UPDATE! New PICS SPRING 2005
DOOR:
See the Stock Jute compared to what I added?
You can see my wires over time have worn into the stock asphault sheeting, and left some residue on my wires. Proof that OEMs use the same stuff.
I have added some pictures from my Sound dampening, note this is an Si, but the same will hold true for anyone... there's no "done" pictures, everything was half way when taking those pictures, I ended up using alot more asphault sheeting and jute by the time I was done. 3M spray adhesive is your friend with the Jute and doors/back panels
http://photobucket.com/albums/v511/O...und_Dampening/
Enjoy the thread, it's worth the read! best 100$ I ever spent, and that's ALL I spent. 10x better sound proofing than someone who spent 10x as much.
As always, the offer to hear/see my car stands to anyone who wants to. I'm in the DC/Nova area.
I made this post over at ClubRSX and got into a little tussle, I don't mean to stir up any trouble on the 7thgen forums, I actually enjoy and appreciate the atmosphere and likeable people... I get along less than famously on that board, so please don't take the below statement the wrong way, the context was some guy with 10,000$ of car audio in his vehicle was telling everyone that the only way to do soundproofing/dampening was to spend oodles of money and I got frustrated, so my comments below may be a little harsh, don't take them the wrong way anyone, they were not meant for you, I just didn't want to type up the entire thread again, so cut and paste mainly... or you can see the entire thread here on clubrsx if you do a search for "brown breading". I'm not gonna post the link because it's almost embarassing how I acted, so, with that said, here's some info on soundproofing.
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No offense to anyone who's spent a small fortune on soundproofing their cars...
the ONLY reason to use dynamat, fatmat, brownbread, or any of these kinds of materials is for weight. There are two kinds of sound dampening, mass loading and diffusion. You could poop on your door panels and have the same exact effect if your poop weighed as much as your expensive fatmat/dynamat/brownbread. All these products are asphault. Different ones have aluminum backing, plastic backing etc... the aluminum and small amount of alphault will stop very little if any noise from leaving your vehicle. What the asphault IS good for, is lowering the resonance freqeuncy of noisy door panels. Think of your door panels like a saw, hear how the saw twangs? sheet metal is like a huge steel drum (and Anything hard will conduct sound very well) Don't even think of using spray foam, it actually amplifies the sound compared to dead air space inbetween your doors.
Asphault sheeting comes from 1 factory in Indiana or Iowa (I forget which), and they're all the same thing, asphault. Lead sheeting is what they use in some of the better home speakers, sandwhiched inbetween MDF. Ever wonder why they use such heavy material as MDF? You really think that your Sub is gonna make 1/2" MDF explode? Not even... 3/4" MDF is used because it's really Fing heavy. Same reason they use that heavy ish in home speakers, because weight does not vibrate.
My reccomendation. 33'x3' =99 sq feet of Grace Company "Ice and Water Guard". Cost 65$ at a roofing supply store. It's the same thing as dynamat original, fatmat, brownbread etc... except plastic backed instead of aluminum, so it's easy to apply. I've been told people think it's thinner than dynamat, and it might be, for the price, you can add 10 layers for the price of 1 dynamat layer. Your choice.
Second type of sound proofing, dissipation of noise. The tool of choice here is fiberous (not rubber) carpet padding, also called 'jute'. The idea is the same as why you put pillow stuffing in your sub box, the minute strands diffuse the vibrations and turn them into heat energy. I put carpet padding everywhere, and that made the biggest difference of all in my car, under the carpet, back panels, door panel, trunk. Cost = 3.50$ sq/yd mine cost roughly 25$.
I gaurantee if you could even find places for 100 sq feet of ice and water guard, and 40 square feet of carpet padding, your car would be leaps and bounds above anyone who spent 300-500$ on their sound proofing. I used 50 sq. feet of asphault sheeting, and maybe 40 sq. feet of carpet padding and spent a total of maybe 100$ after everything was said and done.
