soundproofing

[don_quixote]

living in uni halls im constantly troubled by the over pedantic student living below me who always seems to complain about noise. i've tried stacking my cd player on eggboxes, but it doesnt seem to work... i assume it's the bass travelling through since when i had a subwoofer that wasnt broken she could hear that even when i couldn't hear it in the next room.

so i want to do something about it that doesnt involve turning music down... should i buy a slab of foam or something?

 

[dHarry]

The egg-boxes thing is a bit of an urban myth, based on the fact that they resemble sound-dampening tiles, and even these used in studios don't stop the biggest waves - bass - from getting transmitted, but stop harsh/high frequencies from bouncing around off flat surfaces (your furniture, body, books, etc. do that at home). Bass, remember, gets through even night club walls (that "outside the disco" bass effect), partly because the waves are physically larger than the wall thickness e.g. a 20 Hz signal is equivalent to a 56 ft. air wave!

But one thing you could do is use speaker stands, mounted on rubber feet (to absorb rather than transmit the waves, which is what happens with speakers on the floor - the floor becomes a speaker!) and attach the speakers to the stands with rubber-covered screws to further reduce physical vibration transmission. Air is a much poorer transmitter of sound than solids.

Or a cheaper simpler option would be to just sit the speakers on rubber (or maybe a thick foam, or even cushions or blankets), on top of a piece of furniture (the more off the floor the better).