Finished sound damping one of my front doors and posted pics on my home page. See page 5.

It's not really Dynamat, but some high-temp mastic sheets found at mcmaster.com. I also used Cascade Audio Engineering Quiet Kote spray.

Any feedback on this PITA install will be appreciated!!

Tony

 

Geez man, that is a lot of work. Very impressive. So during a normal ride, how much quieter is the 'road sound' now that you have all of that dampening material in/on your doors? I would love to do that to my trunk and floor of the car, but I am too scared to pull all of that stuff out. You are a braver man than I.

 

Contrary to popular belief, soundproofing (damping, whatever) does very little to supress road noise. The biggest thing it does is reduce vibrations caused by your speakers. It helps your door, trunk, etc. behave more like a conventional speaker enclosure than a crappy hole-infested piece of metal filled with metal parts!

Thanks for the compliment!!

Tony

 

Hardcore install you got going there. Very impressed, I love it when people do everything themselves.

Dixit

 

Nice job! I'd love to Dynamat my Maxima when I get the money and time to do it. Does Dynamat come with any kind of installation instructions? I don't think I'd have to patience to do a nice clean job.

 

Nice job! Dynamating a car properly takes a lot of patience. Anyone who is going to be doing large surfaces, don't buy that crappy roller that dynamat sells. Go to home depot and buy a wall paper roller. It's just a large rubber version of the dynamat pro roller without the high price tag.

I had over 15sq feet of dynamat in my old Civic's doors. Made the door so darn heavy that they wouldn't close properly after that! Made my mid's sound awesome though. The trick is to seal that mid with a wood baffle to the door and try to seal the door the best you can.

I had my mids setup so well that my front stage was totally on top of the dash. For you non car audio folks, it sounds like you have a sub mounted on top of you car hood.

 

OMG , I could neve do that man you got ***** good job!

 

Thanks! It seems no matter how well you explain what you want done to an installer, it never gets done right!

Tony

 

Thanks! I'm not sure if Dynamat comes with instructions (I assume it does). The stuff I used did not, since it can be used in many different applications, one of which is car audio related.

Tony

 

Thanks! I totally agree that an MDF baffle is the way to go. I'm leaning towards puting a 6.5-inch Dynaudio mid-woofer in each door and then mounting midranges and tweeters in kick panels. If I do this then I will make some baffles for the woofers. I still have a Dynaudio 3-way component set that I'm waiting to install. Problem is that the mid-woofers are 8-inch. I could barely fit them into the doors of my Explorer, and I don't think I want to spend that much time trying to get them to fit in my Max (It'd be close). So I think I'm gonna buy some 6.5s and use them in place of the 8s. BTW I totally know what you mean about sounding like you have a sub up front. I almost didn't need one with my previous install in the Explorer.

Tony

 

Thanks!! That's one hella-nice-looking Max you have in your sig!!!

Tony

 

I've updated my how-to thread in the Audio & Electronics forum. This is the link .

Tony

 

Excellent! Just did the same thing to my driver's door with Raamat. Very nice to work with as it's sticky as hell and doesn't need to be heated. It is a killer job though and will take you many hours! I've got to do the other doors yet. I put two layers on the outside skin, one layer on the inside skin, and some more on the inside of the upholstered door panel. I also have some McMaster I bought, but I think I'll save that for the trunk and other open areas. One thing I did that you may want to try is making MDF baffles. I think they make a huge difference as they are so stiff compared to the plastic adapters and they spread the load over a greater area on the door skin. Neat thing about the Max is that you have enough room to double up 3/4 inch MDF for an 1.5 inch baffle. This also allows for extra depth to accomodate speakers. I actually made templates that I could post if anyone wants them. It will save you the time of engineering what I had to go through for exact clearances.

Tony, another thing you mentioned in an earlier post or on your web site was about 5.5 inch speakers in the back and needing to drill holes in the front door and jamb to run the speaker wire. I have the non-Bose sound system and all of the speakers are 6.5 front and back. Also if you look real close there's a rubber plug in the front door jamb to the front side of the upper hinge. You can push this out easily. And on the door right behind the bellows is one of those little black tape circles covering an existing hole.

I don't know which particular item to praise the most, but this is my best sounding car yet! Definite SQ! Great tight mid bass with a lot of impact and sweet highs; gotta love those silk dome tweeters! I fully Raamat'd the door, made 1.5 inch MDF baffles, installed Crystal CPe60s mid bass speakers in the front doors and put the tweeters in the stock A pillar location. I have one ported 10" sub in the trunk. I have a second set of the Crystals to install in the rear doors, but I may not as I'm very impressed with the "upfront and high on the dash" sound I'm getting right now.

