(no subject)

[mithriltabby]

I like to make my drive a little less tedious by listening to music. On a smooth road, it’s just fine, but many roads will produce enough noise that portions of the music can be swamped, and performances like Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe have all their subtleties drowned out.

So I went out on Google with keywords like “road noise” and “sound deadening”. Introduction to Car Audio: How to Tame That Road Noise mentions materials like B-Quiet that can be installed to damp out noise. Dynamat Door Kits are another useful goodie. Quiet In There actually goes into how the sound gets into the vehicle in the first place, and has a number of links to useful products. How to Sound-Deaden Your Car looks handy.

Have any of you had experience with this?

Comments

[meorime.livejournal.com]

No experiece with deading th sound from my car (I drive a truck, after all) but you're only the second person I've ever known who knows about Ruby! The first one was the person who introduced me.

I didn't know you could order her on CD - my old housemate had cassettes.

Good luck on the sound deadening :)

[rhylar.livejournal.com]

which type of noise is it? Tires, wind, or engine? I'm assuming it's tire noise that is the biggest offender.

Besides kits to install inside your bodywork, or under the floor mats, choosing the right tire can also be helpful. I'll assume, though, that you are not close to the end of your tire life, and so you can't change them any time soon. I don't have any tire recommendations, either.

Replacing the weatherstipping on your doors would probably also have positive effect on wind noise.

[mithriltabby]

It’s definitely related to the interaction of the car and the road, so the culprit is likely the tires or the suspension on which they’re mounted. There are some stretches of freeway where I get almost no rumble from the road, and others where it’s quite loud. I had been wondering if there were any dampers that could be applied near the tire instead in the bodywork.

[rhylar.livejournal.com]

smooth pavement, as in no bumps?

Yeah, I get the same thing sometimes. The white pavement tends to give me a very high-pitched howl. Other times, I get the thuds from expansion joints. Every now & then I get a high-pitched warble, and I always worry that a tire or bearing is going, but then I hit a different road surface, and it goes away.

Tires are responsible for the howl, but suspension might help with the thuds. I think most shocks damp low frequency waves well, but high frequency (i.e. sound frequencies) waves rather poorly.

If the Dynomat stuff is thin enough, you may be able to cover some of the wheel wells, but any sound that gets to you by conduction will get through, and there isn't anything you can do about that. If I were going to try to insulate the wheel wells, I would not do anything on the wall towards the engine, but only on the surfaces forward, aft, and above the tires. I wouldn't want to run any risk of fouling the suspension, and I'd be worried about the heat tolerance of the insulation. You may be able to cover the rear wells from the inside of the car, though.