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Sure it can be bothersome. But How much does it interfere with your listening experience?
Most who live in apartments (and houses) have experienced neighbor useing their stereo. Then you play your own music, and simply disregard this noise. But at what level will this interfere with your music?
I believe many have experienced this. So I created "virtual neighbor" in my living room, and try to hear when I cannot tolerate her/him no more.
First I establisshed my listening level to be comfortable. It is about 80dB. Every day this level may change, but today turned up to be this. Song played is by Dire Straits "Sultains of Swing".
Now, lets create a "neighbor". They play the same song, but filter is used for anything above 90Hz, and they are delayed by 10s. It really sounds like neighbor, but still in my room. Lets assume this is close enough to what one would experience.
I imported this two tracks into audio software. Now, the "neighbor" plays alone at:
50dB, I think I can tolerate this "forever".
55dB, hm it's getting noticable.
60dB, if this continues every day, I think I may complain.
65dB, they would get a note on the door within a month.
70dB, I would tolerate one party a week.
75dB, they would receive complaint within 1/2h.
80dB, I will allow two songs before I join the party LOL.
So now I counteract with my music. I play at 80dB, and they do at:
50dB, I do not hear them at all.
55dB, I do not hear them at all.
60dB, I think I hear them, but not sure.
65dB, I hear them, but no problem.
70dB, I need to turn up.
75dB, I will turn up to 85dB, and post them a note for sure.
80dB, I cannot listen. Not tolerable at all! I will show up with bottle of vodka at their door.
This is my experience with my "virtual" neighbor.
Do you have real experience with real neighbor? Did you measure the noise? What did you find you can or cannot tolerate?
Thank you.
Follow Ups:
45dB - but figure 35dB as a minimum and only about 20dB in the lower frequencies... The STC does not consider any frequencies below 100Hz.
But I consider ambient levels above 30 dBA in my listening room barely tolerable - It's the dynamics of the music that help me immerse into the performance.
When I lived in apartments, I would convince my neighbors I was DEAF so they wouldn't complain about music a little loud. I alway cooled it after about 9 or 10 pm and NEVER too early.
I was also tolerant when they wanted to turn it up.....
The thought of a deaf audiophile never struck anyone as ...... odd........
Too much is never enough
...playing scales and apreggios (badly) for 11 months... the Addams Family theme, and a couple phrases from the Ring. His lease is up in June and we're all looking forward to a little quiet.
WW
There is NO substitute for the live performance.
I provided sound for a NYE party in a frame-construction apartment building. I don't know the SPL, but the subs were about 97 dB efficient, and driven from a Peavey with about 220 W and as loud as possible (the DDT limiter lights flashed with the beat). No complaints, no cops, not even after 2 AM or whenever it was that people dissolved into cuddle piles and slept.
I had Yes's "Fragile" on just a while ago- was playing Steve Howe's classical guitar bit, then paused things to go collect the waste baskets (garbage day, yeah!). A neighbour happened to be outside doing her yard work two doors down stopped me to comment on how beautifully I had just played the guitar!!!
I felt kinda bad, telling her it was a RECORD of all things (and not even a CD!). She was totally surprised, as she'd heard about "us audio types"! I normally don't listen at anything near "real" volume, but today, with the wife gone, I had to let 'er rip for a few hours... Such Liberation!
"When a musician believes that music is a commodity, music dies in them." - Robert Fripp
O Yes..........He has great taste in music, but his DCM Time Windows with blown woofers & some 8 ionch sub (dont know brand) is killing me sometimes I just shut down while he is over cranking it............
Yeah, right.
nt
Well, not band camp.
But I lived next to a girl in a condo complex who would put on some pretty good tunes.
When she'd play a record I liked, I'd cue up the same LP and 'almost' get the sound synchronized.
It was more fun than it reads.
Years ago, in an apartment, my neighbor next to me would squawk even if the TV was too loud, let alone any music. No biggie as I worked days. On my day off, he always seemed to go out somewhere and I was alerted to his leaving and coming back by his car alarm chirp. When he went out, it was crank-it-up time, big time.