 

Not exactly. The trick is to prevent the sound waves that come off the back of the cone from getting around and interfering with the sound waves comeing from the front of the cone. Sealing the doors, which is a bad idea, is not part of the equation (water needs to be able to get out the bottom of them).

Stereodude

 

There isn't any holes in the bottom of the door for water to get out anyway. I was a little surprised at this, since most cars have them. If your car does have these breather/drainage holes, I suggest you mask over them so as not to plug them up during the damping process.

Tony

 

How did you put a layer on the inside of the upholstered door panel? Mine is covered in some awful corrogated sawdust and it didn't look like much of anything would adhere to it! I would normally have done this, but scratched the idea after looking at the back of the panel.

Yes...I've been planning on MDF baffles for quite some time, but I'm waiting to upgrade my speakers before I do that. Another thing I've noticed about MDF baffles, besides the benefits you mentioned, is that they do a better job transmitting the vibrations from the speaker to the mounting surface. It sounds more "natural" than a cheap plastic baffle. And if you've gone to the trouble of sound proofing our doors like we have, then the benefits of an MDF baffle are even more emphasized.

As far as the rubber plug near the hinge. I gave a hard-plastic plug in that location and it leads into the front fender area, not the inside of the car. I didn't want to run wires into the fender and then back in to the car. And I don't have that other behind the bellows. Maybe that's just some of the differences between my 2K1 and your 2K2.

Weird how the non-Bose system has 6.5 speakers in the back yet the Bose only has 5.25.

It's amazing how much better the overall system sounds after doing this, doesn't it? I can't wait to get my Dynaudios in the doors. I like the Focal coaxials I have now, but there's really no comparison.

Thanks for your comments!!

Tony

 

Well like I said the Raamat is really sticky; if you misposition it, it's down! Good luck trying to pull it back up. I put little pieces all over the bottom plastic area. Lot's of pieces make it easier to jamb in there and it doesn't have to be pretty, just add a lot of mass to lower the resonent frequency. I then removed the jute sound deadening material from the upper part, scraped the glue off(it comes off very easily with a razor blade style scraper), Raamat'd the crap out of it, then used some 3M77 adhesive to put the jute back. I'll tell it's like an addiction puttin' this stuff on, I just can't stop.

Considering all you've done I think it would be worth it to go the extra mile and do the inside door panel. I'm thinking of adding some more jute style deadning material in there also. Like you said earlier, the dynamat stuff tightens up the panels and stops vibration, but it really doesn't quiet road noise that much.

I didn't realize you had a 2K1, my 2K2 plug leads into the kick panel area so it worked out great. I guess Nissan does make small improvements beside 30 more horses! It really works out sweet because I had enough room behind the kick panel to put the crossover that comes with the Crystals. The speaker lead comes back from the amp in the trunk along the bottom jamb into the crossover in the kick panel with the tweeter lead going up to the A pillar and the woofer lead going out the plug hole that I mentioned earlier.

 

Mine has 'em. I don't think they're new for 2002.

Stereodude

 

Agreed. It was easier in this respect to do my Explorer. Its door panels were all plastic so it was easier to install. I put dynamat EVERYWHERE!! I totally know what you mean by an addiction. I would bring stuff into my living rooom and dynamat it while I watched TV. It's like eating potato chips...you just can't stop!!!

Tony

 

I miss the sweet smell of dynamat..............

 

Maybe we should market a Dynamat air freshener for the rear-view mirror!

Tony

 

Congrats on all your hard work. I've been into car audio for a while, and can safely say you did a great job! Here is my website for my Audi TT
http://www.albany.net/~doug/tt

 

Thanks!! Awesome kick panels!! I wish I had the knowledge to do that or knew someone to help me. You did a realy good job photographing everything. If I ever get motivated and install my Dynaudio component set, the mid-woofer will go in the door and the midrange & tweeter will go in some kick panels. Of course, both the midrange/tweeter are sealed, so the kick panel is nothing more than a mounting surface and doesn't matter it it's sealed or not.

Do you have any pics of your car finished, or is it still under construction?

Tony

 

Its been done for a while but never updated the site. It sounds pretty good!

So you know, the kickpanel should be as sealed form the inside of the car as possible.

 

I bet it sounds good!

All I was saying is that both my midrange and tweeter are sealed, so there is no sound eminating from behind them, thus no need to seal my kick panels. They'd be used primarily for imaging/soundstage and cosmetics. Now, if I mounted my mid-woofer in them, that would be different.

Tony

 

Oh, sorry!