Is it acceptable to run a subwoofer/subwoofers in an apartment building?

[Vacceo]

Classical (almost) only here
(but my nephew has other opinion )

The hammers and anvils in Wagner´s Rheingold must sound insane.

 

[Sokel]

The hammers and anvils in Wagner´s Rheingold must sound insane.

As you said it: Insane.
Specially when it was still empty (close to 90 m²) and the RT was close to second,you could not only hear the hammers,you could feel them too,it was painful .
Eventually Wotan and the gods came to place with treatment

 

[bluefuzz]

Subwoofers in apartments, operating a miter saw at 11:00 p.m., mowing your lawn or starting your Harley ass-early, drunk kids shouting late at night, little shitbag kids on their unmuffled moped things, all forms of noise pollution make me go Costanza.

Yes. I love music but I hate other people's music regardless of genre. Whether you are in an apartment, a detached house or a tent in the middle of nowhere, if I can hear your music at all, ever, at any frequency, at any volume then you deserve the cruellest and most unnatural punishments imaginable. No exceptions!

 

[TSB]

No, only an uncivilized person would play music that can be heard by their neighbors. One of the best features of living in Austria, is that this seems to be a general principle for people here, even trash containers often have signs warning not to use them after certain time.


That being said, I live in a super isolated apartment and can turn the music up quite a lot (tested when I moved in as first tenant).

 

[paulrbarnard]

It depends on how loud you listen. I have a Genelec 7360 in my office on the third floor of my house. Even with wooden floors my music is inaudible on the next floor down. I just checked and I listen at less than -50dB while I’m working.

I once lived in a terraced house and the adjoining house finished up being occupied by a group of early 20s lads. Those were the worst days in my entire life. Loud music EVERY night for months on end, multiple visits by police, council noise monitoring and me knocking on the door at 2 or 3 in the morning begging for the music to be turned down. It is the closest I have ever come in my life to inflicting injury on another person. In the end we simply moved and I have never lived in a house with adjoining walls since.

 

[odarg64]

When I was apartment bound I used headphones.

Subwoofers in apartments, operating a miter saw at 11:00 p.m., mowing your lawn or starting your Harley ass-early, drunk kids shouting late at night, little shitbag kids on their unmuffled moped things, all forms of noise pollution make me go Costanza.

(insert thumbs-up smiley here)

 

[JeffS7444]

I tolerate a certain amount of stupidity from the neighbors (late night power tools, hammering things into the walls) and they seem to do the same for me. I got a small Fostex subwoofer, but I also make use of my AVR's headphone jack as needed.

Years ago while visiting Japan, I wandered into a demo of a noise-canceling surround system in which sound levels dropped off dramatically when you moved outside of the sweet spot. Thought it was pretty cool, and don't think it was particularly expensive - I recall skinny silver plastic tower speakers of the sort that you might get as part of a Home Theater In A Box package. Fidelity was about what you'd expect from a small, inexpensive setup, but it was impressive how well it contained the sound.

 

[Phorize]

I'm cool with it provided that you are cool with me using my angle grinder outside your front door when the mood takes me

 

[teched58]

This is very simple: DON'T PUT THE SUBWOOFER ON THE FLOOR. Also, just as one does for systems without a subwoofer, if you don't want to piss off your neighbors, don't turn the volume up to 10.

A little bleed-through is expected and accepted in most apartment buildings. One lives with this mild level of noise by ignoring it, or more precisely pretending not to notice it. It's the same thing apartment dwellers do regarding neighbors' fights and the 5-minute-long repeated bursts of orgasmic delight which often waft through the walls at nighttime due to the normal activities in which human beings engage.

If these walls could talk, they would have to, er, uh, walls can't talk.

 

[Vacceo]

As you said it: Insane.
Specially when it was still empty (close to 90 m²) and the RT was close to second,you could not only hear the hammers,you could feel them too,it was painful .
Eventually Wotan and the gods came to place with treatment

Booooh!!! You could have arranged private raves and get the money back for accoustic treatments pretty fast!

 

[tomtoo]

The definitive answer has a judge. Any judges here?

 

[rdenney]

I said as others have said: It depends on the apartment building. The typical suburban stick-built apartments may have a firewall between units and may not. But even those are often just 5/8" instead of 1/2" drywall. Transmitting a regular thump into the neighbor's apartment is unacceptable, but not all buildings will do that.

And it depends on the neighbors in question, and the agreements that can be worked out with them.

But we have to acknowledge that some hobbies are noisy and incompatible with living spaces that don't isolate sounds well from neighbors. The flip side of that acknowledgement is that we can't expect our neighbors to sustain absolute silence. Some neighbors demand the unreasonable.

I am a tuba player. I have received noise complaints from neighbors in single-family-home suburbs. When I first moved to Virginia, I bought a house that sits on a 1/3rd-acre lot, and is 75 feet from the nearest house in any direction. The neighbor across the street--who moved in after I did--had a baby and the baby's room was along the front wall of the house. They kept the windows to the baby's room open at night when temperatures were sufficiently moderate. I played the tuba at 9:30 PM and got a complaint, so I moved downstairs to the basement. Then, a few weeks later, I got a complaint from the same neighbor at 8:30 PM. I told him to get used to it--I'd done everything that was reasonable but I simply was not going to give up on my committed avocation because they wished their baby to live in a silent outdoors. I suggested they look for a rural location. The husband who brought the complaint was already embarrassed because he knew the complaint was unreasonable and didn't pursue it. I gave him a hard enough answer to report to his wife that there was nothing more to be done in that direction, and he was happy with that. She was not. But the HOA told her that if it was reasonable for school-age beginners to obey instructors from their teachers to practice their instruments at reasonable hours, it was also reasonable for a slightly more competent amateur adult to do the same.

