How viable is apartment living for production?

[dgmulf]

I'm going to be moving soon, along with my home studio setup, and I'm not sure if I should consider renting an apartment, or focus exclusively on finding an isolated unit like a guest house. I mix at fairly quiet volumes, but I'm also a vocalist. Things I'm worried about include pissing my neighbors off with my passionate vocals, and my neighbors distracting me or ruining my recordings through the walls. How much of an issue is this?

[resynthesis]

It depends, of course, on the neighbours but about 10 years ago I vowed never to live in an apartment again

[nonnaci]

Could try sound proofing / foaming up a room.

[risome]

Its a big issue .Unless you can isolate your room you will eventually piss someone off.Depends on how serious you are about it all.
Can you put in soundproofing in a rented space or not .Otherwise you will be mixing on cans all the time.

[Bombadil]

Depends on the apartment, and on the neighbours. Some neighbours are more tolerant than others of artistes' work. Some apartments, you can hear your neighbours fart. We are lucky where we live, but I don't crank my amp to 11 (I tend to use Scuffham Amp sims these days) and my wife is a trained singer whose voice would never bother anyone. So far, no neighbours have turned up at our door with torches and pitchforks. If you're shrieking heavy metal stuff, you might be in for hassles. If you do it past proscribed times, you'll likely be in for hassles. A decent place with a bit of soundproofing should do the trick.

[JJ_Jettflow]

I'm lucky as the extra bedroom I use is right next to a storage locker so here is some serious space between my neighbours and my studio.

Speaker size counts! Smaller speakers put out less low frequencies and those are the ones that travel. I have HS50s for mixing but a tracking I have a small set of 3-inch speakers in addition to as a set of AKG 240 MKII. As well use those isolation pads under you speakers...they really help.

I also made floor-to-ceiling panels 4 inches thick filled with special sound formulated insulation. They were covered with dense curtain fabric and have flat legs so they stand on their own with no need to attach to the wall. However, for safety, I used that 3M adhesive hooks on the top of the wall and tethered the panels that way. Heavy rug on the floor and that is about all you can do. I placed them behind the desk and on the opposite wall, a huge Ikea bookcase made of squares...looks just like those baffles for a studio.

No complaints from neighbours but then they are pretty noisy themselves so they don't have much of an argument even if they did complain!

[Hink]

at 57 I just bought my first house and finally have my own room for my studio. I lived in apartments since I left home to join the service at 19 so I know apartment life all too well. I'm primarily a guitar player with a small collection of tube amps which means I can get loud, but over the years I took many steps along the way to make it work such as an isolation cabinet, attenuators and amp sims. I think though vocals is the biggest challenge and for that my walk in closet was the best option.

For mixing there is a lot to be said anyhow for mixing at low levels, it's kind of a personal thing but I know a lot of people who do mix at lower volumes to reduce the amount of standing waves all though in an apartment if you have a room you can sound treat the room and improve on the that. What you likely cannot do is soundproof the room, typically the best way to approach soundproofing is building a room within a room and most landlords wont like that.

Some will say you can do everything with headphones but I have found that difficult as headphones give a somewhat different perspective to the sound field. Basically instead of having a horizontal triangular sound field (you being one vertex and each monitor being another in front of you) you kind of have a linear sound field with you right in the middle between the headphones. This doesn't seem to bother everyone but I find it hinders depth perception which in turn hinders placement within the sound field. Still much can be done with headphones, especially recording.

It depends on how much drive you have and whether you are willing to go with some obvious limitations. For instance chances are you're not miking up an acoustic drum kit in an apartment. You're not going to mic up a full Marshall stack either, but for guitar an isolation cabinet is a room within a room and does a pretty good job (does not completely kill the sound but I never had a neighbor complain). Like I said mixing at lower volume levels is not a bad thing but it does take some getting use to. You can get a lot of mixing done with headphones (like eq'ing and mono mixing which is always a good thing) and then use monitors to sort things out in your stereo field.

I guess it comes down to a few things, how much desire you have, if you are willing to make the adjustments for an apartment and I think what kind of music you are producing really defines how many adjustments you might have to make. If you want to produce music in an apartment you can do it, it wont always be easy and sometimes you will have problems (like not just disturbing neighbors but neighbors disturbing you). But I will be the first to admit that now that I have a house with neighbors at a fair distance it sure is liberating. But then I am glad I spent decades still honing my craft even if it had to be in an apartment, I never let the apartment factor stop me.

