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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
carlsbad2's avatar
carlsbad2
1,382 posts
 

Heavy wool rug and townshend platforms will help a lot.  You need to totally decouple from the floor and springs are decouplers.  spikes are couplers.  Feet are in between.

A good system sounds great at low volume. Sometimes people are just used to listening at higher volumes and dont realize their system sounds good low.

Jerry

mofojo
2,172 posts
 

All good suggestions about isolation etc. I really like the idea of meeting the neighbors and see if you can do a sound test. That way you will know how loud you can go and not constantly be wondering if you are pissing them off 😃. 

hudsonhawk OP
137 posts
 

I already have the Isoacoustics Gaia I feet - I assume those should work the same as Townshend to mechanically decouple the speakers from the floor? The speakers have outriggers so I’d need a huge platform and I’d be worried about the added height.

Was then thinking of mass loaded vinyl like Acoustimac under both the speakers and whatever large wool rug I end up with.

I also already have plugs that Eggelstonworks provided for the ports that I use.

Great idea on doing a sound test with the neighbors - will at least give them my contact info and maybe doing a test where i find the volume setting on my stereo that becomes the new “max”. I’m a pretty low-volume listener - my system is designed around that principle from when I was married and my then-wife was sleeping on the other side of the wall behind the speakers.

dekay's avatar
dekay
5,361 posts
 

For area rugs look into sound absorbing rug pads/underlay.

Wool, jute and cotton are all good rug materials (I use cotton as we have cats).

 

DeKay

audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,599 posts
 

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

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