Advice from apartment dwellers

Thanks all, for your considered responses and information...looks like I have some reading up to do. Many thanks!

"Unless you have a pre WWII apartment, you will never get the ability to listen at sound levels that make the hobby enjoyable."

I think you have it backwards. The walls in pre war buildings are paper thin. At least all the ones that I've been in. I can't tell you how many times I ran to answer the phone, only to find out that it was one of my neighbours phones ringing, and not mine.

I agree with you Zd. My experience is the 50s-60s brick buildings isolate sound much better than pre-war flats. Fortunately that's the kind of building I'll be moving into, so we'll see how it goes. I'm on the top floor in a corner, so it's one wall and the floor. The floor, obviously, is the bigger concern.

Construction quality is going to dictate your direction more than anything else.

I once lived in 2 different units of the same apartment complex. Built 2001, very flimsy. The bottom level unit (facing the woods) had carpet over concrete slab and was FAR more enjoyable in terms of sound quality and ability to play moderate/loud. The walls were still flimsy but at least the floor anchored the sound. Big downside here was hearing everything from the unit upstairs, and the higher risk of break-in -- which did occur and caused me to move upstairs.

Then I had a top (4th) floor unit -- it was awful. I don't think there was any way to make those rooms sound good with large speakers, nor to limit sound transmission to below. Lost the nice view of the woods too; overlooked a parking lot. Moving out of there was liberating.

Best system I had in this complex was Tannoy Eyris DC3 compact floor-standers in the unit with concrete slab. Worst was Legacy Signature III (big floor-standers) or Tyler Acoustics Linbrook monitors (way-too-big monitors) in the top-floor unit. However, the Tyler Acoustics Taylo Reference monitors (reasonable size monitors) did manage to sound excellent in that unit, at the expense of low bass. Magneplanars might have been interesting to try, but I never did.

Definitely your building’s construction will dictate. I’m in a co-op built in 1960 and the sound isolation is terrible (as is every other NYC post war building I’ve been in). They were throwing these buildings up as fast as possible and after a couple of renovations of my current place - that lack of quality was seen first hand.

Anyway, I’ve tried all kinds of systems and I ended up with a simple system based around a pair of Harbeths. They’re designed to be the best low-level listening speakers for all day listening. Depending on your room size, a pair of Harbeths with an integrated with some juice - something like an NAD 375 and you’ll have a versatile, great sounding system with your current sources...