I live in an apartment that share walls with the apartments of a few neighbours, with whom I'm generally not chatty. I like to listen to music (without earphones) and more importantly sing in the shower, but I don't want to disturb them. How can I determine if I am being too loud without having to constantly run next door to ask "can you hear me now?" In other words, how can I make sure I'm not being heard by my neighbours?
Details:
- I want to do my stuff as loudly as possible while still making sure that my neighbours can't hear me (in order not to bother them and maintain my privacy).
- When singing or listeing to music, I always close the windows and doors of the room I'm in (and they are in good condition).
- I never do these loud activities in a room that directly shares walls with a neighbour's apartment.
- I am not only concerned with neighbours on the sides, but also the ones above and below my apartment too.
Note about edits: This question was heavily edited several times (sorry!) and is very different from when I first worded it. Thanks @RobertCartaino for brilliantly helping me figure out what really was my own question. The answer by @ZeissIkon was posted before all those edits (thank you very much for answering, I'm happy that you received some upvotes).
At first, I thought that my problem was to determine what is the "loudness threshold" of my apartment, i.e., the limit beyond which my neighbours could hear me; knowing that, I could make sure that I always stayed below that limit. Yes, determining that would certainly work for me, but I realized now that this would be an example of the XY problem. In fact, what I need is any clever way to make sure I'm not heard, not necessarily this complicated one that I was thinking of.
