Do you hear what I hear?

I have a kick butt subwoofer. Two of them, in fact. There's one in my bedroom attached to my computer (where all my music plays) and one attached to my entertainment system (games and movies). They're pretty sweet. I know because I've turned them on at least three or four times.

I live in an apartment and I am aware that subwoofer sound tends to carry. I have neighbors on two sides and one above. There are also three more, at the diagonals, who might be affected. This is Georgia, after all, and they're not big on things like insulation down here. Considering it's sixty degrees outside on this the third day of February, that's not surprising. Regardless of the reason, there's nothing in the walls to keep the sound from passing from apartment to apartment. Normal sounds like voices don't travel very well, but the low beats of a subwoofer treat the walls as abstract concepts instead of concrete barriers. I don't think subwoofer beats even notice the walls most of the time, just go about their business (primarily booming) as if they weren't there.

I know this because my left-side neighbor owns a subwoofer and is clearly not afraid to use it. I have pointed out its capacity for transmitting through walls on several occasions, and each time he is deeply apologetic and mildly surprised. He has not yet grasped that this is not a singular phenomenon. He can be forgiven for thinking so, I suppose, since I am not very diligent in pointing out his error. I have a significant capacity for ignoring background noise that simultaneously awes and frustrates Sarah, who lacks it entirely. Adding in my moderate-to-severe aversion to confrontation means I let my neighbor have his thumping bass most of the time and only interrupt him when it is affecting my sleep or my work.

If he were my only neighbor, I'd have no compunction about using my own subwoofers. Alas, he is not, and the other two are relatively well behaved most of the time. My upstairs neighbor does appear to have a healthy relationship, but fortunately not much stamina and that sound does not carry nearly as well anyway. So I leave my subwoofers off most of the time, and look forward to the day my living space is no longer directly connected to my neighbors'.