Sorry to hear that, I have a similar issue at my house and unfortunately you're totally right about the glass. But windows are not excessively expensive and you could have a set installed on the inside, it would do a lot to kill that noise, my neighbor had it done and it works good depending on the location and design of the window area. The other thing you could do is buy enough sound booth foam to attach to your drapes and make them much more sound resistant. Or have a big foam cover made and just take it down when you wake up. Hope you find something to work. In the end I just purchased comfortable ear plugs and I wear them when things get noisy. :)

Chinizzle, I'm a professional broadcast and audio/video engineer and designer. I know a good bit about studio construction and I saw your earlier question about sound proofing. Here is my professional opinion:

- Foam is generally only useful for controlling reverberation within the recording space. It is usually of very little use, in terms of controlling external vibration, which produces external noise.

- Sheet rock/drywall is generally your only corrective option, and even it has limited value, if not properly executed. For all recording spaces, I specify a minimum triple (3 layers) 1/2" sheet rock. It needs to be installed from floor to ceiling, with no holes. Even a 1" hole will vastly increase the infiltration of high frequency noise. You should treat it as if your are trying to keep out poison gas.

The great thing about building a recording area in Chinese buildings is that there is often no HVAC. This is the biggest contributor to ambient noise back home. If you live in a quiet area of the city, way above the street level, it can be quite nice. Also, a lot of the construction of new building incorporate seismic counter-measures. Internal non-load-bearing walls that would be sheet rock back home, are made of 6"+ solid block.

I'm actually equipping my home to do some voice-over recording, so I share your pain.

Best of luck in your project!

Thanks, good information. Earlier, my post mentioned construction design to save on foam, and what I've done in the past is two framed walls with drywall only on one side each. It creates a dead space in between and is super effective. But I've never tripled it up, awesome.

In the US this method is part of the building code now when apartments share a wall. Interesting bit about the foam though thanks very much I'll keep in in mind. For my friends here in china we soundproof their doors with 8" foam and it is extremely effective. Great post thanks again.

Ps. Hey what would you do to combat hvac noise? Do you use like a break in the ductwork? Soft ducts. Or turn off the unit while you're recording?

Hey, does anyone out there know how hard it would be to set up a home server and home network? Using modern equipment, I'm imagining it's all wireless, and I'd have a few requirements if I'm going to do it.
1. All computers can share all drives, right now I have several auxiliary drives and it's a mess.
2. I'd want to be able to set up my router to the main computer to always on VPN.
3. I would like everything to be very secure, any suggestions on how to keep hackers out of my computer and server?
Okay that's it for now unless you all have some other suggestions to keep my information safe, and make my system more convenient. Home networks are home improvement too. Geeks welcome.

1) There are wireless drives you plug right into the router or some router/drive combos out there now.

www.wired.co.uk/[...]

2) I think you need to make sure your vpn and router support that. I use Astrill and they have a help page that explains a lot. Or research ddrt (but that's a bit technical).

www.astrill.com/astrill-vpn-routers.php
www.astrill.com/dd-wrt.php

3) Don't use Windows Server products. Choose passwords with no english words in them. Good encryption protocol on router and if you are really paranoid, don't have the router broadcast. And install ESET smart security or similar on all computers. If you are going to be doing anything transaction based, better to just hire out and have your site hosted by some big name, Rackspace, Amazon, etc. I wouldn't choose Google for anything China related.

Cool! I will get on it. I use astrill but it's always getting kicked off by the system. Have you purchased any of your equipment from kunming vendors? I know the 数码成 market pretty well but I find their prices too high and quality too low. Thanks for the info.

Have you tried the Astrill help centre, accessed from the Astrill home page?
I have had a couple of issues, including getting bumped with SSL errors.
The online help had answers for all my problems and it is run live like a chat room. The longest I have had to wait is 7 minutes.
Might be worth giving them a ping is you haven't already done so.

The stealthVPN feature in Astrill worked pretty well at keeping connections steady. It's available for an extra fee

I am using the OpenWeb, but needed to change a few settings. No extra cost.

Openweb is great for watching videos and doing normal browsing. I think it works more like a proxy. Openvpn is good when accessing pages where you have to input private and secure data, like passwords, cc details or social network usage. It also has a higher data encryption.

I think Astrill designed the stealthvpn feature to avoid unplanned blocks or new security measures that often occur here. It's probably more of a lazy option when you don't want to tweak the other protocols.