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

Magnepan has a great reputation for bass that is less likely to go through floors and walls...there are some older threads explaining this more technically then I can...

Build a room within the room and pay special attention to the floor isolation.  There are commercially available prefabs, but they will be pricey for the size you need.  If you have basic carpentry skill it's a DIY less than a week long project.

I think the suggestion of headphones is your best bet. If nothing more than as an alternative when you want to either crank it, or listen at an inconvenient time for your neighbors. It’s nice to have another option. And when the dust settles, you may find that headphones might be your only option.

 

 

Yep, show up on front door of lower unit with a bottle of good wine.  Explain how you love this building/unit , want to be a good neighbor but you suffer from Audiophilia....😎

Bring cookies to the downstairs neighbors and introduce yourself. Exchange contact info but don’t say anything about the speakers - then see how it goes. If you don’t hear anything from them then no worries. They may hear some things but it may not bother them!

As an aside, you may not even like your speakers in your new room. Anyway, good luck and let us know how it goes!

(im a landlord in a 3-family townhouse in Brooklyn)