New here. Infrasonic insomnia! Advice, please :-)-Acoustics Forum-Acoustic Fields Forum

Hi everyone –
Name is Bob, from Southern California.

My wife and I need help with a serious issue. She is one of the small percentage of people who are very sensitive to low-frequency noise.

For the past several months, she has been awakened in the middle of the night – 2, 3, 4AM – by irregularly irregular bass tones which are apparently causing the walls to resonate. This continues, on and off, for up to a few hours – and she can’t go back to sleep – and by proxy, I can’t either ;-(

I can’t hear it, but I have felt the bed and wall vibrating slightly. The sound, as she describes it, is analogous to, but quieter than, the noise we’ve all heard when a car with a multi-kilowatt sound system with big subwoofers on high volume pulls up next to you at a traffic light.
We know that this can be caused by TVs, video game machines, computers with speakers being driven at maybe slightly-above-average volume levels – maybe not enough to bother the perpetrators but enough to keep one awake at night even a few houses down from the source if the person is very sensitive to it.

We have spoken to those in the neighboring homes – they all deny it.

We have tried ear plugs; minimal effect.

We have looked into noise-cancelling headphones, but they are cumbersome and none claim to solve this sort of problem.

Major structural alterations to the room (e.g. soundproofing, acoustic blockers, etc.), don’t appear to be a quick or reasonably-priced solution.

We have even been advised to bring in the police. But if they can’t hear it, that doesn’t solve the problem either, and perhaps we get one of “those” comments in our file at the police department.

If anyone has been through this and can offer advice, PLEASE let us know. She has a stressful job, works full-time and can’t function on four hours’ sleep per night. Going to bed at 6PM isn’t always possible, and we shouldn’t have to.

Thanks very much, in advance.
Bob