Who here has installed dynamat or the like?

Kokopelli · Sep 1, 2010

I would love to quiet down the exhaust drone in the car and was wondering who here has installed it and where they got it from? Also how effective is it really?

nsvwrx · Sep 1, 2010

Ive been looking to do same.

slade1274 · Sep 1, 2010

Tutorials galore:

www.sounddeadenershowdown.com

Don is a straight up guy and his info is stellar.

b reel · Sep 2, 2010

Mike it's real simple, peel and stick.

Kokopelli · Sep 2, 2010

Aren't there key places where you place it or do you just coat the whole trunk?

Any prep work to get it to stay attached?

FTZ · Sep 2, 2010

Only prep work is to vacuum out the area you want to install the mat. If you are doing the trunk to block out drone, you will want to do the entire trunk floor surface.

I got mine from Ben a while back and installed in the doors and trunk. Made a huge difference, but mine was done to stop rattles and make my audio sound better.

I would be happy to help install if you need it, though I am sure you can do it on your own. Just need the mat and a roller really.

Doug@DBW Motorsports · Sep 2, 2010

also one thing about dynomat... is you don't always need to cover every square inch... some times a small 6x6 piece placed in the center of a piece of metal IE: inside door skin, will be enough to stop the resonance vibration from making noise.

Kokopelli · Sep 2, 2010

Wow that dynamat stuff is expensive. Anyone use any of the cheaper alternatives?

Alex · Sep 2, 2010

Raamat is frequently referenced as a good alternative -- Plus he's a Subie owner Did you read the site that slade linked?

integroid · Sep 2, 2010

I have always vacuumed out the area and then wiped down with Alcohol. I also have a rubber roller to help the matt conform to the shape of the piece it is sticking to. A heat gun can also help out during install. Like DOug said, you dont have to coat the entire surface. The last batch I used was from edesign audio. It was cheap and did the job for me.

http://www.edesignaudio.com/product_info.php?products_id=360

motomark · Sep 2, 2010

I have a roll of fake Raamat I'd sell cheap. I remember researching the hell out of it and I bought one of the best fakes. Some of the cheaper ones are just asphalt with very little rubber and they melt into a gooey mess and smell like... well... you guessed it... asphalt. You could probably get the super cheap stuff for a trunk as the smell likley goes away after a while. Have seen the cheap stuff used in door installs melt and literally drip out the bottom of door cards- not a good way to save money if you use any in doors.

b reel · Sep 2, 2010

Kokopelli said: ↑

Wow that dynamat stuff is expensive. Anyone use any of the cheaper alternatives?
Click to expand...

lizard skin(?) from scummit racing, it's a spray or roll-on

jesus888 · Sep 2, 2010

I used RAAMat... almost 2 rolls to do entire trunk and under carpet in the interior... it made the car feel/sound more solid but not that much quieter... also ended up adding a bunch (2 layers) of ensolite (close cell foam) in the interior, under the carpet, and that seemed to quiet things down a bunch. But it's not gonna change your life. The car is loud. Just don't have unrealistic expectations

Kokopelli · Sep 2, 2010

motomark said: ↑

I have a roll of fake Raamat I'd sell cheap. I remember researching the hell out of it and I bought one of the best fakes. Some of the cheaper ones are just asphalt with very little rubber and they melt into a gooey mess and smell like... well... you guessed it... asphalt. You could probably get the super cheap stuff for a trunk as the smell likley goes away after a while. Have seen the cheap stuff used in door installs melt and literally drip out the bottom of door cards- not a good way to save money if you use any in doors.
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How much for the roll and how many sq feet is it?

Afande · Sep 2, 2010

jesus888 said: ↑

I used RAAMat... almost 2 rolls to do entire trunk and under carpet in the interior... it made the car feel/sound more solid but not that much quieter... also ended up adding a bunch (2 layers) of ensolite (close cell foam) in the interior, under the carpet, and that seemed to quiet things down a bunch. But it's not gonna change your life. The car is loud. Just don't have unrealistic expectations
Click to expand...

