I’ve lived in my apartment for 2 years and have had no issues with any complaints until a new downstairs neighbor moved in a month ago who claims they can here bass coming from my apartment. I’m not throwing any crazy parties or have it at a high volume. I have a speaker on a table that’s sitting on hardwood that I use to listen to music on throughout the day.
I was wondering if anyone knew how I could reduce the sound from it traveling through the floor? Would a rug underneath the table be helpful? What would you recommend?
Love people reading the title and not the body.
You need to decouple the speaker from the floor, it’s likely just vibrating through. Plenty of options out there, I used Auralex Mopads when I lived in an apartment and they helped with my neighbors.
Open communication with the neighbors is super helpful too, especially while you’re trying to solve the problem.
Yeah absolutely this. There is a way that everyone wins here. I will say, I lean more to the side of “it’s my place and I will play my music how I want” but there is a tactful way to approach it. Obviously avoiding quiet hours, and decoupling your speakers as much as possible is a logical step. But it’s impractical for them to expect silence too.
Vibrational energy through the cabinet is going to be a tiny fraction of the bass energy created by the moving cone as part of the operation of the speaker.
Cut two tennis balls in half and rest the speaker on there. Should mitigate it a little bit.
Perhaps try loosely folding a small towel until it is 4 layers thick and sit the speaker on that as an experiment? You could also try placing the speaker in different locations.
Rubber mat + lower frequencies below 80hz at night
Youll need these to seperate either the speakers from the table (My choice plus a good, thick rug under the table) or to seperate the table from the ground.
isoacoustic stands helped me a bit in this regards
Try moving the speakers, make sure they arent facing open windows and away from doors - all you can do is minimise the acoustic leakage from the room.
Bunch of good responses here already. I concur with dampening the speaker’s contact against your floor.
Also try those plugs you get to seal speakers ports. It looks like a foam / rubber disk with a stick attached. If you have ported speakers, it’s likely you’re getting some runaway bass in a very narrow frequency band which is the main culprit here. In a small-medium sized room you won’t lose a lot of bass by sealing your ports, in fact your response might improve as acoustically suspended cabinets perform better in smaller room sizes.
Source: I design and build speaker enclosures (but it’s strictly a hobby).
My neighbours listen to awesome music…whether they like it or not.
high pass filter below 40hz
Turn volume down at least to half. It’s very frustrating for neighbors to hear loud music through walls and floors which sounds like under water sounds and which interferes with people’s own TV and music sounds. Especially thumping music etc. If they complain, then they definitely have a point because they should NOT hear it in the first place. So you really interfere with their privacy and right to have a quiet life.
My neighbor came running upstairs and started pounding on my door. Can you crank that little more? I love Rush!
(Turning it down is Never an option!)
He would probably enjoy your music more if you had a larger Amp and bigger speakers so you could really crank it up. Muddled music is always annoying.
Lift the speakers off the floor - bass vibrates through the floor. Disconnect your woofer - bass carries. Turn off bass-boost or any equalizer boosting tge bass. Don’t put your speakers against the wall - again, bass carries.
You don’t need to “feel the bass” or boost it to enjoy a movie or music. Get some good over-the-ear headphones if you want to be an audiophile and enjoy “deep bass”
Note, even at really low volume, bass carries and can be heard - sounds like a loud heartbeat in the ear and - believe or not - can still be heard by your neighbor over their own TV or music.
Just turn bass off/turn down on equalizer - your neighbors will thank you for it.
Might have a nasty room-mode or room-mode(s) in play. Might want to measure your frequency-response and even out the modes. My room, for example, is on the second floor and the house is from the 50s so it’s made of paper.
Used to get comments from downstairs neighbours at the time, ended up finding a +15db room-mode at 45hz.
Realistically, there’s nothing you can do that will make a meaningful difference other than turning down the volume. Headphones are your friend. Foam pads, rugs, etc will make very little meaningful difference.
Not true, there’s plenty you can do to both the room AND the speaker to reshape the sound and solve issues like these. How else are soundproof recording rooms made if there’s nothing you can do to a room?
How else are soundproof recording rooms made if there’s nothing you can do to a room?
By making airtight rooms within rooms on top of floating platforms. That is not practical for OP.
99.99% of room treatment in this sub is about acoustic treatment,not soundproofing.