All of these are good suggestions... but we all know that sound frequencies travel at different speeds depending on pitch...
Foam, diffusers, speaker proximity and location will all effect what these waves do.
My suggestion is take a day to move your desk with the speakers on it to the opposite wall of the common wall between you and the room you don't want to be heard from.
Next... turn on your stuff as loud as you usually do, and go to the other room and listen to what frequencies you are hearing most..
that will tell you what you should worry about most. If you hear mostly bass and low tones, then you have to work on your speaker isolation... make sure they are setting up on a medium/dense piece of foam at least 3 inches thick. If you "isolate" the woofer cabs or "float" them off of the solid surface, you will get less transfer of the low bass tones to the desk, and in turn, to the floor and the other room.
If you are hearing a lot of higher frequencies... you have to work on building a damper that will catch or mute them between you and the other room.. high frequencies have a much harder time traveling thru solid surfaces. (because most household surfaces do not have high enough resonant frequencies to transfer the soundwaves thru the solids. but they will slide under doors and thru door jams etc.)
Think of it like this...
why can't you hear a car stereo's tweeters from a block away... but you can hear the bass?
answer?
the length of the sound wave.
The same reason if you go into the ocean, that the tide will pull you in and out with it... very long waves.
conversely, at the far extreme, you will not get pushed or pulled when you have somebody blow a whistle from 100 feet away. (very short waves).
sound waves, lightwaves, water waves... its all waves... so figure out what needs to be corrected with your situation first, then address it.
As far as the pounding on the machine part, put that on a folded towel or foam, and dynamat the case if it is a metal case that rings. Isolate the speakers. put your stuff in the right spot. and the best trick in the book: use EQ shelving during the times of the day that you can't be loud:
take a high pass filter and set it at 150 hz... now you arent shaking the floors.
take a low pass filter and set it at 8khz... now your moms'n'dem cant hear your high hats in the kitchen.
most of music occours in the midrange frequencies anyway.. so get your mixes done in those ranges, and trim out the ultra high and ultra low sounds when you can make more noise.
mixing can and should be done at much lower volumes than production volumes.
also, download or acquire a frequency sweep "song" it will sweep the tone from 1hz to 20khz... you will hear all kinds of stuff around the place start resonating at different pitches... the window might rattle at 83 hz... the wall at 120 hz... and on and on...
each solid object has its own unique "resonant frequency" meaning it will start vibrating itself in tune with the incoming sound waves... (why opera hoe's can break wine glasses). and why some times, you hear your wall start rattling on certain bass notes.
bottom line.... sound is physics... so you can adjust your room to compensate.
poundaproblem wrote:"...dudes like me. Dudes who started YEARS ago and spent HOURS, DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS, YEARS to learn our craft just so some little swaggot can buy an MPC, download a DAW and call himself a producer."