^^^
I got a great deal on RAAMat from this guy and have used it on two cars. I found it very easy to install, cheaper cost and very effective. The end result is very noticeable.

Alex · Sep 2, 2010

FWIW, and for those who don't visit the site that Slade suggested here's the cliff notes. I have found this website to be extremely informative and quite useful in the budgeting/planning stages of my own install.

SoundDeadenerShowdown.com said:

What I've Learned and What You Need to Know

Imagine you are driving on the highway and a very noisy truck is right next to you. Noise from the truck is coming at you through your vehicle's door and it's loud. There are three possible ways to stop the noise from reaching your ears.

The first thing you will notice is that the noise from the truck is making the door's sheet metal vibrate - essentially turning it into an unwanted speaker that is right next to you. Apply a vibration damper like CLD Tiles to stop the vibration. CLD Tiles have been designed to work with minimal panel coverage. That means you will need to do less work and the project will cost you less.

After you have stopped the sheet metal from vibrating you have two possible strategies left to deal with the noise that is still coming through the door. One possibility is to absorb the sound. Unfortunately, absorption isn't practical in a vehicle. The lower the frequency you need to absorb, the thicker the absorber needs to be. Road, engine and exhaust noise are deep (low frequency) sounds. To be effective, you would need an absorbent material between ten and seventy inches thick. Right, never going to happen.

Fortunately, the third option works perfectly in the space we have available. Block the noise. In exactly the same way the barrier wall along the highway is protecting the houses behind it from the truck noise that's coming through your door and driving you crazy, you can do the same thing, on a much smaller scale, using Closed Cell Foam and Mass Loaded Vinyl.

It's really that simple. For years, we've been going about this all wrong - using layer after layer of "sound deadener" and getting poor results. Use the right tool for the job.

Defining Some Terms

Before we can get anywhere, we need to make sure we are talking about the same things. "Sound Deadener" is a vague term that describes a range of materials and techniques. It has traditionally been used when referring to vibration dampers - a specific class of products designed to control resonance in panels. I'll be referring to these products as vibration dampers.

Everything we are trying to do comes down to sound. Whether we are trying to quiet a vehicle, improve its ability to host a music system or both, it's all about sound and controlling what reaches our ears. Sound is almost devious in its behavior so we need to understand a little bit about how it moves around before we can control it.
Stock Deadener Stock vibration damper on the front passenger side floor.

When it comes to noise control we are concerned with engine, exhaust, tire in contact with road surface, and wind - from our vehicle and from all of the other vehicles around us on the road. We may also be concerned with noise created by the music we play as it interacts with the vehicle around us. Some of this noise is transmitted directly through the structure of the car. Some of it travels through the air before it passes through the vehicle panels and glass on its way to our ears, often times exciting panel resonance that creates a secondary noise source.

The first step in any successful noise control or acoustic improvement project is minimizing panel resonance. It doesn’t really matter if the existing resonance is caused by vibrations directly introduced by the engine, exhaust and suspension or if it is being driven by airborne sound. Resonating panels are important routes for transmitting and reinforcing noise.

This is where vibration dampers come in. Your vehicle most likely came from the factory with at least some vibration damper applied. Unless yours is a luxury vehicle, or even if it is and you have added an aftermarket sound system that takes the vehicle beyond the original design specifications, you will want to add more vibration damper. OEM applications favor reducing weight and cutting costs beyond all else. In our zeal to quiet our vehicles, many of us took this too far in the opposite direction - applying multiple layers of vibration damper to every bit of sheet metal in the vehicle. I'll tell you something that no one else selling vibration dampers will - this is wasteful and counter-productive. Put images of shiny silver vehicle interiors out of your mind. When it comes to vibration dampers, anything more than 25% coverage is excessive. Beyond that, you are wasting time and money, making it difficult to refit trim panels and potentially making the vehicle more difficult to service in the future - you are using the wrong tool for the job.
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Alex · Sep 2, 2010

CLD Tiles

SoundDeadenerShowdown.com said:

CLD Tile is just a slightly catchy name for 6” X 10” pieces of constrained layer damper – what we’ve traditionally called sound deadener. If you’ve been doing any research, you have probably come across the usual arguments: “Buy the good stuff and cover everything” or “Buy the cheap stuff and cover everything with multiple layers.

