HT + Apartment = Complaints?

[KEEZY]

Hey kids, I am moving into an apartment on the 15th, and would love to hear some of your solutions to keeping my home theater from disturbing my neighbors.

It is a 3 story house, and we are on the second floor. It will be hardwood floors and I'm probably going to have the front speakers sitting on the floor level, or maybe on some sort of stand. What sort of mats or stands could I use to minimize the sound traveling downstairs to my landlord. I read about GRAMMA Pad for subwoofers/speakers or maybe these speaker pads. Maybe we can roll out some carpet as well to dampen the noise in general. I was also looking at Dynamat b/c DLitch posted that in the Tools thread, but for HT use, that is pretty expensive. Maybe I could buy something for a car, and just set my speakers on top of that?

Any and all suggestions would be very much appreciated, as always. Kisses.

[alter_ego_trip]

Just about anything that would decouple the speakers from the floor would be a viable solution. While this won't help with sound transmission, it will alleviate any vibrations being transferred to the floor below. Buttkickers would be a great addition and work well in your situation. You could still get the tactile sensation without disturbing your neighbors. If your receiver has night mode it would be a great feature to use also. This feature basically compresses the dynamic range so you don't have to turn it up quite as loud for the same effect.

[lovekeiiy]

don't want to distrub your nieghbors, you'll need to shut off the sub. I know with my SVS PB Ultra 12/2, you don't need to have it up very much and the bass sounds carry throughout the whole house

Basically, all the pads you mentioned above are about keeping the speakers from vibrating the floors and those adding additional sonic waves that may, and can, interfere with the sonic waves that are coming out of the speakers. While this will keep your, and possibly your neighbors (depending how loud you play your HT), whatever hanging on the wall from vibrating, some sound waves just carry very well, and don't vibrate everything. And it's really the low frequency sonic waves that pose the problems.

My only suggestion would be to get some kind of sound dampering stuff, like the stuff used in recording studios. I don't think you'll want to do it, but you could add heating/cooling installation into the walls. You could go really ugly and do the stapled egg cartons on the walls.

[alter_ego_trip]

Originally Posted by lovekeiiy

Basically, all the pads you mentioned above are about keeping the speakers from vibrating the floors and those adding additional sonic waves that may, and can, interfere with the sonic waves that are coming out of the speakers.

The pads have nothing to do with the sonic waves coming from your speakers. Their sole purpose is to decouple them from the structure, thus preventing any additional vibrations from being added to the surrounding infrastructure. Speaker pulses can effectively cancel out each other, but this is a different anomaly than induced vibrations.

You could go really ugly and do the stapled egg cartons on the walls.

This will have no effect at all in preventing lower frequencies from escaping. Most acoustic treatment is effective in the KH area. When you start talking about 20 hz waves, nothing short of decoupled walls with DD and green glue are going to be effective.

[MadBryan]

I set both of my SVS cylinders on round concrete pads with hockey puck feet (seen it online) and that kept alot of the vibration down for me.

[Wondermonkey]

Get pieces of plywood and wrap them with some sort of insulation, maybe even something like a mattress cover or ironing board cover, then cover them with some kind of cool fabric that matches your stuff. Hang them on the wall to absorb the sound a tad bit more than normal artwork would.

Also, make sure you get area rugs. From Ikea. Tapestries work the best, but honestly, they look pretty regal and not very conducive to "hip," so I doubt you'd be able to find cool tapestries that don't look like something your grandmother might hang, but man those ****ers absorb sound in an apartment.

[KEEZY]

Thanks all, keep it coming. I only have neighbors above and below, but I'm guessing that having things absorb sound on the walls will help keep it from going up and down.

[D_Litch]

Yeah, Dynamat is probably going to be way too expensive for a HT set-up. It's going to cost me more than I care to mention to dress my vehicle up with it. It is worth the moneyz afterward, but the price is daunting.

