Dampening material

[Markdude]

Ok, so I live in a dorm on the 2nd floor and I have a subwoofer for my music and mixing. I don't crank it, but the people who live below me have started complaining about it. This is strange, because I'm already halfway through the semester and this is the first time they've bothered to say anything...

But anyway, I really really don't wanna just turn the subwoofer completely off, because my music sounds a million times better with it (these speakers don't have much bass). I'm trying to hopefully find a way to keep it from vibrating through the floor, but not sacrificing all my bass. I've moved the subwoofer onto my desk (it used to be on the floor). However, the frequencies resonate through the desk and then back through the floor. So now I've got the subwoofer stacked on top of a couple of books (some hard cover and some soft cover) and a few thick shirts. This has helped a lot, but there's still a fair amount of bass still shaking the floor.

I realize that it will be impossible to get rid of all the floor vibration and still have a significant amount of bass in the room, but does anyone know of any household materials I could use to stack the subwoofer on to try to stop it from resonating so much? Or any other suggestions? Thanks

 

[Wolfeman]

Foam? Seriously though, low freq's travel like a bitch. My buddy used to have his car sub on super quiet, and standing next to the car you couldn't really feel the bass. But if he drove a few miles down the road, you could still hear(or maybe feel) it. I don't think you are going to be able to do much other than ditching it.

 

[Joematthews]

Blocks of relatively compressey (yeah, not a word) foam may help ever so slightly, but bass is a bitch to deal with. Whatever you do, the weakest link effect is in play, so you can't really soundproof part of the room.

Another option is to lower surface contact area between the floor and the sub as much as possible... you can do this using marbles and blu-tac. sort of works to decouple the sub from the floor.

I'd either turn the sub down and get use to lower levels of bass... or get rid of it. Difficult situation .

 

[Metaltastic]

Auralex SubDude

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I think although it's a good idea to decouple the sub it's still gonna be audible downstairs. Bass is a bitch to tame.

 

[Joematthews]

The auralex thingy will work a bit, but I find the claim on sweetwater of "nearly total acoustic sound isolation" a bit ambitious

 

[Markdude]

Thanks guys. I think I'm gonna get the Auralex thing. I found some rubber feet from an old joystick I have and I have the sub resting on top of those, all on top of a book which is on top of my desk. That helped a lot, but I think doing this and having it on top of the Auralex instead of a book will hopefully solve my problem.