Low Volume Listening?

[awkaplan]

As I said, awkaplan has 2 distinct problems, one with  his sound quality at low listening levels and the other with bass filtering through to his neighbours and causing complaints.

If there were no problems with the neighbours the problem of solving low level listening enjoyment would be easy to solve, and low level listening might not even be required. Since there are problems with the neighbours over bass and since a large part of the solution to the listening quality problem is more bass which will make the problem with the neighbours worse if the sound transmission problems is ignored, I think the first thing awkaplan has to do is find ways of reducing bass transmission to the neighbour's apartment. The options as I see them are limited:

1- easy and low cost: speaker isolation and/or increasing the distance between the speakers and the neighbour's apartment. These are also not particularly effective ways of reducing sound transmission. They will help with minor problems but they may not help enough to satisfy the neighbours.

2- difficult and high cost: structural modification to the walls. floor and ceiling of awkaplan's apartment in order to block sound transmission as effectively as possible. This can be much more effective than the low cost options but the cost will be much much greater, it's probably not possible if he's living in rented accommodation,  and if it's his own apartment then it's money that he's thrown away if he ever moves because he's unlikely to be able to recover the cost of the building modifications.

3- free, unpalatable, and unacceptable: only listening to music when the neighbours are out or removing bass content from the music listened to at low level. The problems related to our hearing sensitivity won't arise and there'll either be no neighbours to be bothered by the bass or no bass to transmit to the neighbours but most of us would never want to listen to music without bass and would never wish to go down either of these roads.

4- bypass the neighbour problem entirely, cost variable: headphones but not everyone likes headphone listening.

I am unaware of any other ways to solve the problem of the neighbour's complaints and I am unaware of any way of improving listening enjoyment while listening to speakers at low levels which does not involve boosting the bass levels and doing that will make the problem with the neighbours worse. If anyone has some other options to add I'd like to see them.

All very well put.  Perhaps this speaker cable adventure will enhance the low-volume listening experience.  I’m finding that you are correct, bass even at low volumes can be problematic.  Yesterday I Sol tropes in to a walk-in closet near my listening area and was confronted with resonating bass.  I’m finding toying with volume has been helping too—I think the ill-feelings from the neighbors come from times where I let the system really rip in the past.  Being sensitive to material, I can keep it around -26dB into the evening without incident.  I’ll explore some isolators and new cable.  Placement options are limited.  And I’m not doing headphones or shifting genres/composition.