Oh, and don't even bother putting asphault sheeting on your floor of your car, there's already more than enough built into the vehicle for most of those panels, just use it on ones that when you bang on will make a noise, If you can bang on your floor of your car and it makes a noise, you got alot more problems than sound proofing. They say take a Sub, play it at 40hz and walk around to your entire car and see what rattles, I would say most of the time it's plastic piceces, most people never get their systems loud enough to really shake their metal, and think by mass loading (adding mass to panels) they'll somehow make it quieter? mass loading doesn't stop sound, diffusion does, try the jute.
quote: Brownbread and several others of the B-Quiet line of sound-deadening products are NOT asphalt and DO NOT smell like "Ice and Water Guard" asphalt on a hot day nor on installation. You neglected to mention this lovely fact in your otherwise excellent post. Most people don't like their $30,000 car smelling like asphalt
Some sound dampening materials are actually not mass dampening, if you want to get into the different types, that's another story. For example Dynamat extreme is vinyl stretchy material, and serves similar purpose of diffusion, turning vibrational energy into heat energy. These materials work just as good as if you put many layers of duct tape over your panels, they keep things from rattling, and tend to collect the noise. Point blank, these materials do not stop noise, merely turn what was many different panels into one large panel, it would be like welding the body panel onto the main chassis, only by the chassis's inherent weight do you lower the resonance frequency. Often times simply collecting all the resonances into one solid material is enough for the panel to be heavy enough to stop vibrations. But, the only way you are going to get rid of the noise is with mass, hence mass loading.
As to the smell, mine smelled for a day after, and haven't smelled it since. Hot days don't make a difference, never smelled. I think the "smell" issue is pretty much made up. As the asphault sticky side is what attaches to the doors etc... And if you don't think people with 30,000$ cars don't like the smell, then what about EVERY CAR already has asphault sheeting on it. Does your car smell like asphault when you buy it? No, because the smell goes away after a day or two. Take a car apart, see those maleable things stuck to your floor boards? They're everywhere, and every car maker uses them.
quote: Adding weight helps maintain the directionality of the speakers instead of creating multiple focal points of sound (i.e. each vibrating panel is a sound producing point). Asphalt is a great choice, but is limited due to its smell, and also its limited adherence in vertical positions.
Unfortunately the only way to get rid of sound is mass. You can pick lead or asphault. I myself pick asphault because it's cheap. I personally don't know of any other mass loading materials.
quote:Adding a composite foam, i.e. Vcomp from B-Quiet helps eliminate road noise along with other noises by adding dead-space and aiding in the dissipation of noise. It is half the thickness of Jute and provides twice the effect. B-Quiet's L-comp adds a lead barrier which aids this effect even greater. Jute works, BUT it is really damn thick and raises your carpet to new boundaries thus causing your carpet to no longer sit properly, your panels to no longer sit flush, etc. If you have tons of room, then use this cheap alternative, otherwise, use a vehicle specific product.
By composite foam, what exactly do you mean? The couple of materials I have discovered in my search have been a sandwhich of vinyl and open celled foam, which serves the same purpose as jute. There certainly are better materials than jute, when I worked for a home theatre installation company they had these compressed fiberglass panels that absolutely ate up sound, unfortunately compressed fiberglass is not maleable, and the regular fiberglass for insulation is too big (though it works just as well). And your right, jute is probably 3/8" thick, though if you have problems fitting panels back after adding 3/8" to your floors, that's not my problem, mine worked fine, panels fit back perfect.
Unfortunately there is a direct relationship between mass and thickness and sound diffusion. Either you get lots of mass (compressed fiberglass) which is unmaleable, or you get less compressed, like jute which is thicker. The more fibers in the path of the sound the better the diffusion. I don't doubt that composite foam/vinyl isn't a good material, I'm simply saying that for 1/10th of the price you can get 95% of the effectiveness of vehicle specific materials.
my rule of thumb is to rap the panel with my knuckle, if it makes a noise you don't like, stick your mass loading sheets there. the floor boards don't make a twangy sound like one of those old big hand saws (if you've ever heard the kinda sheet metalish wowooowwowwowoowow noise). If you think of that noise, and that's what you're trying to eliminate, you'll probably have a good understanding of what the purpose of those brownbread or dynamat sheets are for.
I put some sheets on the outer skin, and on the inner skin. Keep rapping it with your knuckle until it quiets down (assuming you're putting on more layers between raps ) The parts where the speakers go are also twangy sheet metal, I would put the sheets where your priorities are (probably doors first), and then back panels. Not sure as to the RSX's trunk, but I'm guessing there's some sheet metal there too, especially if you're bouncing your sub off of your trunk there might be some high twangy sheet metal there as well. Depends alot on what your setup is.
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Hope this helped anyone, and flame away if you must, but gimmie a break, I already took some bashing on clubRSX for it, just thought I'd share some info.
Welcome back Mo!
