Anyone mat their doors? (1 Viewer)

[Dave Bennett]

I've noticed that certain bass frequencies make the plastic rain sheeting inside of my door resonate and rattle(it's not the metal door itself just the plastic rain sheeting). So I'm contemplating buying one of those Dynamat kits specifically just for speakers. Has anyone had any experience with just matting the area of the door around the speakers? Did it improve the sound quality much? Do you think I'd be better off matting the whole door? Also, does anyone know of a place where I can get a good deal on Dynamat, Raammat or the equivalent? Oh and does Dynamat Xtreme warrant the extra price over regular dynamat? Is it that much of an improvement?
Finally, did you put the plastic sheeting back on inside of the door after applying the mat? I'm afraid that if I didn't I'd have a problem with water getting inside of the car. Thanks for any info.

 

[Sean^M]

as a cheaper alternative to Dynamat, look at RAAMat, Fatmat, or similar offerings, all of which are the same stuff, which is identical to the ice sheeting you lay under shingles from a roofing supplier.

the purpose of this stuff is to absorb and thus stop resonance in sheet metal. you can cover the entire panel with it, or lay it in strips. Either way it's just as effective.
In regards to the plastic sheets, some duct tape may even solve your problem if the metal resonation isn;t a concern to you.
matting the entire car will lower road noise however, and generally quiet the car, but it is a LOT of work.
you have to gut the entire car, and mat the bare metal, then replace carpet, then seats and dash etc.. door panels, trunk liner, et al.
also for spots you can't mat, consider expanding spray foam. It does wonders as well.

 

[Dave Bennett]

Right now I'm thinking of just matting the front doors(The back speakers really can't be heard from the drivers seat anyway as they are 4" and are low in the door panels). I'm thinking of partially doing each door(the part of the door closest to where the speaker is). Is there a noticeable increase in sound quality? I can get some Dynamat extreme in the right quantity for a good price so if it will provide a noticable benefit I'll probably spring for it.

 

[Sean^M]

the way you're talking about doing it, no, it won't make any difference really.
you need to mat any metal that can resonate and do it all to make it worth the effort and cost. Otherwise, it's like acoustically treating half of one wall of your home theater room, and asking if that's good enough.
What you may want are baffles for the door speakers. These mount around or behind the door speakers, and do have an effect on the sound quality by isolating the drivers.

 

[KurtW]

I disagree. I think ANYTHING you can do to eliminate resonance in the car will improve sound, be it a cheap sheet of $20 Dynamat from Best Buy, or Rhino-lining the entire interior of the car (which I've actually done, when I was in a custom shop ).

Start with what you can. Then go looking for rattles and such, and use either the canned stuff or the roll stuff to eliminate them. I do it to every car I own(ed), and I always noticed a difference, even in my wife's 2004 Corolla.

 

[Dave Bennett]

Sean and Kurt,
I think you guys are actually agreeing but you don't realize it
For clarification, what I'm talking about doing is getting one of the Dynamat Speaker kits which goes around the speaker and forms a baffle. With what you have both said, it should make a difference so I'll probably go ahead and get it. I found the Xtreme speaker kit is reasonably prices at thezeb.com so I'll probably go with that as it is supposedely(and if you guys have some input please let me know) more effective than the regular stuff. For applying it, do I really need the roller? I might have a roller around my house somewhere so I'll look for that first. I hear the roller makes things easier but that you can still apply it pretty easily without it.

 

[Sean^M]

ah ok yeah it is a baffle then, and that will help.
I thought you just emant putting a few inches of matt around each speaker, thinking that'd dampen the entire door or something..
I misunderstood.
please understand, I assume the worst. you wouldn't believe the sort of things I get asked about car audio.. it's apalling. "which way does the fuse go into the holder?" "can I use lamp cord from teh fuse box to power my 1200 watt amp, and can I just drill a hole in the floorboard to push it through and wrap it around the exhaust pipe?"
yeah. no joke.
heheh

Kurt's right as well. matting a door etc is a great start, as is eliminating specific problem spots, and keep in mind you don't need to cover an entire door to dampen it. you can apply diagonal 2" strips of matt, about 6" apart across sheets of metal, and it will absorb vibrations in the same manner as coating a door in it.

Rhino-lining is great stuff. heh been there done that.

 

[Andy Hardin]

I used Fat Mat off of ebay, did the doors and trunk so far.

Unbelievable amount of difference. I think where it helped the most was the back side of the door skins. This prevented the plastic from "rattling" which I've always had a problem with. I need to go the extra step and do it on the underside of the dash and steering column area. Its a 96 Impala SS and that whole part comes off in one piece. It'll be an easy fix, I'm getting noise from it, and just haven't gotten around to it...

As I've grown up with car audio (had my first system 12 years ago) I now feel that the sound dampening is the single most important step to getting a good sounding system. A $4000 stereo with rattles sounds horrible.

 

[Sean^M]

doing the floorpans helps a lot too. those are large sheets of metal under your feet.. they resonate a lot more than most realize.
The only problem there is the labor involved, pulling out all of the seats, then consoles, then carpeting.

