I can relate to this very much. A city guy, no one could understand my (also) 20 years of complaining about neighbors with loud music, slamming doors, making noise after midnight, etc etc. I lived on top floors, and I even spent a fortune living in a luxury building that was newly built, hoping sound insulation was higher end. The problem is that bass music travels through everything. I suffered from being woken up in the night by party goers, and early morning by door slammers. Once I wake up, it takes me a long time to fall back asleep. On weekends, when I want to stay at home and just play a game or read, people play music in the afternoon and often I would stress over some sort of party nearby beginning that evening, forcing me to find somewhere to go just to avoid the noise. Eventually I purchased a home in the woods.

What's happening to make us a minority here is at the minimum:

- Younger people are less sensitive to noise, go out more, and generally don't understand how distressful it can be

- Some people are light sleepers as well as get cognitively overloaded, needing relatively quiet environments to relax. People like me are in a tiny minority.

- Cities are the future, they're the greener option, and you're supposed to prefer the dense apartment life instead of the car one, on ethical grounds.

So when I detailed my suffering several times here on HN, and suggested dense cities are not mentally healthy for many people such as myself, I got downvoted. There's a bit of politics behind city living that folks who don't have cognitive sensitivities around noise just won't relent from.

I also can't stand noise and in my case the solution was to find a two storey apartment at the top floors. They're fairly common in my city.

Another thing that happened by itself was my neighbour with whom I shared several walls moving out. His landlord put the apartment up for sale, but a year later there are still no takers.

I'm seriously considering buying it if only to keep it empty and my place peaceful.

There are a few topics that illicit this kind of response. I've lived in apartments/condos ever since I moved out of my parents' home, and living through Covid in an apartment was the nail in the coffin. My wife and I decided we would not live in a shared building again - at minimum, we'd only look for places that have a private entrance.

Based on the behavior of real estate in our area (high density suburbs of NYC), I don't think we're the only ones? Condo prices have either fallen or remained static while SFH have skyrocketed.

> The problem is that bass music travels through everything.

It’s not just bass tones—low-frequency vibrations travel through everything. I live in a five-story pre-WWII building, and sometimes, when a neighbor runs their washing machine early on a Saturday morning, I don’t even hear the spin cycle. I just feel it, lying in bed trying to squeeze in a little more sleep. It’s an odd sensation, not painful, but definitely not pleasant.