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neighbors below not liking my subwoofer
fightinfilipino
Angry as Hell#BLMRegistered User regular
Angry as Hell#BLMRegistered User regular
i've got a subwoofer hooked up to my gaming rig, and i play a lot of shooter/shooter-related games. naturally all the explosions and gunfire and whatnot generates a lot of bass.
the neighbors below my apartment in the complex i'm in aren't exactly fans. i suppose i can't blame them.
weird thing is, my room has carpeting, and i thought that would be enough to muffle the sound. apparently it's not.
does anyone have any suggestions on how to muffle my sub? any kind of eggcrate foam or soundboard or anything i can put below the sub so the sound doesn't transmit to the floor below?
the neighbors below my apartment in the complex i'm in aren't exactly fans. i suppose i can't blame them.
weird thing is, my room has carpeting, and i thought that would be enough to muffle the sound. apparently it's not.
does anyone have any suggestions on how to muffle my sub? any kind of eggcrate foam or soundboard or anything i can put below the sub so the sound doesn't transmit to the floor below?
fightinfilipino on
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You're pretty much S.O.L. on this one. Just wear headphones or else turn off the sub.
As Esh said, you're basically screwed. Headphones are your only option.
I never finish anyth
Its also why when I was in a condo my super awesome sub was stuck at 20%. Not much you can do.
As someone who has lived beneath someone who had a subwoofer, there is nothing more annoying than the indistinct low-freqency rumble you are sending through your neighbors walls. My entire bedroom wall would function as a diaphragm and there's nothing worse than your wall going thrum thrum thrum brrrrrrrrrrrrr dun dun dun at the threshold of perceptible sound, so that you both hear and feel it in your skull.
Moral of this story--there is no place for subwoofers in an apartment building if you want to avoid your neighbors hating you.
Subwoofers are the most irritating thing in the world if you're not the one playing the game. I know, I live down the hall from someone who used to use one all the time.
That poor old woman downstairs!
That really doesn't work well at all where bass is concerned.
Really? Because I just turned down the volume on my speakers and the sub isn't nearly as loud.
I have a weak system - and even if I turn the bass all the way down - I can still hear it downstairs. I can almost hear it better downstairs than I can directly next to the sub woofer.
Seriously.
Make a small enclosure out of 2x4's with a plywood base, fill it with sand, and set the sub on a piece of plastic in that. You'll still hear the bass, but the sand acts as an excellent vibration dampener.
Wow, this is actually a really good idea.
It's the vibration and the "thrumming". Not the volume persay.
So are you claiming the distance that vibration propagates is in no way related to the volume of sound output by the subwoofer?
I have been living in second floor apartments for 10+ years, 8 of which with a sound system that has a subwoofer.
Noise complaints: 0
this...sounds like a project.
i'm gonna look into this.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Yeah, I'm pretty sure all you really need to do is keep it from having physical contact with the floor. To get technical, I'm pretty sure what you're doing is creating a more mismatched interface (air to floor, with the, compared to sub to floor which is how damped by the sand) which causes less sound to be transferred into the floor from the room (and thus be conducted down into the apartment below, and into other apartments nearby through the attached walls/ceiling).
You'll probably still need to keep the sub down, but it should at least make it possible to use it, rather than having to turn it off completely.
There really isn't a place for a subwoofer in an apartment building. Use headphones.
Or you could just get some sound dampening material that is normally put in cars and set it under the subwoofer.
Yes.
Properly positioning your sub will help a lot. I had my home theatre sub right up against the wall in a cabinet and always thought I had no bass even though it was turned up fairly loud, turns out the frequencies were being canceled by some weird forces of physics that I still don't quite understand. Moving the sub has improved the sound by a huge degree and reduced the amount of vibration transferred to the walls.
Yes, I am. If he's directly above them, the volume isn't going to matter.
You've been VERY lucky with extremely tolerant neighbors.
Even at a VERY low volume the thrumming is obnoxious. It's like a mosquito in your ear. I'm not arguing physics, I'm arguing that ANY ambient bass is irritating.
Low frequency sound will travel much further through solid material than high frequency sound, right? Even if the subwoofer is at a very low volume, that very annoying low volume, low frequency sound is still turning my bedroom wall into a giant soundboard.
The problem with your line of thinking is your only taking into account the vibration transferred directly to the floor through the feet of the subwoofer. There is also energy transferred to the walls through the sound waves generated by the sub, thus moving the sub farther from the wall will allow those waves to be less direct and create less vibration through the wall.
Least that's my understanding.
I agree, and people in China must fucking hate my subwoofer cause my shit travels through the whole damn Earth right? Even when it is set to 3?
Your point? I'm not sure what the purpose of quoting me was when you've said nothing to counter my comment.
Ok and? Same for you, how is this countering my argument again?
Because those physics you're so keen on are all about the transfer of energy. One of those types of energy being acoustical, which means if the energy source is moved rather than just lessened it can still impact how much energy is transferred to, in this case, the walls and floor of OPs apartment.
I guess if you wanna be a silly goose, you said that volume has a relation to the amount of transfer, but you're incorrect to say that there aren't other options to help lessen the amount of vibration that's transferred through the walls and floor.
If you're going to be a silly goose, just stop responding. We're all speaking from personal experience of living near people with subwoofers. I think that trumps most everything else.
the sound waves will be more inclined to bounce than penetrate! Maybe? I dunno! Physics is craaazy!
or just get some good headphones, which will probably sound better anyway
The subwoofer is sending soundwaves out and while they do hit the air, a large part of the problem for neighbors is not the soundwaves in the air, but the physical vibration in the subwoofer itself. This is why a lot of them are sold on stands, as that does help minimize them.
Speaker spikes essentially eliminate it, giving the speaker a very small contact point with the floor. As such, the subwoofer is essentially "hanging" in the air, unable to transfer sound directly to the floor.
Other methods such as cardboard, wood platforms, etc., still allow the sub to transfer the vibrations to other surfaces because they sit flush against it. Sand would work but you're essentially just dampening it the same way that you'd do if you turn it down. It's like, if you're emiting a wave, and them damping that wave, why not just make the initial wave smaller?
If you can't afford spikes or are leery about physically modifying the base of your bass, any cone-shaped support should function very similarly (for obvious reasons).