Downward firing speaker port and domestic issues

Perhaps using a pair of Townshend Platforms would help decouple any bass that could migrate to the downstairs apt.

Though, to be honest, I own a floorstander with a bass port (Vandy Treo's), The amount of bass energy exiting is rather low.

Bob

Panel speakers work good for this. Not much energy goes anywhere but on axis.

I sincerely share your grief and recommend you headphones. Where your speaker fires, it doesn't matter at all. All will depend on your neighbor tolerance and degree of sound isolation. If you have neighbor upstairs and hear him talking or watching TV program you're familiar with...(Can you imagine AGT everyday??) than probably you have an approximate measure to worry about your total listening dB. To your surprise or not, there are choices of components for every case of listening situations especially when you want to listen lower than concert or band levels. I would kinda look for pure class A amplification 10...15w per side if you're not the owner of such yet.

Living in an apartment has compromises.

But to be helpful, I think a lot more information would be useful to us. What kind of music do you listen to? What equipment do you have. How loud do you listen? What speakers are you considering?

While it is normally regarded that bass is not directional. I doubt many folks have actually tried downward firing woofers (I assume that is what you are talking about) versus others, and went downstairs to verify this assumption. Transmission occurs in two ways, the sound from the cones and the cabinet vibration.

While I have not tried downward firing woofers, it would not surprise me if they would transmit sound downstairs more than forward firing. I would buy forward firing and isolate them from the floor. There are hundreds of brands of speakers… I am sure you could find some you could love that are not downward firing.

Also. You might consider meeting and making friends with your neighbors downstairs and show that you are really trying to be considerate. There may be some times that they have TV time and don’t mind a bit of additional noise. You might have them up to listen to music!  If you wait until they complain, you have pissed them off. Best to head it off and maintain close communications.

actually kenjit you're uninformed as usual there is something that will stop based from going into the floor it's called the Townshend podiums and they stop all vibrations from going into the floor and coming back into the speaker and your equipment and shaking them and vibrating them they isolate down to three Hertz not cheap but boy do they work very well it's like upgrading your electronics the more expensive gear that's how significant the improvement is.