Acoustic wall panels

[Boopeedoop]

Hi there. I have very noisy neighbours, especially in the bedroom. 🤢. Are those wall panels any good for filtering out sound for us, or are they more beneficial for our neighbours?

Many thanks.

I didn’t find them much use. The noise travels though the floors and the ceilings too easily for wall panels to work effectively. Felt like a waste of money.

That's what I suspected. These 1970's houses are shoddy!

Don't bother. I did similar to my ceiling and it didn't help at all. You either soundproof all surfaces or none.
Invest in Loop earplugs.

We have insulated walls. The neighbours complain about our noise all the time. Not to our faces - behind our backs to other neighbours, Facebook etc- but what they don’t realise is they’re just as noisy and we just ignore it. Don’t get your knickers in a twist over a first world problem.🙂

I have them in an otherwise tiled area of my house and they are quite good for dampening the echo we would otherwise get. They might muffle the sound a bit but I think you'd want them in your neighbours' house, not yours. And they wouldn't help with banging headboards etc.!

No, not at all.

Acoustic treatment and soundproofing, although somewhat related, deal with two entirely different issues. Am a sound engineer btw.

I would invest in a decent pair of loud speakers to place against the shared wall.

I had soundproofing in my favourite house all along the stairs and most of one room and it did help. You can get soundproofing board now and we've got them between the bedrooms. They are not as good but as our walls are just panels internally it helps a little.

I can hear them fucking in their bedroom from my living room.

I hear his smokers cough.

Shagging sounds will likely be structurally transmitted, a pp mentioned banging headboards. This is particularly hard to get rid of.
Hearing their voices might be a little easier to deal with depending on if it’s him or her (eww don’t want to think about that) but basically I think you’ll need to accept that the dividing wall between the properties isn’t very thick.
Impact noise (foot stomping or rampant headboard banging) is best dealt with at source, ie inside their house, with materials that absorb these vibrations; acoustic underlay for example.
Voices can be dealt with by dividing wall treatments, this will involve treating the entire wall though, the more mass (weight) and structural isolation you add the better you get. You will likely need (good) professionals for this- it’s not a diy job.

The slatted wooden things you can buy from diy places that you hang on the wall and are quite trendy at the moment will do bugger all though.

Id either call some experts (££££), put up with it, have a word with them…

or move.

It could be so much worse. Sound proofing does go both ways. My neighbours moan relentlessly about a certain noise from our home. We’ve had sound proofing installed, the noise was measured, they were happy. Six months later they’re not happy, nothing has changed. They then tell lies to environmental health. They eventually back down when we prove it’s impossible. All during this time their children scream - all the time - father shouts, crying in the night. DIY all weekend. We say nothing. Because all families are different. Just remember you hear them they probably hear you 😉

God how horrible! I would move !!

What sound proofing did you add?

Things hung on the wall have zero effect generally. Soundproofing, to do correctly is actually incredibly difficult.

I’m not sure what sound proofing it is. It’s in between the walls, then almost a new wall was built in front of it. Excuse my ignorance on the specific language. It was very expensive. We wasn’t a diy job.

If you’ve had a new wall built infront of the existing one and it’s been done correctly, then you’ve done the right thing and it’s the right approach.

But sound transmission also works through the structure; flanking transmission is what it’s called, it will travel through floor and ceiling joists too.

Basically it’s physics, you need to stop (airborne and impact) energy transferring into your home and that can be difficult to impossible depending on what type of noises you’re dealing with.

Sorry if this is a bit anorak and boring but it can be incredibly hard to deal with if the starting point is basically a flimsy house/flat.

@Lilacmclovely it seems like you’ve done as much as you can to try and make things better for your neighbour. Some people are just unrealistic about how much they should hear. People have to go about their lives and there gets a point where their problems aren’t yours.

Environmental health will only get involved when things get extreme and I can bet this is not the case with the noise you are making. The fact they’ve called them marks them out as selfish and unreasonable.

And I sympathise with the op too. FWIW one of my previous neighbours seemed to get off on how much sex noise they could put out when they were at it, pretty grim for everyone else.

@Lonelycrab we’ve done as much as we can. But yeah people are unrealistic and actually don’t realise they’re noisy too sometimes. Environmental health do not have the time for people like my neighbours. They are very intense people. We on the other hand are a bit more chilled. We have more interesting things going on . @Boopeedoop my original response seems flippant and it is but what I’m saying - rather badly- is just chill. It could be so much worse. Maybe have an equally loud session 😉

I've lived here over 25 years. They are the first neighbours that I've heard!

I think it bothers me even more knowing the 11 year old child living in their house is subjected to it as well.