Recently, some new people moved into the apartment next door, I don’t know who, but I do know that they like to play music…a lot…quite loudly, actually, to the point where I can hear it in my apartment. Usually I can tune it out, but Thursday night I could not stand it any longer and went knocking on their door to ask them to turn it down.

Strangely enough, they did not open the door, instead a man asked me who I was through the closed door. I told him I was his neighbor and that I would appreciate it if he could turn down his music. He did so, I went to bed, and life went on.

Fast-forward to Friday and he is at it again…this was during the day, mind you, but even then. I’d like to think that as a general rule, I should not hear anything coming from my neighbor’s apartment, and they should not hear anything from mine. As previously, I knocked on the door, and knocked, and knocked, but nobody answered.

I didn’t want to call the police, but I had to do something, so I called the apartment office and they said they would call my neighbor and ask him to turn it down. The music continued and a half-hour later I had to call the office again. Eventually (later that evening, actually) the racket stopped and I haven’t heard anything of consequence since.

I obviously don’t know what the apartment people told them, but I’m glad they finally got the message. I suspect that the source of the noise is a subwoofer, they have a nasty tendency to reverberate through walls. Regular speakers, not so much, but the bass coming out of a subwoofer will be felt in surrounding rooms pretty easily. Turn down the subwoofer, problem solved.

I think its a pity that I had to resort to calling the apartment office, I think we could have easily worked it out if they had just answered the door, but what can you do?