How Do I Keep My Apartment Neighbor From Hearing My Subwoofer?

[jiminlogansquare]

I would give a try to the IsoAcoustics stands in that Amazon link you shared, especially if the concern is vibration of the subwoofer cabinet being transmitted through the floor. I have used another similar product from IsoAcoustics (Gaia footers) that helped tame this problem for my subs that rest on a hollow wood plank floor. It is not a panacea, though in general IsoAcoustics sells solid engineering rather than "woo magic," is used by studio pros as much or more so than by home audiophiles, and is very reasonably priced (you cite cost concerns).

 

[jiminlogansquare]

Now that I know that you, like I, have a wooden floor, I'm going to double down on recommending you try an IsoAcoustics product. To reduce risk to your wallet, you could try to purchase from a vendor that will let you return them if they don't work out.

 

As the name "IsoAcoustics" implies, they isolate - or decouple - the speaker from the floor. Why this doesn't ruin the tightness of the bass is documented pretty effectively  at the manufacturer's website and in numerous product reviews around the internet; they have a novel internal structure/engineering solution and are not simply rubber stops or feet.

 

Their value for me and possibly you is that they greatly reduce how much speaker vibration is transmitted into the floorboards of a wooden floor, which in my case was creating annoying resonance in my listening room.

 

Of more direct value to you, I found the IsoAcoustics product also reduced the amount of bass disturbance in the rooms directly below my listening room (which is in an attic).

 

I don't have any experience with heavy absorption materials like the stone and concrete slabs discussed above; they might work as well or better. Experimentation can be fun, though!

[jiminlogansquare]

5 minutes ago, cjf said:

The IsoAcoustics units you mention are pretty nice but its a damn shame they don't make bigger ones. If your sub or subs are on the smaller size (say 12" or under) they would be fine but I would need four of them under each of my 15" Rythmiks and possibly 6 of them under the 18" Rythmik I just bought. This is when size and weight are considered. They aren't as inexpensive anymore in that scenario.

 

But I agree for a smaller sub they would probably be the ideal solution, over and beyond what a heavy slab of stone could absorb unless you are talking about a slab at least twice as heavy as the object you place on top of it....IMO of course

Yeah, the IsoAcoustics website has a product matching calculator that recommends a set of four Gaia I footers for an 18-inch Rythmik, which is $599. So pricey at that scale. Not sure how heavy the OP's subs are, but the smaller IsoAcoustics products are much less expensive.

[jiminlogansquare]

36 minutes ago, sphinxsix said:

Something tells me that in most cases putting loudspeakers on something less stable than their spikes resting on stable floor surface, if connected with the described above increased bass control works like this': the lowest bass gets lost to some degree due to the increased instability of a speaker (instead of emitting the lowest frequencies into the room a driver slightly 'shakes' the whole loudspeaker enclosure) hence the problems connected with those frequencies disappear and therefore one can have an impression of increased bass control.

Just my 2p.

The folks at IsoAcoustics would disagree with respect to their products. I am not qualified to comment, but quoted below is their summary position on the matter.  
 

“There is a common misconception that isolation can result in a loss in output in the lower frequencies. Testing completed in the Anechoic Chamber at the NRC measured the decibel level output at various frequencies when using IsoAcoustics products and using spikes. The results using both IsoAcoustics isolation and spikes are compared on figure 4. The testing concludes that there was no colorization when using the GAIA isolators. The decibel output is consistent between spikes and the GAIA’s through the tested frequencies ranging from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.”

Citation.

 

The “Citation” link below the quote will take you to an article written by IsoAcoustics (including the figure noted in the quote) making their case based on some very scientific-looking testing and analysis. See what you think after reading it.

 

[jiminlogansquare]

You might want to audition some cast iron speakers.

[jiminlogansquare]

1 hour ago, sphinxsix said:

Edit: As for the FR of speakers on spikes vs on their products the differences are small indeed, however they don't say (or I haven't noticed) what speakers were used for measurements - the ones on the photo seem to be quite big floorstanders. In this case it's simple physics - the smaller (lighter) the speaker the differences I wrote about will be bigger.

 

That’s an interesting observation, because I don’t think the OP has identified what speakers they are using and how large or heavy they are. For what it is worth, there is at least some evidence lurking in the IsoAcoustics document to indicate they tried a range of speaker sizes, but it’s just a surmise on my part. Specifically, the graph in Fig. 4 shows results for Gaia I, II, and III footers. These are designed for speakers of different weight ranges (Gaia I for the heaviest), and I believe they have stated here or elsewhere that using a Gaia for a speaker too heavy OR too light for its design would be suboptimal. So, I would guess that they might have used different size/weight speakers for the tests. The Focal shown in the photo you pulled is indeed a big speaker, and those look like the largest (Gaia I) footer size. 

[jiminlogansquare]

The poor OP! We have thoroughly hijacked his thread. I just want to add that regardless of the reasonable doubts expressed above about the impact of Gaia footers (or other similar products) on SQ, the Gaia’s really do help with the problem of bass vibrations going through a floor that brought the OP here to post his query. And in my experience with Gaia’s under both my floor standing full range speakers and a pair of smaller REL subwoofers, they didn’t affect the SQ at all, either for the good or the bad, other than eliminating most of the vibrating floorboard annoyance inside my listening room that I mentioned above. After reading this thread, however, I think I need to start shopping around for an abandoned bank building with a pair of safes bolted to the concrete floor of its basement.