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Comment by brandonhorst | Hacker News Reader

Off topic, but looking through the comments, so many people seem to believe that any multi-family housing is noisy. That has literally never been my experience despite living exclusively in multi-family housing for the past 15 years. Sometimes I can hear my neighbor's kid when they're directly outside my front door. That's it.

Have the folks who think that apartments are noisy just never lived in apartment? Or is my experience the skewed one?

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Every apartment or condo I’ve lived in in the US (and it’s been at least 10) has had terrible problems with noise from neighbor units, except 2, and one of those was the top floor. The other was actually a concrete high-rise built as condos so I suspect that solid construction helped. Voices, TV, footsteps, sex, arguments, domestic violence, parties, demo/remodeling, noisy pets; you name it, I’ve heard it in excruciating detail. It’s not been my experience that “niceness” of the building makes any difference either, just height, as wood frame construction becomes impractical over a certain number of stories—but that’s getting higher every few years.

I understand there are construction techniques to mitigate this even in low-rise wood frame buildings, but I’ll eat my hat if any designer or builder in the US bothers unless forced by regulation.

The "modern" apartments I've lived in have been relatively quiet, but the one 50's era apartment was terribly noisy. It was a two story with an attic appt and a basement appt wedged in-between the main floors.

I lived on the second floor, and loved the hardwood floors and french doors etc. Then someone moved in above me, and another across the hall. I could hear the guy across the hall every time he opened or closed the door. The guy who moved into the attic above me must have been related to Sting. His lovemaking sessions lasted for what felt like weeks.

I think this is a key point of customer discrimination. It would be really helpful for housing to have a required and standardized "sound-proof" rating. If customers could be informed and builders incentivized, then what is build and bought could change.

That being said most apts I've lived have been pretty quiet, but I'm not sure how much that is from materials or luck with neighbors.

Most US stock of multi-family housing in low and mid-rise apartments were not built with modern building code with STC above 45 (hotel framing AKA staggered studs). Furthermore, between floors sound can carry, and even older homes can drop in STC over time depending upon the material used in insulation as well as deterioration of materials over time. My friends that lived in only high rise buildings haven't had noise issues like myself and many others where we could hear conversations on the other side of walls of neighbors similar to the extent parodied in the movie Office Space with the main character's neighbor.

I've lived in a variety of multi-family units, some have _definitely_ been far too noisy. I'm still trying to work out what some upstairs neighbors I had a few years ago were up to regularly that sounded just like bowling but with office furniture.

But for the most part as long as the unit isn't facing a major road/rail and the neighbors aren't the college-frat sort, they're usually not too noisy at all.

Most apartment buildings in America have a quite bad sound insulation in my experience, and although I've seen some modern apartment towers with a solid soundproofing, those are usually not affordable to most people and so everyone just believes that apartments = noise.

In Canada they certainly are. In Germany the isolation tends to be significantly better.

In Canada I could follow the hockey score through the wall. In Germany I've literally never heard my next door neighbour. Newer buildings are even quieter.

It is related to the cost of construction. I paid 600k+ for a nice condo with concrete slab between floors. I never heard anything from my neighbors. Wood construction might be a different story.

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