96 Impala SS. Nice car. I thought about buying one myself since you can do a LTO to those LT-1 motors for added performance. The only real downside to those are the lousy 4x6 factory speaker sizes. I'd have ended up having to fab new door panels for a set of three-way components.

 

[Dave Bennett]

Well since today was an unseasonably warm day, I decided to run over to Tweeter and pick up some Dynamat. I got a Dynamat Extreme Speaker kit, which is enough to do the area around the speaker as well as have some excess for other spots near by.I pulled away some of the plastic rain sheeting, put the dynamat on the metal and then I trimmed a bit of the sheeting. So I've still got that extra water protection. I gave them a quick listen and already I noticed an improvement. For one thing my left front speaker sounds ALOT stronger than it used to. It sounds much more balanced now. Also, the highs sound a bit crisper and the mids bit smoother. I didn't notice much change in bass response(it may have sounded a bit tighter) because I have the bass coming from my sub. So I'd say for 20 bucks it's a worthwhile investment. I probably won't do the rear doors(as the speakers can't be heard from the front anyway since they are 4" and low in the doors, plus I faded the system a bit to the front) but I'm glad I did the front doors. I'm sure I'd get more of an improvement if I did the whole doors but I don't really feel like spending the money and time to do the entire door. The speaker kit works great though.

 

[Leif Wall]

Peel and Seal is available at Lowe's for pretty cheap. I've read some good things about it.

 

[Andy Hardin]

Sean

I love the SS. A performance upgrade would be nice, but. to tell you the truth, for my daily driver the bone stock engine is more than enough!

As far as the doors go, doing a custom baffle was really easy. I have never done one before but found a template at impalassforum.com and made it out of mdf. I think it took me a total of 4 hours from the time I popped the first door skin off, until I was cruising with the upgraded sound.

I cut, mounted the speakers in the baffle, mounted them and then put about 3 layers of fatmat around the speakers and baffle to ensure rigidity and dampening. I used the infinity kappa 6.5 component set (I really like this set for the price, I had the same set in my 1997 GTP and they are a good, budget system).

There is enough room in there though for an 8 inch woofer if you want to bump it up or a 3 way 6.5 set. I even put the x-overs in there as well. Plenty of space.

I did the install in pieces over about a 6 week period and it worked out great. Its too cold now (fall in Illinois is no fun) but I've got a few items to finish. I used the 2x12 1 ft^3 dual chamber box for my 12" Infinity Perfects and it doesn't fit too well with the spare tire in the trunk (amps are mounted to an amp rack attached to the back of the rear seats). So I'm going to get two seperate cubes to put on either side of the trunk. I've got a 30 band stereo EQ mounted on a rack over the spare tire (for accessibility) that I need to clean up the wiring on. I'm going to replace the factory carpet (its getting a little rough) on the inside and when I do, I'll dampen the floor plans as well. Those can all wait for spring. The nice thing is that the Impala gives you plenty of space to work with so you can lay things out nicely.

 

[Frank Carter]

The ice sheeting is thinner than dynamat so you need to use two layers, but it still comes out way cheaper. I bought 250sq ft for $75 split it with my friend. It was enough for both of us to do our entire cars. It worked extremely well.

 

[Jay H]

Cool, I have to stop a rattle in my MR2s door and was weighing the pros and cons of this "dynamat"-like material. Some people seem to say it is great while others say it's not necessary. I'm not a huge car audio buff since I don't spend much time in a car but I hate rattles so I want to open up my door panels (I've already have instructions) and was going to baffle the speaker at least.

Can one get this ice sheeting in smaller quanties from say a Home Depot kind of store?

Jay

 

[Andy Hardin]

Anyone that says the stuff is unneccessary is just plain *wrong*. Disregard anything else those people have told you about car audio.

I honestly believe it is the number one improvement you can make in your vehicle. How good does a 3K system sound like if you get constant rattles? No better than a $300 Walmart system.

 

[Jay H]

Hi Andy, I guess I wasn't clear in my post, obviously rattles are bad, but they said that most of the rattles in the MR2 speaker is due just to loose clips from the woofer to the form that it is in. I was told that I don't need dynamat stuff to stop the rattling. The MR2's door has a vapor barrier plastic thing that is glued onto the door panel and some people take that out and replace it with Dynamat-like material or just the backing of the speaker so I was considering it while I had the door panels off.

Since I want to fix my rattle, I was thinking of putting at least something behind the speaker that is similar to the 10"x10" squares that Dynamat sells specifically for speakers as well as replace my stock woofer with a component system (See my thread on the JL Audio)

Jay

 

[Scott L]

I think someone from this board years ago said they bought the "cheap industrial stuff" at Home Depot as an alternative to Dynamat. He said it smelled in the summertime when the interior heated up and it added a lot of weight to his car.

Just a warning.. you get what you pay for!

Andy I noticed you drive an American car. They usually don't put as much effort to the build quality of the interior as foreign cars do.. maybe this is why some people aren't in such a rush to Dynamat their imports. I have a nice little system in my maxima but I don't feel the need any sound-proofing just yet. However the stock Infinity system in the family's Chrysler rattles the rear panels like it ain't no thang.

 

[Jay H]

[deleted]

Jay