them and stick to them. Give them your phone number so they call you before the police, and get some headphones (watch your ears).

Once again, sorry man, but you're pissing in the wind unless you have means of getting a brand new and extremely heavy/solid floor.

[humancond1tion]

Literally, cut out your bass frequencies and you will get no more complaints... the wavelengths of sub frequencies are a couple of metres long depending on the note, so they will travel through walls, floors, ceilings.. anything, compared to those of mid range which are much shorter in length and will generally stay within the boundaries of the room.

Bass traps will help to absorb some of the sub frequencies, but really you should just cut them out using your amplifier/mixer/computer as they're not really needed for monitoring your mix.

However, if you really can't fathom cutting out the bass, then maybe have a talk with your neighbours and have agreed hours of the day when you can blast out your speakers (e.g. 4-7pm), this is what I did in my old flat... sure its annoying, but it will save you hassle of noise complaints and getting evicted, etc.

[skellum]

I work at night a lot and can't be loud... just got the nicest headphones I could afford so I use them at night then check the mix etc with my monitors the next day. and it can be useful to reference with different speakers anyway

[jaydot]

I'm lacking at a decent set of headphones for the time being so when I'm making beats at night-time I have to use these shitty ones or have my speakers on low with hardly no sub.

It's easily remedied but for the time being I have to make do.I'd obviously like to make the beats on headphones (my brother has a pair of "Turtle Beach" dunno if they're any good but I "borrow" them when I can just not at night.

[the get down]

yah some nice foam under the speakers, but also put a thick/dense blanket or somthing under that desk which should help decouple the bass from the building even more. But soundproofing is a lot harder and more expensive than you'd think.