Limiters, noise, neighbours: Any advice?

[mxg]

Hello,

I wonder if anyone has any experience in using limiters (or other solutions) to minimize problems between bars and neighbours?

I live next door to a bar that sometimes has DJs come in. There are ongoing problems w. noise in my apartment. (I get mostly bass, w. a bit of mids once in a while). The owner of the bar really wants to help. He and I trying to work together to figure out a way to set levels, to try and find a working compromise where customers can enjoy music without bothering their neighbours.

I’m not a sound pro, and am learning about this as I go along. I wonder if anyone might have suggestions.

1) Does a limiter seem like a useful solution?
From what I’ve learned, it seems like a limiter is the piece of equipment that would most help. I’m guessing the solution is to place a limiter in the signal chain right before the power amp (which, in this case, happens to be built into a pair of active speakers). The power amp and limiter would be set appropriately, and then placed somewhere were overzealous DJ’s couldn’t get at them.

2) Does anyone have specific recommendations for a limiter? Would multi-band help?
Do you have recommendations for a limiter that might be particularly appropriate to this sort of application? I wonder whether a multi-band limiter might be especially helpful, with thresholds set lowest on the bass frequency, a little higher on the mids, and higher still on the treble, reflecting the realities of how sound transmits through the building. Does this make sense? Has anyone tried anything like this?

3) Does anyone have specific recommendations for settings/setup?
Of course, we’ll have to set the levels ourselves. But does anyone have specific thoughts on how to set up things like attack and release times?


Any help on this would be much appreciated!

[JeffBarnett]

There are really only two solutions to your problem. One involves a construction permit and more massive walls (maybe an extra layer of drywall with some sheetblok (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=sheetblok&go=Go%21) sandwiched in-between the layers?)

The other involves cooperative musicians, deejays, and sound guys who are willing to turn it down.

If neither of those are possible, a limiter will probably make things worse...

It will set a maximum "thou shalt not" limit, which will effectively allow you to keep DJs (or whomever) from exceeding a set peak SPL. But it won't necessarily lower your RMS (http://www.sweetwater.com/insync/word.php?find=RMS) sound level, which is more in line with how your deejays (and neighbors) perceive sound levels.

Imagine this scenario - Your sound guy is running at a reasonable level, and he's only hitting the limiter on really loud peaks. But he feels it should be louder. So he turns up the levels on his console. Now he's hitting the limiter a little harder. The peaks aren't any louder, but the valleys are. So the average volume has increased. But he's still not getting the "punch" he wants, so he turns it up even more. Your new limiter gives him confidence that he can do this without any risk of blowing speakers or damaging amps. So he turns it up again. Now he's driving the limiter almost all the time, and while the peak SPL hasn't changed, the average (RMS) volume is WAY louder than where he started.

And then the cops show up to investigate a noise complaint.

A better solution is setting the gain stage of the amplifiers such that your deejays can't get things too loud, even if they turn the console all the way up. Or have a "come to Jesus" meeting with your deejays and explain that you are serious about controlling SPL, and if they don't want to use the SPL meter (with the "slow" mode on), they don't need to work there.