Upstairs neighbour mystery noise equipment

Davesnave

It could well be something like a surface transducer, which turns any resonant surface into a speaker. Something like the hum from an amplifier could cause the vibrations if it was placed on his floor:

https://www.proto-pic.co.uk/surface-transducer-large.html?gclid=CP6Ay4PYttQCFRY8GwodhLEK2Q

However it could also be a low frequency bass shaker, such as used in computer gaming chairs. These are designed to send very low frequency pulses through the body to make things like explosions etc more real.

Low frequency sound, maybe beyond the range of hearing, is disturbing to some people. It causes them unpleasant physical effects. Such noise could be seen as a form of assault if being deliberately fed into your home, but the problem may be proving this.

Here's an interesting piece of research about low frequency noise which may/may not be relevant:

http://www.salford.ac.uk/computing-science-engineering/research/acoustics/psychoacoustics/low-frequency-noise/frequently-asked-questions

coffeehound

Many thanks for the posts, folks.

Geoff1963 that is a great idea re the rubber blocks; might well come back to that.

Subwoofer is a good suggestion, maybe if run with a squarewave signal though it. Also Davesnave's suggestions sound like what it feels like. Yes sub-bass/infrasound seems to cause momentary feelings of dread here so that makes sense.

Anyway, fingers crossed, there hasn't been any industrial vibrations in recent days so hopefully he's had to give the toys back. Unfortunately he's reverted to thumps, bangs and crashes instead...

lazer-zxr

Dont know how I stumbled on this thread -> but this seems ridiculous. Why would someone put their energy into disturbing someone else? I can't even comprehend it. Is this actually real?

Ryanfuego

You're in trouble of course, but go and talk to your neighbor, in a normal way and without any yelling, very gently and you will know whats going on and why there is a voice, or how can u prevent it.

susan53_2

Hi i understand your situation as i am going through a similar situation. Getting the council involved is a long process. I know this from what my father has told me. They bring round a machine to your home to monitor the noise and then you have to keep a diary of when the noise is happening. You have to do this for a few weeks in the meantime you are loosing sleep. Your best bet is to move I know this from experience. My neighbour is a man in his 70s and most people of that age like peace and quiet but this man will have his friend round at 2.05am in the morning talking and walking backwards and forwards. He is a loon like your neighbour. I would definitely move i Know it is expensive but in your new home you will have peace and quiet. That is what we are going to do when we have got the money together. Good Luck. Hope my advice has helped.

another_casualty

Strider590 wrote: »

My neighbours used to make a lot of noise, especially music........ We used to call it Ch4v anthems 2015.

That was up until I introduced them to Rammstein on my rarely used stereo (which is beefy enough to shake the building). I was careful to take down all the glasses from the shelves in my kitchen before hand.

Rammstein are the nuts ! :T
Sorry , but just had to say that

another_casualty

Sorry to hear about your situation coffeehound & others.
Years ago my friends girlfriend had issues and had to get the noise enforcement from the council to deal with it .
They had to attend on quite a few occasions ( mainly with the woman persistently complaining) before catching the neighbours in the act so to speak .

I have heard of people retaliating by turning on a guitar through an amplifier , recording a loop and letting it repeat consistently while they went away for a few days. Not recommended if you have thugs to contend with . Hope things improve anyway

Davesnave

susan53 wrote: »

My neighbour is a man in his 70s and most people of that age like peace and quiet but this man will have his friend round at 2.05am in the morning talking and walking backwards and forwards. He is a loon like your neighbour.

Such odd behaviour shouldn't be tolerated from someone as old as that.

How dare 70 year olds have friends around, talk and wander about in the middle of the night; it's perverted! :rotfl:

susan53_2

Not long after my son and i moved into our flat which was 11 months ago my neighbour(70 year old man) started slamming front door. It is a communal front door. He now does it every day and knows we dont like it but gets a kick out of it and does it even more. I spoke to my landlord about this not long after we moved in but he is not interested. As long as he gets the rent every month thats all he is interested in. We are going to move in the future. But we will not be driving out and will move when we want to. I sympathenise with anyone who has noisy neighbour. People are inconsiderate and i know from experience that there are some sick people in this world who get a kick out of annoying their neighbour because they are not happy with their life

thebigstillmeister

Definitely keep a diary of all the dates and times. We lived in a town house a few years ago and the owner moved to America and rented each room out to different tennants,.. was fine for a year or two however one guy moved in to the master bedroom which connected to our master bedroom and he would literally have his tv on full blast from around 3pm till 5am every morning so loud you could make out all of the words not just background noise, ,.. we spoke to him twice, and he said he'd turn it down, but never did and we rarely saw him,. He never answered the door either when we knocked on it. You could hear other neighbors shouting out of their windows, I contacted our environmental officer, he asked me to start a diary (so do that now, possibly back fill it if you can) which I did, I was also in the process of writing a letter to all the neighbors (who were clearly also suffering) giving the contact details of the environmental officer suggesting they also make a complaint.

However before I got to the point of posting them I came home from work and my neighbor had returned from the USA to visit relatives and had dropped in to check on his house. I told him about the noise issues and he was really apologetic but said don't worry, he was so annoyed with the state of the place he had already told them to leave....