All sax mutes were meant well to solve some serious noise & neighbors relations problems, after all the e-sax was invented in Japan where the vast majority of people live in small flats where, even if they wanted, most people couldn’t fit a whisper room and swing the proverbial cat in their flat.
The sad fact is that there is no real solution for this problem other than playing the only real silent, true, sax in the world the Swiss synthophone
http://www.synthophone.info which is not a proper sax in sound (since it is a midi instrument) but it is, at least, a proper sax when it comes to everything else (unlike other electronic contraptions by Akai, Yamaha and the old and gone Lyricon ).
The problem is that the synthophone costs as much as an inexpensive isolated cabin ! And that that is above most people budget!
Playing “ in the closet” makes you look and feel stupid, so unless you are really motivated you won’t do that long.
The blanket solution wouldn’t work for me either, again, my experience is that ( and I am not the only one), if you reduce the sound of the saxophone in whichever way and your ears are not connected to the saxophone somehow most,
but not cafe member altissimo, will play harder to hear themselves.
Which is the reason why the makers of the e-sax and subsequent copies, provided this mute with an internal microphone, headphones, the possibility of creating some sort of reverberation ( because it sound more natural this way) and the possibility to play IN some background music so that you hear in the headphone, music that outside is silent and you play at a similar volume level, hearing the whole thing in your headphones. You can also play the whole thing OUT so that you can record yourself ( or leave the whole thing to imagination and memory, both kinder than real records).
Yes, your hands will sweat, yes the inside of your mute collects lots of moisture that you are blowing in the mute, but if you use it properly it will work better than any relatively cheap solution to this problem.
I live in a flat, with the exception of one another family, I am the person who has been living here the longest, when new people come to live here they know that I play saxophone between 16:00 and 18:00 (often less and sometimes I don’t play at all). Most are still at work and are not yet having their dinner (which I would no doubt spoil) 17:00 tea is not a normal thing in the Netherlands.
Soon I will have to move and I will have this problem. I hope to find a solution. If I can’t then e E-sax is probably the temporary solution that I’d go for.