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Hey guys! My neighbor living below is complaining about the hammer sound of my Yamaha N1 even though I have been wearing my headphones. It seems like the hammers are really making lots of noise which goes through my floor to my neighbor's ceiling.

I have tried using shock-absorbing pads on each of the legs of my N1, but my neighbor still can hear it when I play.

Any ideas what I can do to reduce the noise in the best way? Thanks in advance!

Buy your neighbor ear plugs

What about some think carpet and padding under the piano area?

This is very odd. There are no strings so the hammer is swinging but hitting nothing. How can they possibly hear this from a room away. Unless you are really slamming hard on the keys causing the whole frame to shake.

Is it possible for you to post a sound recording of you playing with the piano turned off?

The hammers move ... and the hammers stop. When they strike the stop there's a noise, despite the felt padding.

I don't disagree. I'm just perplexed this is loud enough to be heard by a neighbor. I'm very curious to hear a recording of this.

The sound of the hammer strikes is conducted through the body of the piano and into the floorboards.

The floor is the soundboard for this percussive anomaly. Much to the consternation of the neighbor.

Solution: Try sorbothane. Or so have said many here (and elsewhere).

Isn't he hearing the keys thumping instead of the hammers?

Anyway I would put it on a rug and some decent sound proofing caster cups, but I think other than that, if you play at normal times, and not all day long, the real problem is your neighbor.

You already took a big effort to not disturb him by buying a hybrid and wearing headphones, neighbors should really appreciate this. You could have an acoustic piano!

I really dislike people that complain because they "can hear" their neighbors. Live and let live, you are not alone in this world, and if you have neighbors, you can't expect absolute silence.

Depending on how much you want to solve the problem, you might consider building a platform for the DP, and supporting it on an array of tennis balls. I think that should work pretty well.

A YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkg-95wSiaY

For many more ( I had no idea how popular this was) Google

vibration damping tennis balls -racquet

Heehee, neighbours?... what are they? The Missus and I consider ourselves fortunate to be living in one of the world's least populated regions... an island off of another island, in a province where the population density is a mere 0.3 people per square mile... by comparison, New York has 26,403 people/square mile. (and Manhattan has 'em packed in there like an oversized can of sardines, at a whopping 66,940 people/square mile!)

So, we could bang away on the piano all day and night, or crank the stereo up into ear-bleeding territory, and still, we wouldn't be disturbing a living soul. As for the non-living, well, there is a cemetery right across the road, but so far there have been no complaints!

But seriously, it sounds to me like your downstairs neighbour is possibly just one of "those" people who seem to have nothing better to do with their time than to complain about something. I mean, you have made a nice effort to keep things as quiet as possible. Unless your building is constructed out of tissue paper, I doubt that he's hearing much of anything. You just can't please some folks.

A Rug definitely helps, But also a THICC slice of Silicone where the piano contacts the floor (feet) really cuts that vibration.

You want silicone, NOT-neoprene.

Very surprised this is an issue. A hybrid piano's mechanism is probably no louder than a washing machine or background chatter at a dinner party.

One other option is to move the piano to another location within your home? I moved my hybrid piano from our living room into a bedroom that doubles as my home office. When the piano was in an open area, my wife could hear the hammers from the 2nd floor (we have an open floor plan which predisposes to this problem).

Thanks for all your ideas! I am sincerely thankful for them.

haha and I am surprised how many of you here are complaining about my neighbor. But I think the complaint is justified as I played Rachmaninoff and Chopin Etude (with headphones) at around 1 am and my neighbor cannot sleep so it is definitely my fault I would like to address this problem.


This looks like a fancy idea but if I remember correctly the N1 weights more than 100kg. I don't think a self-constructed tennis ball platform will be able to stand the weight and the shock when I play on my N1...




caster cup vs silicon vs sorbothane...which would be the best solution for my case?

Don’t play at 1am?

On the contrary, tennis balls would easily support a structure of 100kg. You just need the appropriate number of tennis balls. It's the hassle of making it that's the main deterrent.

A thick sheet of sorbothane, with some sort of plywood/particle board over the top of it would do you just fine. There are silicone caster cups around - most of which offer very little actual vibrational damping when heavily loaded. You're have to get very thick, expensive and nicely squishy ones to have them work well on your piano. I'm not sure what the rear legs on your N1X look like so I don't know whether they are suitable for the rear. Caster cups certainly will look nicer than a sorbothane/board sandwich, but I suspect the latter would insulate the piano better from your neighbour.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Should I have the sorbothane/particle board sandwich just under the four legs of the piano or should I create a huge sandwich? And is there a difference between just sorbothane and sorbothane+particle board?

Why go through all this hassle when you can just tell your neighbour "wasn't me" or "Sorry, really have no idea what your talking about"

I would buy a cheap weighted keyboard to practice at odd hours and then just play the other during day practice times.

You’d be surprised how a ‘cheap weighted’ keyboard can also produce loud thumping sounds.

The best solution is creating layers between the piano and the floor. As has been suggested before, a combination of thick rugs and other soundproofing products can work very well.

I put my N1X on a MDF board (1500x700x19) with five 10x10cm cellfoam stands beetween the floor and the MDF board. It removes about 90% of the sound from the keyboard. Less complaining now from my family members watching TV on the first floor

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