The usual arguments miss the point. Products like this are vibration dampers. Their only purpose is to control resonance in a vehicle’s panels. Controlling resonance is the absolutely critical first step in any sound deadening project, but more isn’t better and trying to use a CLD to block sound is too expensive, too labor intensive and makes it unnecessarily difficult to do future vehicle maintenance. The old adage about using the right tool for the job has never been truer.

Some of you know that I have been testing and writing about products like these for more than four years. Here’s what I’ve learned in a nutshell: To control panel resonance you should use the best vibration damper you can find and only treat the 25% at the center of the panel. You won’t have to worry about asphalt melting or falling off and you won’t get black goo from cheap butyl compounds on your living room carpet. You will spend less, the project will be easier and the results will be better.

With this in mind, I set out to create the best constrained layer damper I could. The first step was to develop the adhesive/damping layer. Two years of testing and tweaking went into this phase. I wanted maximum effectiveness and durability as well as solid performance over the widest temperature range possible. I also wanted extreme heat tolerance – in case you need to subject it to that sort of torture and because heat tolerance is a very good predictor of stability over time.

Once I was satisfied with the adhesive I started to test aluminum constraining layers. The best theoretical constraining layer is the same as the material you are trying to damp. For most vehicles, that would be something like 22 gauge steel and completely impractical. Still, because my goal was to be able to get the job done with smaller pieces, I was able to settle on 8 mil aluminum as the best compromise. You can cut it if you need to, but since you will seldom have to, you get the benefits of a thicker and stronger material. You don’t have to worry about being able to press it into irregular surfaces or bend it into corners because those areas don’t need to be treated since their shape already makes them resistant to resonance.

Time for a demonstration. This is a 12 inch square of 22 gauge steel suspended by the top corner and struck in the center of the side facing away from the camera with a xylophone mallet. The piece on the left has no vibration damper applied and the piece on the right has a 6 inch square applied to the center (25% coverage). You can see the measurement microphone jutting in to the photos from the left. Play the two sound files and tell me there is any point in adding more vibration damper.
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Vinyl/Nitrile Closed Cell Foam

SoundDeadenerShowdown.com said:

Closed Cell Foam is the ideal decoupler for barriers and trim panels in a motor vehicle. It will also absorb some very high frequency noise, but let’s not get carried away with that aspect of its use.

When you want to block noise, you need a massive barrier like our Mass Loaded Vinyl Barrier. For a barrier to work well, it should be floated above the substrate to which it is attached. If the substrate has any residual resonance after treating it with CLD Tiles, using CCF as a cushion will stop the resonance from exciting the barrier material. It also creates a more complex path for the sound to travel through, further increasing the effectiveness of the barrier.

When trim panels buzz or rattle, lining them with CCF will isolate them from whatever they are rattling against. Problem solved.

This Vinyl/Nitrile foam is manufactured for Sound Deadener Showdown with some uniquely beneficial characteristics. Most important among them is its ability to resist what is called compression set. Products like these tend to flatten out over time when they are under pressure. This foam has very small cells to resist this. If you’ve ever taken your car apart after applying other CCF and found it as flat as a piece of paper, you will appreciate this feature.
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Mass Loaded Vinyl Barrier

SoundDeadenerShowdown.com said:

Once you've applied CLD Tiles, turn your attention to blocking noise. Controlling panel resonance is an essential step to prevent transmission of noise, but you need to block noise at the point of entry to achieve the kind of quiet ride we all want.

