Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Key "Thump" heard downstairs - advice on how to quiet?

So I have the Roland FP7F, with the wooden stand. I'm on the second floor, and the piano is on a light carpet.

From downstairs, I can't really hear the music, but a very audible "Thump" of the keys going up and down can be heard. It sounds like distant thunder, and is surprising how much noise those little keys actually make downstairs, even when played softly and not banging.

Now - what can be done to reduce this thumping noise? The Roland is pretty heavy, so I figure maybe it's really pushing down on that wooden stand and thus on the floor causing the vibrations to be more pronounced.

Would an extra carpet under the Roland help? Or what type of material would be most effective at reducing this thumping noise? It's not up against the wall, but close to it - but I am assuming that the thumping is traveling through the legs of the stand.

Any ideas?

Open cell foam perhaps? I used some black foam that I got with a replacement hard drive in the mail under my new hard drive (open, not in a case) and it stopped the noise dead. If you can put some between your piano and the stand it might help. And another carpet under the stand (perhaps with foam under it) would help yet more. Basically the idea is to separate the movement of your piano from the stand and floor so it doesn't use them for a resonating board.

I use shelf liner under my piano, though I don't have much a problem because I have concrete under me.

One can also try and actually block the sound, but for low frequencies like thumps that stuff is typically massive and not always cheap. Is the noise being transmitted through the floor or is it going under the door and down the stairs?

Edit: oh you are using the attached stand. So everything needs to be between the stand and the floor.

It's going right through the floor - it seems to sound louder downstairs then when playing the piano!

Hmm. Foam, carpet, a folded up blanket, couch cushion. Try lots of stuff until you find the easiest thing that works. And definitely let us know what ends up being the solution.

I will - also I want to keep in mind the height of the keyboard, I want to keep it level with the bench, so if I get something that raises the keyboard, I'd like it under the bench too to stay at the same height. (Like a larger carpet.)

They sell vibration/noise dampening stuff for laying under wood floors. Laminate flooring underlay. That might be more resilient. You could get a small amount and fold it a couple of times. Something like that. It's kind of designed for that purpose, but most likely a single layer will be too thin for what you want.

The thing is, you really only need it under a very small area, so you could get something pretty exotic and effective if you want, so maybe floor underlay is not right.

This is structural noise and you need to isolate that. You need what some drummers use. I could describe it at length but there's loads of stuff out there on the web if you look for it. It will be an effort to make this thing but it will cure 95% of the problem...

You need a bid board (big and rigid enough to carry the piano and your stool when in the playing position - a big strong plywood sheet would do it). You need to cut holes into this board (quite a few holes - at least a dozen, maybe more) and the holes need to be big enough for tennis balls to locate into but not slip through. The idea is that the board on the tennis balls isolates the key thumping that generates the structural noise in your house. So you could then carpet this board so it looks ok and then you would step up onto this little platform to play the FP. You could make the board just big enough for the piano but then the piano would be a couple of inches higher than your seating position and that would probably cause issues with pedalling which is why the board ideally needs to be big enough to accommodate your bench too.

I know it's a pain to do this but all the other ideas about just using more carpet etc will not really cure this problem - you need balls to isolate that noise!

Good luck,

Steve

I use a slab of granite under the stand. You don't want anything "smushy" like foam because that will cause your piano to wobble. The granite is SOLID and extremely dense and did the trick perfectly. The downside is that it ain't cheap and it's heavy as heck so getting in the room wasn't a simple task.

You could use smaller squares of granite to and place one under each leg, or contact point, of your stand. But a single slab has significant density and eats up the thump.

Curt

That provided my morning giggle . . . !

I had the same problem. I wasted $400 on a dense, thick rug that didn't help at all. Neighbors kept banging on the ceiling with every little noise, got fed up, moved out of that 2nd floor apartment, and moved into a first floor apartment.

It's so nice to be able to play without having to constantly worry if your neighbor's are going to get upset.

I just opened up my MP10 and discovered that the thump comes not from the key "bottoming out" but from the hammer striking the padded bar at the top of the mechanism. It only touched the bottom pad when I pressed down quite firmly on the key - way more force than is applied during normal playing.

Now the padding on this bar is quite soft and its purpose is to simulate the "strings" in an acoustic piano, giving a similar feel to when the hammer strikes the strings. But the pad strip is adhered to a thin metal (aluminum) plate that is quite resonant itself! Just tapping the metal with my finger generated a very loud thump similar to what is heard when playing!

I think to better aide in thump reduction, the "strings" foam strip should be adhered to a much more dense material. I would suggest using a granite or marble beam, realizing that this could add a few pounds to an already heavy unit that is intended to be portable.

I'm curious though... given that the MP10 is a stage piano where thumping is a total non-issue, I wonder if the other KAWAI pianos (the "home" units) have the same hardware assembly as the MP10? I know that they share the RM3 but does that mean the same aluminum bracing and pad placement?

Curt

Yes, the keyboard action is the same.

James
x

So I assume that they thump as loudly as the MP10 does?

Curt

I don't believe the 'RM3 Grand' action thumps, nor is it loud.

James
x

Kawai's action is quiet by comparison with some other actions, though I can understand discussing it as a "thump." When the hammers hit the foam it makes a fairly low frequency noise. It's not loud in my opinion, but low frequency stuff is hard to damp.

Well I have three people in my house that would respectfully disagree with you! Four, if you count me. It may not be as loud as the Roland actions, but it still makes a LOT of noise and especially through the floor to the room downstairs.

Curt

That's where something of significant mass, like granite, works perfectly! But I still am curious if applying the mass to the plate where the hammers strike would absorb the thump - stop it internally by design. It makes physical sense to me.

Curt

Well, I actually enjoy problems like this. Most likely the right solution will be cheap (like old blankets or something) and fun to try and figure out. I kind of wish I had a problem like that to fix with my system rather than the ponderous dilemma of finding speakers that do my DP justice.

My advice is to have some fun with it. Try a bunch of stuff and combinations of stuff until you figure it out and show your family that you are the hard-core DP master of the house!

Well, as I said, the granite slab beneath the stand did the trick AND it still looks cool - like gloss ebony! But to me, it's a band-aid. I'm like Dyson or Jobs in this respect; things should just be right by design and not require shoe horns or wedges or duct tape to get it to do what it should do.

I may just look into adding the mass to the plate inside though. I wish I had the project drive that sigasa has!!

Curt

Yeah probably something massive like that granite slab. Maybe with something thin and soft on top of and/or under it. When they sound proof rooms they use massive materials like lead (or used to) and then layers of soft stuff that absorbs some of the shock. The mass is necessary because of the low notes (at least in room soundproofing).

To give you an example, the cheap, DIY way to soundproof a room is to add a layer of drywall on top of your existing one with a layer of caulk in between the two layers of drywall. The mass of the drywall stops the vibration and the soft stuff keeps it from getting transmitted. There are better materials than regular dryall (like super heavy drywall), of course, but that's the principle.

A heavy solid mass under the piano with something soft beneath it operates on basically the same idea.