Help Me Be An Asshole of a Neighbor

mjj asks a question, don't worry about why:
"Hi!

Please don't ask why, but I have a desire to create 4 hours long silent track with occasional bursts of very short (2-5 secs) noise effects in it. I mean: 30 mins complete silence + 2 secs loud noise + 20 minutes complete silence + 4 secs loud noise and so on... Will that track damage my system if I leave it playing quite loudly (70dB)?
Do speakers wear off when playing empty silence too?"

Statmangler needs answers: "I have to hear a good explanation as to why you're doing this or else I vote for this likely being a troll post. "

mjj responds: "Thanks for replies! So if I crank up the volume and silent track is being played, cones and woofers are doing nothing, right?
Some crazy neighbour noise wars are going here..."

After being pushed on the neighbor comment mjj explains:
"Ahh... Ok... My neighbours seem to make a lot of structural noise at night. Sometimes on purpose... And they sleep during the day. So I have that crazy idea to simulate the structural noise from my side when nobody is at home. Like “large door squeak”, some minutes of silence, then “object drop” sound effect, some minutes of silence... and so on...

So I would like to create one long audio file and playback it when I’m out

Yeah, sounds strange "

Agitator says: "Too funny!

Sounds like you’re in an apartment building.

Combating noise with noise usually escalates the war. It is rarely seen or heard as a taste of the same medicine. It the neighbours won’t be reasonable and respect the fact that they shouldn’t be disturbing other residents in the middle of the night, complain to the landlord. If the landlord won’t (or can’t) do anything about, you can either continue to do battle with the neighbours, hope the situation will get better over time, wear earplugs when you go to sleep, move to a better building, or move to quieter apartment in the same building.

If you own your apartment (in a condo or a co-op), then there is a board of directors to whom you can appeal and a property manager who can wield some authority. Doing battle with the neighbours by using noise yourself will undermine your position in any formal complaint. If there are other neighours adjacent to your apartment, there is also the likelihood that the noise you generate will disturb them as well."

Stratmangler says:
"The problem with that is they might eventually complain and once they do, the super might try to get in touch with you. If he opens the door, sees nobody, but sees the stereo is on, playing noises at random, you won't look too great in that conflict.

Have you complained about it? Here's my anecdote. A woman decided to simultaneously adopt a dog and bird. For what reason? Beats me. The bird's squawks would trigger the dog to bark which would trigger the bird to squawk. You can quickly guess how it degenerated quickly. That would only happen when she wasn't around and the noise would easily travel down the corridor into our apartment, 3 doors down... even through both heavy doors.

My experience is almost all people are unreasonable in that sense because the reasonable ones are typically not so clueless about how their actions impact others. Anyway, in spite of my better judgment, I tried reasoning with her for a couple of days but was met with arms crossed and a look of total indifference. Complaining to the super didn't change anything. So I recorded what it sounded like and sent the audio file via email to all recipients of the company owning the building. A couple of days later, the pets were gone, and the woman would give me the stink-eye when our paths would cross."

mjj: "Yeah, it's my apartment in 9 floor building. Sound insulation is bad and I have neighbours above me and below me.
We don't have directors or managers here. Only police theoretically could help, but it's a tricky situation as noise is not a blasting music... Voices and noises are not constant. Police could come but it may be quite silent at that moment... And my girlfriend is quite against calling to police. She better see me suffering than having bad relationships with neighbours

Basically I thought I would not let my neighbours to sleep during the day so they will be asleep at night. That was my simple logic."

Bathory seems like a great neighbor:
"Ha, ha, the ol neighbor screwing with.

Fun stuff, my first apartment had top and bottom noise makers.