Many of us have tried following the old way of sound deadening a car - piling on layer after layer of vibration damper. The doors close with a satisfying "thunk" and the car sounds completely dead when you tap on its panels, but most of us have been disappointed to take our masterpiece out for a ride, only to discover that traffic, road, engine and exhaust noise are only slightly diminished. This is yet another case of needing to use the right tool for the job. Using a separate barrier to block sound is the right way to deal with the problem. The result will be much better, cost less and take a lot less work.

Barriers work best when they form an unbroken shield between the noise sources and your ears. CLD Tiles are designed to work best with just 25% coverage. That isn't true for a barrier. For best results, you will want to completely line the floor, doors, quarter panels and trunk or cargo area for a hatchback, station wagon or van. If you are willing to compromise you can cover the firewall to the front edge of the front seats, doors and rear wheel wells and still get very good results.
Frequency (Hz) 125 250 500 1000 2000 4000
Sound Transmission Loss 15 19 21 28 33 37

Barrier performance is significantly enhanced by adding a foam decoupler or "air spring" between it and the vehicle. This works by isolating the barrier from any residual resonance that may still exist in the underlying panels after treatment with a vibration damper. It also creates a more complicated series of boundaries for noise to negotiate. Finally, adding a layer of closed cell foam will absorb and block some high frequency sound. Our Vinyl/Nitrile Closed Cell Foam is ideal for this purpose.

If you have been shopping around, you have probably noticed that Sound Deadener Showdown MLV is sold alone – not as an MLV/foam composite. This is by design and there are several reasons to do it this way.

First, while using foam between the vehicle and MLV improves performance, there are applications where there just isn't enough room to use both. In this case, using a barrier alone is much more effective than using foam alone. Maybe you have room for a 1/8 inch decoupler but not for 1/4 inch. Just use our 1/8 inch CCF and you are all set.
MLV with and without foam Seaming sections of MLV together is a lot easier if the foam isn't attached.

Although MLV is quite flexible, you will often find yourself needing to cut and assemble pieces to create a contiguous barrier to cover irregular shapes. The best way to connect these pieces is to overlap them slightly and bond them together. This is very difficult to do with a composite. On the other hand, using HH-66 Vinyl Cement, you can create a seam that is air tight and actually stronger than the vinyl itself.

There's no question that MLV/foam composites are very convenient for covering large, flat areas, but I’d rather offer a flexible approach that lets you design the exact solution you need. I also want you to be able to use what I consider the best closed cell foam for every application. Preassemble composites don't give you those options.

While MLV is a very good material for building barriers, there's nothing magical about the product sold by Sound Deadener Showdown. Lead sheeting is slightly more effective but it is also much more expensive and has toxicity issues that need to be considered if you are going to work with it. MLV is the answer to the question: "How inexpensively can we create a substitute for lead sheeting that will accomplish the same thing"? Sound Deadener Showdown MLV is good quality and very easy to work with, but by its very nature it is heavy and expensive to ship. We offer it so you can have a reliable source for the relatively small quantities needed for most vehicle installations, but if you can find a local source that will sell it to you in reasonable quantities or can split a large order with some friends, you will definitely be able to save some money. Alternatively, if you have a local and inexpensive source for a thin and flexible material that weighs 1 lb/ft² or more, you may want to go for it. Noise doesn’t care where you purchase your barrier material.
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nsvwrx · Sep 2, 2010

Does ben still do installs?

b reel · Sep 2, 2010

He does

motomark · Sep 2, 2010

Kokopelli said: ↑

How much for the roll and how many sq feet is it?
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Lemme check at home. It's a huge roll brand new in box, I know I have the invoice. I'll charge you exactly 1/2 what it cost me new- been wanting to get rid of it. I have a whole bunch of nice car audio stuff- Eclipse 8053, Image Dynamics Horns, Image Dyanmics mid range, 2 eclipse amps etc. It was for an A4 I sold 4 months ago and I just need to unload the stuff.

I might keep the horns those things are like $450 new.

Kokopelli · Sep 2, 2010

I work near tucker so if I could swing by and pick it up today that would be great.

