When you build a race car, you want the stiffest, lightest-weight chassis you can get. To get that stiff chassis, you’d reinforce it with a rollcage, strut braces, antisway bars, and you might even swap out some of the unibody structure for a tube frame. You’d also pull out all of your factory sound-deadening material to combat weight. Hell, it’s a race car—you don’t care about noise.
Cars used in sound competitions are just the opposite. You could care less about the car’s ability to take a turn flat-out, but you do want it as quiet as possible inside. The only noise you want is the stuff that your head unit is sending to your speakers. From the floor to the doors to the way the interior panels fit, a car built for sound competition is assembled so there is absolutely no vibration from anything except the speakers. Then there’s your street car.
Compromise is the key word when it comes to sound deadening for your MRyde. If you’re going to spend four grand on a system, you cannot compromise when it comes to making that system sound the best it can. However, that doesn’t mean you have to tack on 25 percent more weight, either.
Rather than focusing solely on the car’s acceleration, handling, or bass production abilities, you should focus on your comfort while driving your car (And its “Wow!” factor if you want to impress the honies.—MAX). Current products offer unbeatable sound absorption and damping with a barely noticeable weight gain.
The whole purpose of adding sound damping materials is to lower the noise floor. In layman’s terms, the noise floor is the height/volume that detrimental sounds reach in your car. Think of it as a pitcher of ice-cold Miller Genuine Draft. When it’s full, nobody’s having a good time, but when there’s only a little bit left (And another pitcher on the way.—MAX), everyone’s pretty happy.
The vital part of getting the most out of your system and, therefore, out of your sound damping setup, is proper use of damping materials. You don’t need 14 inches of material on all surfaces to stop unwanted noise.
Cascade Audio recommends using a noise barrier on the floorpan and a spray-on damper on the inner side of the metal of the doors. Continue by replacing the plastic vapor barrier between the door and door panel with a properly cut sheet of vinyl-based damper, and eliminate interior panel movement (Rattles.—MAX) with well-placed vibration-damping gasketing. The main purpose of noise barriers is to reflect noise. Used on your floorpan, they reflect low-frequency waves and absorb the higher-frequency ones. Dampers transform the mechanical energy of sounds into low-level heat that is easily dissipated. Gaskets simply keep things from contacting each other due to induced vibration.
This may seem complicated, but it isn’t. The hardest part of installation of sound damping materials is moving other parts out of their way so the material can be installed. This doesn’t mean that you have to pull out all of the tar and carpet padding to lay your sound damping (And this isn’t recommended because factory materials also act as heat barriers.—MAX), but rather that you have to find a hard part to affix the materials to. Spend the extra man hours to properly apply the damping materials. It will mean the difference between a decent system and an exemplary one.
If your intent is to build a race car, then don’t worry about sound damping. If, however, you’re looking to build a street monster, then you have to. Sound damping—it’s the paint clay of the auto sound world. It offers awesome returns without a huge investment. For more information, point your browser to www.cascadeaudio.com.