Watching the Sabres game with my stereo and then watching a movie after, my neighbor came banging on my door pissed off as all hell, pulled me over to his side of the apartment wall and made me listen to the noise. I could hear the bass as clear as day, shocked that there was absolutely NO sound proofing between our living rooms!
I had heard his bass before on my side, but apparently he doesn’t turn it up ever. I had it at a reasonable volume for watching a movie… IE… I had bass on! He said “I have been dealing with your bass for months! I texted you twice already to please turn it down!” I replied with “I figured you meant just those two times… sorry.”
I want to remedy the situation since I just renewed my lease. The wall is only 13 feet long at normal room height.
Anyone do installations? Anyone know where to buy it? Costs/etc?
Investigating, the two apartments are only seperated by two 5/8" normal drywall and NO insulation in between. They even told my neighbor “They are seperated with concrete.” It was either a lie or the construction people forgot to put the correct drywall in between us!
I do not want to remove the drywall that exists and it is an apartment, not a condo. If they won’t do it for me, I will do it myself and not tell them. I want to put the QuietRock on top of the existing drywall to add extra insulation.
I want this problem to go away, and I really don’t want to be a dick on accident to my neighbors!
Quiet rock is supposedly very good, not sure where you can get it locally though.
They do sell a couple soundproofing items at Home Depot… basically like drywall. You can just screw it up right over your drywall, use soundproofing joint compound… primer and paint right over it.
edit;
think it’s $26 for a 4x8 sheet at home depot.
I think.
don’t quote me on it.
Insulation alone will not do anything. Bass frequencies travel the furthest and are the biggest nuisance in soundproofing. You can get the studio foam kits from Musicians friend…I don’t think Guitar Center sells them
Auralex Studiofoam Designer Kit
$99.00 [LINK]
or you’d probably be better off with the Pro pack Auralex DS-2 Pro Designer Kit
$249.99 [LINK]
You can get some really good advice from guys who do this kinda stuff for a living at www.homerecording.com/bbs. Explain your situation and they’ll probably steer you towards the stuff you need.
Aurelex sucks. And definitely won’t do stuff for bass. Get green glue and install another layer of drywall with green glue as a spacer. You can also add a sheet of mass loaded vinyl or face the wall with rigid fiberglass panels on standoffs.
Cost of green glue? MLV would cost me $200 for the wall at around $2/sq.ft. Also, green glue comes in caulk bottles yet you want to put a full layer all over the wall, I’m confused by their website. I’ll do more research on the rigid fiberglass panels. As for standoffs are you talking about resilient channel?
I talked to my brother who is an architect who pulled out of his ass something along the lines shown below…
He said that ideally it would be beneficial to put a Resilient Channel behind the layers of drywall, but I told him I wasn’t going to pull the wall apart to do this (it’s an apartment, not my home)
So, he said that I could put it on top of the drywall to seperate the two, and then put the $40/board QuietRock 525 on that which will help quite a bit.
I will need 4 boards at around $40, then the RC-1 which is pretty inexpensive and some sort of sound deadening caulk to seal the edges (not sure on cost)
Hopefully I can convince my apartment complex to pay for it as they said “that’s a concrete wall” when I signed my lease. It clearly is not any different than the internal walls…
Quick answer: Find a friend who works in a hospital. Ask him for lead x ray vests. Decorate wall with lead vests. Problem solved. OR just buy him a surround system to. That way his bump will cancel your bump.
I live in an up down duplex, he has a shitty surround i have a nice one. When his goes up, mine goes on and then up to mute his out. Its the shitty part of living in an apt. As much as you want to your bound to piss off someone. Honestly just tell him to deal with it, im sure its in the lease there is a “quiet hour” noted like 11pm or 12am. If you go by the lease and thats in there he has no real arguement.
Green glue and drywall is your best option for trebble sound proofing, the only thing that can stop bass is decoupling, which green glue kind of does, but you really need a floating wall
This is why I suggested the foam. It’s not going to do much but it will soften the blow. I don’t know any apartment complex that allows tenants to either hack apart the wall or start adding more to it. Those triangle shaped foam pads are Bass traps. They’ll dampen the bass frequencies. Just modifying one wall will not help very much either as Joe pointed out.
Best advice right there. I still live with my parents, but the house is usually empty during the afternoons which is when i can crank it up till my ears bleed(hasn’t happened… yet). And i’m on the 2nd floor of my house, i can feel the bass in my driveway. So good luck isolating it in an apartment building(though i’m sure your sub is more of the “home theatre in a box” type dealies in which case you can isolate it easier than myself)
