Downward firing speaker port and domestic issues

I lived in  a condo and my neighbors routinely called the popo. You might consider quality headphones for when neighbors are home

I'm in the same situation.  I live in a rented apartment with neighbors all around.  I'd avoid a down-firing floorstander.  You might be better off with front-firing standmounted speakers decoupled from the floor.  If the room and the speaker allows, move them a little away from rear and side walls.  With the right speakers you could have very good sound at moderate to low volumes.  When you're listening you don't want to have to be concerned about whether you're disturbing your neighbors.

To address this issue, we need to address the topic of "bass". Your sitting comfortably at home and someone drives by with a rather loud and obnoxious car stereo. The bass overpowers everything in your environment, and large objects start moving aroiund the room. Althought the car is "decoupled" from your space, the bass escapes it’s environment and finds it’s way into yours. The car is relatively "sealed", yet the bass finds a way out. It travels a hundred feet or so, penetrates your siding (or brick, or stone), sheathing, 4"-6" of insulation, 1/2-5/8" of drywall and rattles your brain. Long wavelengths with great intensity are difficult to constrain.

The second issue IS coupling to your room. Sympathic resonances caused by the vibration of your speakers couple with your subfloor, finds their way thru the insulation below, and through the ceiling material of the lower apartment. So, you’re actually dealing with two highly related actions here. YES, coupling will address one issue, but not all issues because high energy, long wavelengths are highly persistent.

The better question(s) are not so much WHERE the bass port is facing, but rather how low the tuned frequency is. Bass penetration is highly relevant to wave lenght. And, how loud you play.

As @ghdprentice suggested, getting to know your neighbors is the key here. You might ask them to help you discover the threshold of pain for them in THEIR apartment via your audio system, and establsh guidelines for behavior. You might discover that your music is not as intrusive as you thought.

Decoupling your loudspeakers from the floor will help both sound transmission and the sound of your loudspeakers, although you may still need to moderate your volume when your neighbor is home. I recommend the Auralex iso platforms from personal experience. The "Subdude" models will work fine for full range loudspeakers and are not expensive.

I hope this helps!

Not sure whether a down firing port will bother your neighbor more or less than a front or rear facing port or a sealed box—probably makes little difference relative to the overall bass output of the speaker. The more air the speaker moves the more trouble your gonna have with your neighbor. Decoupling from the floor will help so tweaks of this sort are worth exploring. FWIW I have never heard a speaker with a down firing port that provided quality bass—muddy, loose, slow, lots of overhang.

In my experience, it matters not at all where or if there is a port or a passive or if a sealed box.  Bass goes everywhere, if you have it.  Your best bet is to either luck out with an elderly hearing impaired neighbor, or to get a really nice pair of LF challenged compact monitors and a sweet EL84 amp to drive them.  Black Ice F11 for example, with a pair of LS50s or similar.  Keep the volume down and enjoy.

tenant or your own space below: nix to downward firing bass drivers or ports.

nix to wanting a lot of bass when the space below is used, thus tone controls might help when those spaces are occupied, out of circuit when below is unoccupied.

isolation decoupling speakers from floor probably needed. you could start with a set of 2x2 isoblocks. many swear by townsend iso platforms.

I've installed corporate  fitness centers with occupied space below: add separate  'floating' floor on absorbent blocks, small ramp up.

Your dilemma reminds me of an apartment I rented in an 8-plex about 15 years ago. The landlord was cool, but he was pretty intent on filling the place with these bohemian hipster types. Guy downstairs was a drummer. Twice a week he had band practice in his apartment. Electric guitars, amps, stacks, the works. The loud, crappy indie rock was terrible.

Wasn’t such a bad deal tho… nobody could complain about me shaking the walls with EDM blaring through my Pioneer SX-D7000 and Cerwin Vega AT-15’s whenever I felt like it.

So… move in next to some hipsters?

actually kenjit you're uninformed as usual there is something that will stop based from going into the floor it's called the Townshend podiums and they stop all vibrations from going into the floor and coming back into the speaker and your equipment and shaking them and vibrating them they isolate down to three Hertz not cheap but boy do they work very well it's like upgrading your electronics the more expensive gear that's how significant the improvement is.

Living in an apartment has compromises.

But to be helpful, I think a lot more information would be useful to us. What kind of music do you listen to? What equipment do you have. How loud do you listen? What speakers are you considering?

While it is normally regarded that bass is not directional. I doubt many folks have actually tried downward firing woofers (I assume that is what you are talking about) versus others, and went downstairs to verify this assumption. Transmission occurs in two ways, the sound from the cones and the cabinet vibration.

While I have not tried downward firing woofers, it would not surprise me if they would transmit sound downstairs more than forward firing. I would buy forward firing and isolate them from the floor. There are hundreds of brands of speakers… I am sure you could find some you could love that are not downward firing.

Also. You might consider meeting and making friends with your neighbors downstairs and show that you are really trying to be considerate. There may be some times that they have TV time and don’t mind a bit of additional noise. You might have them up to listen to music!  If you wait until they complain, you have pissed them off. Best to head it off and maintain close communications.

I sincerely share your grief and recommend you headphones. Where your speaker fires, it doesn't matter at all. All will depend on your neighbor tolerance and degree of sound isolation. If you have neighbor upstairs and hear him talking or watching TV program you're familiar with...(Can you imagine AGT everyday??) than probably you have an approximate measure to worry about your total listening dB. To your surprise or not, there are choices of components for every case of listening situations especially when you want to listen lower than concert or band levels. I would kinda look for pure class A amplification 10...15w per side if you're not the owner of such yet.

Panel speakers work good for this. Not much energy goes anywhere but on axis.

Perhaps using a pair of Townshend Platforms would help decouple any bass that could migrate to the downstairs apt.

Though, to be honest, I own a floorstander with a bass port (Vandy Treo's), The amount of bass energy exiting is rather low.

Bob

Subwoofers and neighbor quiet are opposing concepts.

Better off with sealed on springs.

I recommend stand mount speakers

yes you will get flak. Bass goes everywhere. You cant stop it. Not much you can do about it

Understood. I am mainly concerned about getting flak from the neighbor in the apartment below me should the bass go into their apartment via the floor. 

I wouldn't worry the bass pressure should be similar if the ports were front or rear firing.