Barry_Green
Moderator
Totally off topic, totally off of any topic whatsoever, but hey, if it helps one person, it's worth it...
Maybe it's because I'm sensitive to audio in general, but I find that the thumpety-thump of someone's stereo, or their Harley at 3 a.m., is REALLY ANNOYING when it intrudes on my living space and there's no escape from it. I know it bothers a lot of apartment dwellers too, etc.
And there's no escape from it. Bass travels through everything. You can soundproof yourself against a lot of things, but it's very difficult to soundproof against bass.
So far the only thing that I've found that masks it, is to play my own music at a substantial-enough volume that my bass overpowers their bass; that can work during the day, if not doing audio work(!) but it's tough to sleep through...
If it drives you crazy, there may be something you can do about it. I have found a free or super-cheap way to cover it up. You can't escape it, but you can layer some of your own bass over it to mask the intruding sound. White noise won't do it; white noise generators exist to mask various sounds but the thumpy bass slides right in under the white noise. Pink noise isn't any good either. And I tried www.boombuster.com, which seems tailor-made to address the problem, but found that when you crank up the bass enough to make a difference, there are aliasing artifacts that create repeating patterns that end up being equally as annoying as the intruding bass.
But, so far, I think a solution is www.simplynoise.com and their "brown noise". This is a totally free website that you can leave running in the background. It can generate white, pink, or brown noise. White and Pink don't help, but the brown noise actually stretches low enough into the bass spectrum that, when played back on a subwoofer, can cancel out the intruding bass.
There's no free lunch; when you're playing it, now your office will sound like you're on an airplane all the time. But, you may find that that's a lot less annoying than uncontrollable thumpy-thumpy bass.
The web app works for during the day, but if you're also being assaulted by bass at night, what can you do? You probably don't have a computer you want to leave running all night just to play a brown noise loop, so ... they also have an iPhone app for 99 cents; if you plug your iphone into your stereo with subwoofer. Pick up a cheap Coby 2.1 speaker setup with a subwoofer ($30 at Staples) and plug your phone in, and now you can have bass-masking brown noise at night too...
Just throwin' it out there in case anyone else is being driven crazy by neighbors, teenage children, freeways, or any other source of intruding bass...
Maybe it's because I'm sensitive to audio in general, but I find that the thumpety-thump of someone's stereo, or their Harley at 3 a.m., is REALLY ANNOYING when it intrudes on my living space and there's no escape from it. I know it bothers a lot of apartment dwellers too, etc.
And there's no escape from it. Bass travels through everything. You can soundproof yourself against a lot of things, but it's very difficult to soundproof against bass.
So far the only thing that I've found that masks it, is to play my own music at a substantial-enough volume that my bass overpowers their bass; that can work during the day, if not doing audio work(!) but it's tough to sleep through...
If it drives you crazy, there may be something you can do about it. I have found a free or super-cheap way to cover it up. You can't escape it, but you can layer some of your own bass over it to mask the intruding sound. White noise won't do it; white noise generators exist to mask various sounds but the thumpy bass slides right in under the white noise. Pink noise isn't any good either. And I tried www.boombuster.com, which seems tailor-made to address the problem, but found that when you crank up the bass enough to make a difference, there are aliasing artifacts that create repeating patterns that end up being equally as annoying as the intruding bass.
But, so far, I think a solution is www.simplynoise.com and their "brown noise". This is a totally free website that you can leave running in the background. It can generate white, pink, or brown noise. White and Pink don't help, but the brown noise actually stretches low enough into the bass spectrum that, when played back on a subwoofer, can cancel out the intruding bass.
There's no free lunch; when you're playing it, now your office will sound like you're on an airplane all the time. But, you may find that that's a lot less annoying than uncontrollable thumpy-thumpy bass.
The web app works for during the day, but if you're also being assaulted by bass at night, what can you do? You probably don't have a computer you want to leave running all night just to play a brown noise loop, so ... they also have an iPhone app for 99 cents; if you plug your iphone into your stereo with subwoofer. Pick up a cheap Coby 2.1 speaker setup with a subwoofer ($30 at Staples) and plug your phone in, and now you can have bass-masking brown noise at night too...
Just throwin' it out there in case anyone else is being driven crazy by neighbors, teenage children, freeways, or any other source of intruding bass...