I have to drive to Alabama and back on Saturday and would love to have this installed before the trip.

midnight_rider · Sep 2, 2010

Ive used fatmat before in my friends 02 sedan. Did a pretty good job of taking the rattle away from the subs in his trunk. Is a little cheaper that dynamat as well.

Alex · Sep 2, 2010

motomark said: ↑

Lemme check at home. It's a huge roll brand new in box, I know I have the invoice. I'll charge you exactly 1/2 what it cost me new- been wanting to get rid of it. I have a whole bunch of nice car audio stuff- Eclipse 8053, Image Dynamics Horns, Image Dyanmics mid range, 2 eclipse amps etc. It was for an A4 I sold 4 months ago and I just need to unload the stuff.

I might keep the horns those things are like $450 new.
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Which ID mids & which amps do you have?

goixiz · Sep 2, 2010

wear disposable gloves and get a can of goo off
need a good blade - to cut

motomark · Sep 3, 2010

Alex- The horns are CD1-Pros I have both mini horns and the full length horns. The full length horns need some work ( I have a buddy in aerospace who mixed me up some urethane- never got around to fixing them as I was probably going to use the mini-horn bodies anyway)

Mike@TTR · Sep 3, 2010

I was talking to Ben about this today as we are going to attempt to completely seal off any outside road noise for my father in law on his car to help with his hearing condition. He said that in competition cars he would actually use FOUR layers on floor and roof of the car as well as 2 layers on all of the doors. But it was perfectly silent in the car

Alex · Sep 4, 2010

Correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't he be using more than just the tiles if he wants to 100% quiet down the inside of the car? The tiles only do so much I thought.

slade1274 · Sep 4, 2010

^^ absolutely correct.... it comes down to mass of the material as mass is what blocks sound. This can be done with CLD tiles but is not the most effective way as it isn't as "heavy" as other better suited materials. MLV (mass loaded vinyl) is used in the automotive industry as it is flexible, non hazardous, and has a great mass ratio per ft^2. I have used MLV and can say that I don't like it. It isn't flexible enough and getting full coverage (as sound will find the voids) can be a royal pain. Using multiple layers of CLD is "easier" as it's all peel/stick and easy to get full coverage. Also, the MLV needs to be "decoupled" from the structure with closed cell foam or felt fabrics; thus making it thicker to try to get under panels.

Mercedes,Lexus, and BMW use formed MLV sheets decoupled by the felt materials as underlayment in their interiors..... but they have the benefit of pressure forming it. Moral... if you want Lexus quiet.... go buy a Lexus.

As far as the CLD damper sheets, buy a roll of the aluminum duct tape from Home Depot/Lowes to put over the joints where the butyl may seep, this will keep it cleaner when you get back into it after a hot summer of running goo.

Trey · Sep 4, 2010

New exhaust?

Mine was very quite on the highway. Blitz NUR Spec Touring. (Fat can)

b reel · Sep 4, 2010

Wouldn't four pair of Bose noise canceling headsets be cheaper and weigh less overall?

Mike@TTR · Sep 4, 2010

He already wears ear plugs and it still bothers him. It is almost like a hypersensitivity to sound. Crazy stuff.

Cool_____ · Sep 7, 2010

slade1274 said: ↑

Mercedes,Lexus, and BMW use formed MLV sheets decoupled by the felt materials as underlayment in their interiors..... but they have the benefit of pressure forming it. Moral... if you want Lexus quiet.... go buy a Lexus.
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Yeah I saw TONS of the MLV sheets everywhere in my M3 when I completely pulled and gutted the interior while doing a radio swap into my car. That stuff was thick and showed why/how my car is so quiet inside. Also there was a good bit of foam between the metal and the MLV sheets too.

Alex · Sep 7, 2010

I've been cruising McMaster Carr to see what options are out there that may be more budget friendly. I'll let you know what I find. I am not expecting anything like CDL tiles, but I do believe they'll have substitutes for the foam and MLV.

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