Not necessarily. I had neighbors do that with the car stereos -- across the street and down a house.

They played them so loud, and the subwoofers were so strong, that I would hear the glass panes vibrating within their frames, in my windows. In addition to the bass, itself.

There is simply no way to stop such noise from penetrating right through nearby structures.

In my last corporate job, that moved from offices to shared, low wall "cubettes", there was a contingent that would stand up and shout their conversations across the aisles. There was my immediate neighbor, on the other side of my cubette wall, who would pound our connected desk system incessantly while on hours worth of personal phone calls. (Sometimes "multi-tasking", which would show up when her work products would have to be redone.) Not only would I hear it, it would shake my own desk. When I asked her, very politely, to please not to hit her desk repeatedly, she reported me to HR and I ended up in the dog house.

All the... well, corporate propaganda, was about "collaboration".

And within that cubette you shared, you were supposed to tune out hour long cube meetings taking place 3-4 feet from your shoulder.

Grandparent commenter: I sympathize. That... "sounds" very familiar.

I had no support from family and friends. Actually, sort of active anti-support, until they experienced it for themselves. Which few, other than family, did, because I was so uncomfortable that I didn't invite people over.

My strong advice, after having let the stress pull me into a downward spiral, is to do whatever you can to get yourself out of it and to someplace safe. Screw what other people say; they're not living with it.

And, we don't all have to be corporate -- or start up -- environment drones.

Get out, before it's too late.

P.S. Lest people say I'm "anti-social" or poor at working collaboratively, at one BigCo, I had a senior manager outside my reporting structure present me with a corporate-wide award for independently and pro-actively throwing a cross-country team together to troubleshoot and solve a process that had been in chronic, repeated crisis for some years. These weren't people who reported to me, just people across the organization who benefited from -- collaboratively -- establishing responsibilities, expectations, deliverables, dates, and a process for problem resolution, for something we all depended upon and knew needed to get done.

"Collaboration" does not mean tuning out a bunch of noise that has nothing to do with what you're working out.

One of the most effective, and senior, development teams I was on, within a rather large corporation and development shop, was about 50% remote, with developers upping their remote time as much as they felt they could, as that became acceptable. (This happened particularly after the move from offices to those "cubettes", for those who had been working in the office. Oh, and the distracted, desk-pounding neighbor was not part of that team.)

The team had no problem working together, nor with other teams, internal and external. People knew what they were doing, and they could make the space to concentrate on it effectively. One of the most effective guys, off in Atlanta, I never even met face-to-face, over the course of a few years.

Sorry if I've gone on about this, a bit. But this "mythology" of the primacy of "open space collaboration" needs to be... "dispelled" is too weak a word.

As far as I'm concerned, if people want to work that way, let them. Somewhere away from me. I'll outperform them, if my own work preferences -- needs -- are respected, and the metrics are fair.

Furthermore, you need a living space under your own control, to enjoy and also where you can rest up from the parts of the world -- including the work world -- that aren't under your control.

The idea that you should somehow learn to ignore, or even "enjoy" your neighbor's loud music and other behavior. No. And, I've found, most often the people making such comments aren't putting up with such circumstances, themselves.

People in other circumstances may live differently. Even then, I think there is a difference between community noise and penetrating, amplified noise that invades your space and triggers your autonomous nervous system.

Kids playing in the neighborhood, quite audible through an open window, are no problem for me. There is a difference.