Moving into an apartment with wood joist floors - worried about neighbors hearing


Hey all,

So during the pandemic I bought a pair of very Manhattan-unfriendly Egglestonworks Kivas. They sound amazing! 

However I recently decided to move and found an amazing old loft. While signing the lease I saw a bunch of language about noise and playing music loud - and now I’m starting to wonder if I’ve made a huge mistake.

I’ve lived in places with concrete floors the last 15 years, so i didn’t even think about it when taking the place, but this old building has wood joist floors. 

While I don’t listen loud - I’ve always been a low- to medium-volume listener - I’m worried that even then the Kiva’s will have too much bass energy.

The opposite pressure is that the room is huge with high ceilings. So in a vacuum, the Kiva’s would be the perfect speaker for the space.

The way I see it I have two options:

1) Try to move in with the Kiva’s and do everything I can to contain their energy (bass traps / panels / thick rugs / Isoacoustics Gaia pucks - some of which I already have). If there are complaints, then get different speakers or use equalization to lower the bass on my digital sources (not an option for vinyl though)

Or:

2) Get different speakers proactively. If I do this, I could consider a pair of bookshelf speakers with limited LF (SF Amati’s or those WIlson bookshelves?)

Anyone have any experience with this? If I go route #2, what about planar ribbon speakers like Maggie 3.7? Seems like the dispersion on them might solve a lot of the problem here, but not sure if they’ll still resonate the floor.

hudsonhawk

Showing 2 responses by audiotroy

we have worked in

NY metro for 25years it really depends on the building some loft spaces do have a concrete slab between floors so we would recommend setting up the system and seeing how it goes

 

with the deep bass of your kivas you will likely get complaints as bass will penetrate most materials

a mini monitor sub package will work well

our shop is 10 mins away from Manhattan we can assist

 

Dave and Troy

Audio intellect NJ

Sorry to say if the speakers produce deep bass there is nothing you can do bass wil penetrate all less dense materials

 

 

Therefore rugs and footers can not block bass any and all materialsthat are not extremely dense only bass blocking material is mass loaded vinyl sheeting or cobcrete board with an air gap we know we built a theater for rev runs renovation and we had to sound proof the walls and yoou would need to cover the entire floor to be even remotely effective 

Put the speakers in storage and look for a less bass capable loudspeaker

Dave and Troy

AUDIO INTELLECT NJ