Could try sound proofing / foaming up a room.

Foam does not soundproof, it only cuts down on reflections.

[InLight-Tone]

I live full time in an RV and produce library music from the road. Then again, there are no vocals in my productions, just midi instrumentals. Wouldn't trade this lifestyle for any stick and brick...

[JoeCat]

I produced EDM in an apartment with no complaints; did most of my up-front work with cans and used monitors sparingly until the final mix (probably didn't make much difference; my room wasn't prepared and I'm not an ace producer anyway ). But no complaints.

Mostly I just stuck to decent hours, and didn't do too much at one time (which is good practice anyway, as far as ear fatigue). I also only cranked the volume occasionally - and taking breaks helps mitigate that "volume creep" that seems to happen the longer you're working.

Also, I think a lot depends on the apartment and the room. Some places have much better sound isolation. The room I was usually working in did not share a wall with another apartment - only the ceiling - and probably being on the first floor is a better bet.

Did the walk-in closet thing for vocals also - good times!

[jancivil]

You're a vocalist, get some space for that.

[jancivil]

Some will say you can do everything with headphones but I have found that difficult as headphones give a somewhat different perspective to the sound field. Basically instead of having a horizontal triangular sound field (you being one vertex and each monitor being another in front of you) you kind of have a linear sound field with you right in the middle between the headphones. This doesn't seem to bother everyone but I find it hinders depth perception which in turn hinders placement within the sound field. Still much can be done with headphones, especially recording.

I get why people say this. I think with certain massive lows a tuned room may be preferable.

I find most of that illusory, myself. Depth of field is necessarily more accurately perceivable because it's through speakers... in what ideally has cut majorly down on reflections?

This is an abiding interest of mine in mixing, back to front in a mix, and I only use headphones. I like to have different bass response and I do not want illusory presence or highs, but your nearly entirely flat response only goes so far, too. Everyone will have their own thing, but that's my view on it, from never expecting to have enough space to do otherwise. The perfect the enemy of the good.

[RichieWitch]

I produced EDM in an apartment with no complaints; did most of my up-front work with cans and used monitors sparingly until the final mix (probably didn't make much difference; my room wasn't prepared and I'm not an ace producer anyway ). But no complaints.

Mostly I just stuck to decent hours, and didn't do too much at one time (which is good practice anyway, as far as ear fatigue). I also only cranked the volume occasionally - and taking breaks helps mitigate that "volume creep" that seems to happen the longer you're working.

Also, I think a lot depends on the apartment and the room. Some places have much better sound isolation. The room I was usually working in did not share a wall with another apartment - only the ceiling - and probably being on the first floor is a better bet.

Did the walk-in closet thing for vocals also - good times!

^this

I moved my studio to an apartment last October and have not had a single problem with the neighbors. But like JoeCat said, I pick decent hours, use headphones for sound design, composition, and arrangement, and generally use the monitors only for mixdown and streaming music from my computer. I've learned to recognize my neighbors cars too, so if I look out the window and see their cars are gone, I don't worry about the noise.

[Hink]

see you guys obviously dont work with open mics often. My problem miking up a speaker cab often wasn't disturbing neighbors (I had a 4x12 in my closet) as I could turn up the gain on my mic pres and turn down the attenuator. My problem was a sensitive mic picked up heavy walkers, door slams and such

[Azura]

One aspect you should consider with neighbors: they can be friendly, tolerant, no problem with them. But there will be a time that they move out, and the new neighbors are not so comprehensive and tolerant. Big problem.

Marc

[fluffy_little_something]

Other aspects might be window quality and whether or not you live along a busy road. When cars drive by outside my house, there is slight low-frequency rumble. If I recorded vocals here, the microphone might pick that up, I suppose. Actually, I love to sing, but never do since I moved in here. In my previous apartment I had a 3x3' storage room right within my apartment, that was ideal. Since I want to sing again, I will build a little singing booth, like a phone cell

I live downtown now, my house is surrounded by three other houses, wall to wall. The family at the back recently renovated their home, the noise of their power tools was transferred via the walls right into my apartment
The interesting thing is that high frequencies don't seem to get transmitted that way, I never hear anyone speak or sing, no TV or radio, either.
I do hear noise occasionally from outside, it seems to enter via the exhaust hood in the kitchen and the fan exhaust in the bathroom.