(The following year, I found a rural location and moved. Now, I can practice at 3AM and have only one other person to protect. She can sleep through anything. But I don't play the stereo loud when she's home. My current home is on a 6-acre lot, hundreds of feet and through the woods from any neighbor, but I can still make my music heard by them. Such is the nature of the NC502MP amp and capable speakers, even without subs.)

Rick "forgives the neighbor in Dallas who complained about the Bach on the tuba after midnight long ago--she was probably a music lover" Denney

 

[tomtoo]

German law is strange here. Playing 2h drums a day has the neighbour to accept.

Buuuuuut if your music comes from conserve, he will always win in the court if he complains.

 

[Vacceo]

I said as others have said: It depends on the apartment building. The typical suburban stick-built apartments may have a firewall between units and may not. But even those are often just 5/8" instead of 1/2" drywall. Transmitting a regular thump into the neighbor's apartment is unacceptable, but not all buildings will do that.

And it depends on the neighbors in question, and the agreements that can be worked out with them.

But we have to acknowledge that some hobbies are noisy and incompatible with living spaces that don't isolate sounds well from neighbors. The flip side of that acknowledgement is that we can't expect our neighbors to sustain absolute silence. Some neighbors demand the unreasonable.

I am a tuba player. I have received noise complaints from neighbors in single-family-home suburbs. When I first moved to Virginia, I bought a house that sits on a 1/3rd-acre lot, and is 75 feet from the nearest house in any direction. The neighbor across the street--who moved in after I did--had a baby and the baby's room was along the front wall of the house. They kept the windows to the baby's room open at night when temperatures were sufficiently moderate. I played the tuba at 9:30 PM and got a complaint, so I moved downstairs to the basement. Then, a few weeks later, I got a complaint from the same neighbor at 8:30 PM. I told him to get used to it--I'd done everything that was reasonable but I simply was not going to give up on my committed avocation because they wished their baby to live in a silent outdoors. I suggested they look for a rural location. The husband who brought the complaint was already embarrassed because he knew the complaint was unreasonable and didn't pursue it. I gave him a hard enough answer to report to his wife that there was nothing more to be done in that direction, and he was happy with that. She was not. But the HOA told her that if it was reasonable for school-age beginners to obey instructors from their teachers to practice their instruments at reasonable hours, it was also reasonable for a slightly more competent amateur adult to do the same.

(The following year, I found a rural location and moved. Now, I can practice at 3AM and have only one other person to protect. She can sleep through anything. But I don't play the stereo loud when she's home. My current home is on a 6-acre lot, hundreds of feet and through the woods from any neighbor, but I can still make my music heard by them. Such is the nature of the NC502MP amp and capable speakers, even without subs.)

Rick "forgives the neighbor in Dallas who complained about the Bach on the tuba after midnight long ago--she was probably a music lover" Denney

Didn't you have the temptation to play bad on purpose? I mean, tubas poorly played are some of the most laugh-provoquing instruments ever!

I'd even have a helicon at the side to increase the fart-like sounds on those people.

 

[rdenney]

Didn't you have the temptation to play bad on purpose? I mean, tubas poorly played are some of the most laugh-provoquing instruments ever!

If your last statement is true (and I'm not saying it isn't), then I am a comedian of the first water, intentionally or not.

Rick "whose favorite musical notations are 'blastissimmo' and 'largeassimmo'" Denney

 

[Vacceo]

If your last statement is true (and I'm not saying it isn't), then I am a comedian of the first water, intentionally or not.

Rick "whose favorite musical notations are 'blastissimmo' and 'largeassimmo'" Denney

Some years ago, I saw a guy doing exactly that on a KKK rally when we went to counter-protest them. It was amazing!

 

[617]

Typical construction does almost nothing to prevent LF propogating through the air (structural vibration is another matter.)

STC ratings assume a sensitivity curve that peaks in the voice region, so even very quiet wall constructions do comparatively little at LF. For example, an STC 56 rated wall (considered a very good score) could attenuate 1600hz by around 60db, and 100hz at 39db. In other words, what your neighbor hears is a 21db low pass filter.

Part of what makes noise from neighbors annoying is that the bass sounds louder because that's all that gets through the walls.

You can listen to how different STC ratings perform in this article I wrote last year:

What do walls sound like? – Nicholas Martin

nicholasmart.in

 

[Waxx]

I live in a an +400 years old fortified farm in the fields between two rural villages, devided in several houses with massive thick walls so i can make some noise. My neighbours also make a lot of noise btw, but only during daytime. And that is the rule here, between 10PM and 8AM you need to be silent, and outside that hours, noise must be reasonable, but some noise is not a problem. And on sunny days when i'm home, they ask me to put my system outside in the garden on relative high volume because mine is much higher quality than theirs, and they like my music...

 

[ryanosaur]

Yes you can have a Sub in an apartment building. Yes, you absolutely MUST be sensitive to your neighbors.

If you think you can hook up some 18" or 24" behemoths and just let 'er rip: NO. Bad human.

 

[FeddyLost]

In fact it heavily depends on construction of building, listening room, required SPL and local codes/regulations.
I don't listen too loud, control SPL with noise meter, live in building from steel reinforced concrete and have no problems with neighbours and 2x15".
For sure, if one does not understand what he does, it can be extremely annoying for neighbours even without any sub. Typical 5" active monitor can produce 100 Db@m in midbass and it's a lot.