After he moved out, some fool moved in who thought he was the "Karaoke Queen". Rehearsal started at 11:30PM, ON WEEKENDS! Asked him nicely to turn it down, he said I couldn't tell him what to do. Called the cops. Cops said send a written complaint to the landlord and if it happened again, the landlord would be cited for maintaining a nuisance. Wrote the letter, never heard another peep sung after 9-PM.
Back in an apartment for now and my upstairs neighbor and I have a sort of MAD pact. We don't go to SPL war and nobody calls the cops =^]
Years ago when I was living in an apartment, I was playing my bass guitar and amp as I heard a loud knock on my door. Got up, and thought uh-oh as I realized it was my new neighbor that lived above me. He said he's a lead guitarist and wanted to jam! Ended up playing the blues numerous times with him.
Like DMan's neighbors, it was on their mid-fi as an alarm. Hers triggered Madonna at 4:30 am, and his ran Metallica at 5 am. So every morning there was a double blast of high-dB Metadonna for a few seconds (until, I assume, they respectively leaped out of bed to shut it off.)
Highly annoying, but for community's sake we tolerated it. Then they left town for a weekend... and forgot all about their clever alarm system. For the next 48+ hours, starting at 4:30 am, the same Metallica and Madonna albums repeated endlessly at insane volume levels below our bedroom. We literally couldn't hear each other speak, much less sleep, so wound up checking into a motel--as well as begging the landlord to shut off power for just a few seconds to kill the damn thing. (Which the bastard wouldn't do.) And to cap it all off, when the fools returned... they were furious at US for calling the landlord!
Our current neighbors: upstairs, a 4 yr old and 6 yr old running, fighting, and playing until bedtime; downstairs, 50+ married couple that argue, fight, and scream nightly. I play at 80-85 dB, C-weighted on an SPL; and don't give a damn what either one thinks. I learned the hard way not to care about people who prove themselves to be inconsiderate.
Man, I was with you until the second paragraph!!!! I would have gone nuts, broke the doors down to their respective apartments, taken a sledgehammer to each system, and calmly walked back to my place...
Seriously, for them to even consider being gigantic you-know-whats to you just because you called the landlord about this??? YIKES!!! I'd want out. And I guess in retrospect, thats what Vicky and I did- we bought a house and rock whenever we want now. The neighbours know us well now and there's never been a complaint.
Still, I do feel for you!
I can easily stand kids.. In fact I used to enjoy hearing them run and tumble overhead. It's the cheap boombox, and fighting... 2:30 AM drunken arguments.. the gunshots down the street on the weekends... I do not miss those.
THe drunks here are quiet drunks... And, at night: SILENCE. I mean it is only the distant trains rumbling at night. And I am only about one mile from where I used to live.
YUP! I understand where you are coming from.
The ironically with me is that the drunks and drug-heads WEREN'T the problem in either of my places! They actually kept things on the "down low", so to speak. It was the drug head's "clientele" that didn't know how to keep a good thing (to them at least) quiet- cops showed up every weekend at the place the wife and I lived at!
who didn't listen when I asked nicely. They decided, instead, to turn it up louder. They had no idea who they were initiating an SPL war with.
Wanna guess who won?
likes to drown out the sound of her vacuum by playing country music really loud with the windows open (in the summer). We live on a very quiet street, so it is clearly heard down the block.
I tried to counterattack one sunny afternoon by putting on Beethoven's Ninth as loud as I thought the system could handle. After the end of the chorale, the country music had stopped. Next time I was talking to her, she said she really liked the sound coming from my house. It's a sad and pathetic thing when you can't even pick a fight with a country fan!
nt
However, we have a studio on the top floor of our house. My wife and I were practicing the mambo and was playing Tito Puenta quite loudly with the windows open. The neigbor's behind us complained because they couldn't enjoy the serinity and the contemplation of their belly buttons with the so-called noise from Tito Puenta. We gave them the finger and they haven't talked to us since.
I love Tito Puente and mambo records, but I'm not always in the mood for it. You sound like an inconsiderate neighbor, and I'm glad I don't live next to you.
N/T
. . . I encountered everything from "quiet freak" neighbors that couldn't tolerate ANY sound in the building, and were always calling the cops with noise complaints about other people's sound that was WELL within the legal limits, to some noyz boyz who blasted hard rock, whooped, hollered, and thumped on the walls until 3 o'clock every morning.