[alter_ego_trip]

As I mentioned earlier, while adding acoustic absorbers in your room will certainly help your listening environment, it will offer little to no improvement for sound proofing. Carpet, rugs, drapes, etc. are great at reducing flutter or slap echo. They are not an effective solution against anything below the kilohertz range. I run an REW program for my Behringer, which helps to plot the in room frequency response for sub tuning. The front wall of my theater is completely lined with 2" thick fiberglass panels, and there is also 1" thick acoustic insulation completely surrounding the lower half of the theater. Running REW before and after has shown an untraceable change in the frequency response below 500 hz. The mid's and high's are definitely cleaner with much less reverberation, but as far as sound containment is concerned, it has no effect. On top of this, the weakest link in many homes (especially apartments), is the floor. There is very little insulation between the joists of apartments. As you and others have mentioned, the most effective way to contain the sound is decoupling sub and using reasonable volume levels (night mode). I would personally talk with the lower tenants, explain your love for HT, and tell them to let you know when the volume becomes excessive. At least you will know the limits and not have to worry about bothering anyone during your favorite flick.

[ZoomZoom71]

I believe we have met our resident audiophile. Nicely played, AET!

[alter_ego_trip]

Originally Posted by ZoomZoom71

I believe we have met our resident audiophile. Nicely played, AET!

Thanks Zoom. There is nothing better than coming home after a bad day at work, plopping down in the theater chair, and cranking Metallica to 11 on a hi res DVDA disc. It's tough to stress out when it's too loud to think.

[Jon Liu]

Obviously, I love my home theater and I'm sure if I tried to enjoy it as much as I wished I could, my neighbors would seriously complain. Make a deal with them. Be friendly and up front. Even to the point of excess. Or, simply invite them over occasionally if you are going watch a movie. That should get them off your back.

I always watch at a reasonable volume and I've ensured that my normal viewing habits don't happen too early or too late in the day.

I've never gotten a complaint, even when I've pushed the limits a bit.

[lovekeiiy]

I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I am particular about the sound I get and equipment I use. So, I'm not going to dispute AET because he's really telling you in detail why or why not what will work based on scientific information; how do sound waves travel.

I know I have my HT set for peak listening at volume 20 on my Denon 3805, which, if I remember correct, is at 87 or 86dbs. I haven't fine tuned the sub, but it's close enough. At that volumne, certain scenes in movies, such as the torpedo hit on the sub in U571 when transferring the hostages, literally rattles the whole house. And my HT is fully carpeted with thicker padding.

If you into night time movie watching/gaming, and concerned about the sub, I suggest to get some quality headphones; I like the site HeadRoom - Right Between Your Ears. It's ran by a bunch of headphone audiophile people. Not that you want to spend over $3000 for some headphones and amp, but they definitely have cheap stuff and good info on the pros and cons for an audiophiles point of view.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by alter_ego_trip

As I mentioned earlier, while adding acoustic absorbers in your room will certainly help your listening environment, it will offer little to no improvement for sound proofing. Carpet, rugs, drapes, etc. are great at reducing flutter or slap echo. They are not an effective solution against anything below the kilohertz range.

Don't forget, Keezy is in an apartment, he's not trying to sound proof his place, he's simply trying, by any means necessary, to reduce the sound coming through his neighbors walls and floor. Anything, and by anything I mean anything, absorbs sound when it's in a hardwood floor room with very little insulation in the walls and the floors.

If you have the pleasure of listening to the place next to you become vacant and then have new people move in, the first thing you'll notice is that your neighbors are always louder before they have carpets and shit on the walls. Get some stuff in there, even plants, the harder you echo, the louder you are going to be to your neighbors, so you want to reduce that as much as you can. Large houseplants help a lot too. I don't think there are anything thinner than apartment walls, I think Dangerkitty has some underwear material that's thicker.

I'm hardly an audiophile by any means though, but I am an expert in city apartment life though. Um, yay.

EDIT: Also, Nightmode and not watching porn at full volume will help your relationship with your neighbor as well.

[KEEZY]

I'll definitely get a carpet of some sort. Even though I don't have neighbors to the sides of me, I'm guessing that the walls will absorb sound and move it up and down to the other tenants. I'll just have to keep my night mode on after hours, and turn the sub down. I was planning on talking with my landlord and doing a test run as well. I'm sure if I explain it and give my number, it won't be too bad.