For the loud people underneath me, I bought a 1/2 inch plywood at Home Depot, cut it to 2 ft square, and a 16 lb bowling ball, I would drop the ball on the plywood from different heights depending on what they were doing.
Even standing on my step stool to have the ball fall even heights of the 9 foot ceiling for max “THUD”
Also with my work boots on, hitting the floor while stomping down hard with my 240lb frame, that really make a longer lasting reverberating “THUD”

For the upstairs annoyance, I used another piece of the same 1/2 inch plywood, this time with a thick rubber pad on it, and a old shower towel wrapped twice around it, as to not mark up the ceiling, and wait for silence, then, with full force slam the pole up on the ceiling, multiple times,making,sure it always hit flat on the ceiling with a massive “THUD”
I knew where their small kitchen light was, I would aim for that light, as to really make it rattle, and blow out some bulbs from time to time.

The upstairs people were so obnoxious, they had a dark doormat at their door, I went on all fours, and wiped a whole tube of heavy equipment grease on their dark colored mat, before they came home from work, walked right into their nice carpet.

Or as my upstairs neighbor did to me, he left his sink on one morning, I came home to a flood, as did the lady below me.
He did it on purpose. It’s ok, none of my stuff was damaged.

Following weekend, I bought some angle iron locks, and quickly screwed his door and door jam into one another with no less than 5 of them, he had to have the landlord come and get the door off to get in the apt.

Our whole complex was like this everyone was vicious, so it was not just me, some people are very inventive.

Someone put a thick bead of liquid nails all around my door one afternoon, hahahah must just laugh and move on, smile.

There were so many hi jinx at that apartment complex. I was there for just for a 1 year lease, but man, did we have fun.

Someone hid a praying mantis egg sack inside the fire extinguisher case (it had no glass)
So one morning, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of little tiny praying mantis crawling all over the third floor hallway.

Ahhhhh, the good ol day’s.



And no, dead air will not damage,speakers."

head_unit says: "Why not rig up a microphone setup to record all their nighttime noises, then play them back during the day! Though actually a recording of "Structural noise" will not propagate like someone physically stepping on a floor. And you might piss off other neighbors-have you thought about that? I was going to suggest how about low frequency noises hard to localize but that would bother everyone. Or rent your apartment out daytimes as a brothel so loud sex noises will bother the neighbors...unless they like it! You could also just play the radio all day at a reasonable level (documented with an SPL meter/app) and if there are complaints say "it's not that loud, you can't sleep all day!"Except, some people work crazy shifts. WHY are they up all night?
On a different note, maybe a soft noise generator, a running fan, or YouTube tracks of rain forest, ocean, etc might help."

mmj: "Haha Great points!
It was my initial idea to record their noises and playback them, but recordings appeared not to be so clean and clear.
These neighbours are a couple: one man and one woman about 65 years old, they don't work anymore... They drink quite a lot. Sometimes 4 days and nights in a row. I am amazed how they are still alive. My main hope is their age... Come on, how long can you live like that?

Yeah, I am using white noise coming from speakers at night, but sometimes I have to crank it so loud, it appears my neighbours hear it Actually I have heard them one time annoyingly speaking to each other about that weird buzz coming from my apartment at night It was a sound of ventilator (maybe to bassy)."

Someone asks the obvious question, "Have you tried talking to your neighbors?"

mmj: "Yes... There was a polite message in their mail box, polite talk in the beginning. But then they lost it... After three nights of very disrupted sleep I came to that woman and told everything I was thinking about them.

And yeah... I know sometimes they make noises on purpose at night...
Actually they drink in one room and then sometimes they come to the other room (where I am trying to sleep) just to throw something at their ceiling or to hit the wall with something. Then they sneak to that other room... They make it to sound like accidental noise, but come on. Who throws things at their ceilings? At night? Or hits the wall so I can feel vibration of that?

These conditions are quite hellish, guys. Yeah, maybe I am a little more sensitive to noises than average people, but these bastards definitely don't act as normal people."

It's hard to make sense of mjj's prose, but I think he is saying he wrote a note and lost his shit. A calm discussion alludes these people, better to weaponize the stereo and piss off all your neighbors.

I skipped the posts from the guy saying no one should own a dog unless they have 5 acres of land, and some pedanty bullshit about spelling and forum rules regarding correcting someone's spelling.

Here's the thread: forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/is-it-possible-to-damage-speakers-amp-by-playing-silence-loudly.841990/