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In a couple days, I'll be moving into a new apartment building. It literally is a new building, too - completed just last month - and it seems to be well made. However, the walls, floor and ceiling were built with only basic sound insulation, and this poses a problem. I'm actually not concerned about blocking sounds coming in from the outside. What I'm hoping to do is minimize the nuisance to my neighbors when I use my speakers, which is something I do a lot of. Basically, I want to play music after 11:00 PM without driving anybody insane. I should also stress that I'm not expecting to achieve total sound insulation or anything. I really just want to be able to turn up the volume a couple extra clicks without passing the audible-through-the-wall threshold. Because it's a corner apartment, I share only one significant wall with my next-door neighbor, and it's this wall that I'm focused on insulating. Here are the important points about it: -It is 285 cm wide by 240 cm tall, with other walls adjacent on both sides at 90 degree angles. -There are no electrical outlets or vents. It's truly a bare slab of a wall. -It's in my living room, and it's somewhat preferable to have the speakers facing toward it for general layout reasons. Also, I might put my couch up against it. -The room on the other side is almost certainly going to be used as a bedroom. -The only thing I know for sure about how well it currently insulates is that if a person pounds on one side, a person on the other side can hear it. -Modifications to the structure of the wall itself are not possible. I would not mind having to sink a good few hundred dollars into a solution, including purpose-made sound absorbent padding, which wouldn't be too expensive for a wall this size. I do intend to ask my new neighbor to do a test or two with me to see how high I can turn up my volume before he can hear it. But assuming that the answer is anything short of "really loud", I'll probably want to do something. Does anyone have any ideas? Any lessons learned from experience? I've heard about putting up a few layers of thick blankets, but I think my girlfriend would veto that idea unless they looked really nice, which of course entails a higher price. The floor and ceiling are a little better insulated (or so the landlord says), so I'm not quite as worried about the people above and below me. I suppose if anyone has any thoughts about how to position speakers to minimize noise to those people, too, I'd be interested. I plan on putting them up on stands, and maybe putting some cushioning under the stands to hopefully absorb a little sound that would go through the floor. Thanks! PS: I live in Japan, so specific products are likely unavailable to me.
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Aug 12, 2014 19:20
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 10:04 |
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Yes, you definitely want to decouple your speakers from the floor. Consider blocks of styrofoam or similar rigid foam with a wood sheet on the top face between the speaker and the floor. You could wrap the block in fabric to make it look better. Can you determine what the wall is made of? If it is typical highrise construction, it is likely to be drywall on each side with sheet steel framing. If you bond a layer of foam sheeting to the wall, followed by another layer of drywall, the two sides of the wall will no longer have the same resonant frequency, which degrades the ability of sound to be coupled into the interior of the wall and then be transmitted. To further absorb high frequencies, as well as improve the listening experience in your apartment, consider finishing this off with high-density foam pyramids.
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Aug 12, 2014 19:53
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Samuelthebold posted:-Modifications to the structure of the wall itself are not possible. That cuts out most of your options, unfortunately. Samuelthebold posted:including purpose-made sound absorbent padding Will accomplish little to nothing. Soft, light materials do virtually nothing to prevent sound from transmitting through them. They reduce the amount of sound that bounces off a surface and around the room (e.g. echo), but the sound that bounces off the surface wasn't passing through to the other side of the wall anyway. To stop sound transmission, there's basically only one thing that really matters, mass. Lots of mass. Ideally, multiple layers of mass with varying resonant frequency. The one thing you might be able to get and hang on your wall in a manner that impacts sound transmission is Mass Loaded Vinyl. But it's fairly expensive and it won't be easy to hang in a way that will still be significantly effective at reducing sound.
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Aug 12, 2014 22:26
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Like Zhentar said, the only thing that stops sound is mass and lots of it... and you probably won't be able to make the modifications needed to not disturb your neighbors. I would invest in a really good set of headphones, not blasting your speakers is a downside to apartment living.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:25
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Thanks a lot for the replies, everyone.Zhentar posted:Soft, light materials do virtually nothing to prevent sound from transmitting through them. They reduce the amount of sound that bounces off a surface and around the room (e.g. echo), but the sound that bounces off the surface wasn't passing through to the other side of the wall anyway. That makes a lot of sense. One thing I was looking at was this. It's fairly thick and dense, it's stiff enough to be easy to put up, and it gets a lot of good reviews. But I suppose that would mostly prevent echo within the room and not block sound transmission to the next room? Again, I'm not hoping a huge difference. Maybe just 3 or 4 points on the STC scale. I'll look into mass loaded vinyl. For now, I have to pack!
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Aug 13, 2014 05:14
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Buy a nice set of wireless headphones. Problem solved. Welcome to apartment living: Speakers = rear end in a top hat.
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Aug 13, 2014 23:02
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 10:04 |
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Samuelthebold posted:Thanks a lot for the replies, everyone. Beyond building a smaller decoupled room within your living space there is going to be nothing you can do that will make an appreciable dent in the sound, in practice a reduction of 4 STC points is barely noticable (it may only reduce by 4 points in a narrow range, might take out some mids and highs but let bass pass through unhindered) and definitely not worth investing hundreds of dollars for. Even if you treated the whole surface with mass loaded vinyl there will still be a lot of reflection above and below the wall that can enter your neighbour's apartment via the cavities and frames in the floor and ceiling. Contacting your neighbour to see how much sound actually comes through is definitely the best way forward, especially if you are able to go into their apartment with them and adjust the volume via your phone or something so you can both come to an agreement of acceptable midnight listening levels. Besides that, those few hundred will buy a couple of nice sets of wireless headphones as already mentioned. Another option are directional sound setups like these sound domes but they are likely very expensive and probably significantly lower quality than your current speakers. Gym Leader Barack fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Aug 14, 2014 15:07
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