With the former around, I wound up using headphones a lot. With the latter, I had to fight fire with fire. Found a record at the Goodwill that had "Sounds of the Drag Strip" on Side 1 and "Demolition Derby" on side 2, and another called "Swiss Yodel Party." Those became my standard 6 AM fare when I had to get up, with 3 hours of sleep, and get ready for work.
In my current house, no problems. I can listen at reasonable volumes, the neighbors don't hear me, I can't hear them. Most of the noise issues involve neighbors working in their yards with noisy power tools (limited to weekends) and the occasional drive-by rap attack from a passing thumpmobile.
I about fell off my chair when I read that.
I wonder what "Swiss Yodel Party" would sound like on a horn-based system with 1 kW amp cranked full blast?
Their strategies are 1.) Play obnoxious techno trance music that causes the building to shake and their adjoining neighbors to complain, 2.) Bang on the radiators (we are all connected by district heating), causing all 60 people in the building to complain.
and invite them over to see your impressive gun collection. Hopefully, that puts an end to harrassment.
I like to clean my guns in the driveway. It is amazing when neighbors come by and say what kind of gun is that? Answer Uzi, AK47, 1911-45, 30-30, 12 guage etc. Why do you need so many guns? Answer, this is for a few
MF's, this is for a few more MF's, and this is for a whole lot of MF's. They look apalled. Then I say want to hear some vinyl? They just walk away shaking their heads.
.
use to be my preferred way of conveying "f**k off," but these days people will just assume you are using some kind of hands-free cellphone.
Guns and vinyl....how.....retro!
I had good luck in my apartment days convincing my neighbors I was deaf.
Too much is never enough
my neighbor came over and asked me to turn it up.
I rarely listen above 80db - which IMO is damn loud. Usually its around 70db. At 85 db a compressed recording is clearly audible outside of my home and down the street a bit.
I live in an end unit in a five unit, two story building. Fortunately I have no common walls with my next door neighbor as our apartments are separated by two stairways. I'm situated above a five car garage so I have no one above or below me. A good situation for living in multiple unit housing. I've rarely heard anyone in my vicinity playing recorded music so that has never been a sonic intrusion. My neighbors' daughter, who is now away studying at a music conservatory, has delighted me with her piano playing for the past few years. Due to the acoustics of the space between my building and the one next to me which is very close I could hear her piano playing very clearly when she practiced which was appreciated by myself and my neighbors. I recall a few times when after she finished a lengthy and rigorous piece neighbors would break into applause.So that's my experience with hearing neighbors playing music. I'm not sure I understand the point of your testing but I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed my past impromptu neighborhood concerts.
Drove me crazy!
Now in a small country hamlet with a double brick wall three story house , circa 1899 built on bedrock. That was when there were true craftsmen. My normal sound level is 80db; but when I want to rock and roll it is more like 105 db.
Sitting on my front porch; can barely here the tunes. NO KNOCK on my door.
Gotta love it.
Cheers,
Richard
Having been in a house for the last 9 months (and my second house), after spending time in two different apartments, I've learned a LOT about what others can hear, what I can hear from them, and building construction.
My first apartment after my separation and divorce, which was cinder block construction, was built like a bomb shelter! I could come home from work on the road at any time of day or night, turn on the stereo and play it about the volume most play a TV set at. A decent level, but no louder than conversation. Open the door into the hall and you could hear every one else's TVs! This was great for "back to mine" parties and such! NEVER had a complaint. I sometimes miss that place, just for the transitional time (or the "let me be a bachelor again" attitude of the time!
My next place, after marrying my high school sweetheart, was like living in a commune- everybody knew everybody else's volume habits. The building was made of wood and drywall. Conversations next door could be easily discerned. My downstairs neighbour had a mid-fi system with a timer as an alarm clock... SET FOR 4AM EVERY WEEK DAY. While this wasn't bad considering that my schedule shifted to having to be up before 6am every day myself, it annoyed the wife to no end (she worked completely different times from me and didn't get up until the later morning hours).
The last few days before we moved to our current house, I played the Telarc Stravinsky's Firebird suite a few times. Combined that with some serious trance and dance electronica, and they were glad that we were leaving!
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