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Car Door Sound Deadening Strategies:
Max Out Your Car Audio
Car Door Sound Deadening Strategies: Max Out Your Car Audio
Whether you’ve got a fully upgraded car audio system that you turn up to 11, or you enjoy playing some smooth jams to relax and de-stress. For a lot of us, our car is our mobile concert hall. But it can be tough to get into the rhythm when unwanted noise is infiltrating your sanctuary from all angles. From wind noise, to road noise, to rattling sheet metal - most of us wish our car ride was a little quieter.
If you’re here you’ve probably heard of sound deadening. Sound deadening works by adding soft materials such as mats or foam to the metal surfaces of your car to absorb and help block unwanted noise.
By utilizing sound deadening material, you can simultaneously quiet the unwanted vibrations you hear as road noise and add some much needed thermal insulation by creating a radiant barrier to protect you from unwanted heat during those summer months.
Whether you’ve got a fully upgraded car audio system that you turn up to 11, or you enjoy playing some smooth jams to relax and de-stress. For a lot of us, our car is our mobile concert hall. But it can be tough to get into the rhythm when unwanted noise is infiltrating your sanctuary from all angles. From wind noise, to road noise, to rattling sheet metal - most of us wish our car ride was a little quieter.
If you’re here you’ve probably heard of sound deadening. Sound deadening works by adding soft materials such as mats or foam to the metal surfaces of your car to absorb and help block unwanted noise.
By utilizing sound deadening material, you can simultaneously quiet the unwanted vibrations you hear as road noise and add some much needed thermal insulation to protect you from extreme heat during those summer months.
Where's the Noise Coming From?
- Tire noise, bumpy and poorly maintained roads
- Wind noise
- Outside noises. Construction, other cars.
- Rattling from inside car
- Road noise & tire noise from bumpy/poorly maintained roads
- Wind noise
- Outside noise. Construction, other cars.
- Quarter panel, door panel, and other sheet metal rattling inside your car
- Tire noise, bumpy and poorly maintained roads
- Wind noise
- Outside noises. Construction, other cars.
- Rattling from inside car
NOT SURE WHAT PRODUCTS YOU NEED?
Try our product recommendation tool and find exactly what you need.
Anatomy of a Car Door
When you’re in your car, you’re essentially sitting in a small metal room. And unfortunately, sheet metal is the absolute worst acoustic material that exists. This is most apparent in your car doors due due to the way that car doors are constructed, essentially being made of three layers.
Outer Skin
This is material on the outside of the car, right behind your front quarter panel. Unless you’re driving a machine from Mad Max, this material tends to be more flexible as it’s built to crumple in a collision - which means wind or even your own door speakers can cause vibrations that create unwanted sound. Your car door might be great for safety, but it’s not ideal for car audio.
Inner Sheet Metal
This is the rigid metal frame that houses mechanical parts like window cranks, door switches, and door speakers. This metal is stronger and vibrates less, but is built with a large hole in the middle so mechanics can easily access those moving parts we just talked about. Ever heard a firecracker go off in a mailbox? Ok so it’s usually not that bad, but you’ve basically got four echo chambers surrounding you while you drive.
Door Panel
The door panel is what you can see from the inside of your car. It’s usually thin; it’s usually plastic; and it’s usually held on with flimsy clips. You may finds foam layer inside. The door panel isn't doing a ton to keep noise out and likely is making noise as vibrations cause the plastic to rattle against other parts of the car door.
Strategies for Sound Deadening Car Doors
If you want to keep light from getting through your car windows, you add tint. The more tint you add, the darker it gets. Similarly, the more quality car sound deadening material you add to your door, the quieter they get. And an insulated door means better car audio quality.
We'll walk you through the installation process of the four levels of car audio sound deadening from simplest to most complicated.
How to sound deaden car doors?
- Find out where the noise is coming from by adjusting the fade and balance settings on your audio system.
- Tighten any loose screws to stop rattling. Try adding washers or closed cell foam to decouple.
- Replace blown or broken speakers.
- Install Speaker Tweakers to improve car audio by preventing speaker back waves from bouncing directly back into your door speakers.
- Install sound deadening and soundproofing materials to your door. Read on to see which products we recommend!
Method 1: The Speaker Cradle
If you door panel is rattling due to your aftermarket speaker upgrades, it has to be fixed. A quick solution is to place the sound deadening mat over the area where the speaker hole is (covering it), and then use a utility blade to quickly cut the a hole for your speaker. By wrapping your sound deadener completely around the speaker, you're attacking the root of your car audio problem as efficiently as possible. Depending on the strength of the vibrations, you'll need to also add some Damplifier Pro to the outer door skin and parts of the rest of the inner skin.
Couple this method with Speaker Tweakers to keep the audio focused towards you and help stop speaker back waves from distorting the speakers in your car doors. We think of The Speaker Cradle as Steve Meade's signature deadener move. You'll see it in a ton of his videos. Another option is to add speaker box insulation, which we wrote an article on if you're interested.
Steve Meade Cutting a Speaker Hole in Damplifier Pro
Installation Tip
Use plastic panel popper tools to carefully disconnect the plastic clips when removing the door panel to avoid scratches.
Research Tip
When buying deadening materials, pay close attention to what it’s made of. You don't want cheap fillers in your butyl or asphalt. Using a poor performing mat will drastically reduce your vibration damping (sometimes as little as 1/10 the effect). Not only do these products do a bad job of sound deadening, they can be dangerous to your vehicle and your health.
Method 2: The Car Audio Standard Rattling Treatment
If you want to ensure that your car doors stay quiet and don’t rattle, you’ll want to cover the outer skin and inner sheet metal with sound deadener. Focus on covering the door's outer skin as the metal surface is less rigid and more prone to vibration noise. You may see a plastic “vapor shield” covering the inside of your car door, you can remove this to make it easy to access the inside of the door with sound dampening material. When you're done, you can add the vapor barrier back if it's in good shape. (Our butyl tape is the perfect adhesive for that.)
Take it a step further by adding high density closed cell foam, a denser material that will improve car door insulation inside the door cavity while reducing some low frequency sounds like road noise and speaker distortion. Besides giving you an insulated door, closed cell foam is the best material to use as a decoupler to ensure plastic parts, like those in your door panels, won’t make rattling noises when you turn up the music. If you've got rattles, especially rattling plastic, the answer is OverKill or OverKill Pro closed cell foam.
Team Second SKin (JeffRey & Sydnee) Installing OverKill Pro in a Car Door Panel
Installation Tip
Use clear plastic or tape on your door and draw a template to cut your material to size. Be sure to mark mounting points and holes for mechanical parts.
Method 3: Clean Up Car DOor Sound With a one-Two-Three Punch
To make the inside of your car quieter than thanksgiving dinner at your in-laws, you’ll want to go the extra mile by combining Damplifier Pro sound deadening mats with hydrophobic melamine foam (HMF) on the door's outer skin and Luxury Liner Pro on the inner sheet metal to create a sound blocking and protective layer. You may be wondering why we recommend two materials to go with your sound deadener. HMF is an aircraft-grade insulation and sound deadening foam great for off-roading vehicles, older cars, premium sound systems, or… aircraft. Because its excellent thermal insulation, it'll also help keep your car cool in the summer, and warm in the winter.
That sound absorption is absolutely key to improve the sound of your door speakers. Absorb the echoes and sounds that are living in the background to get the acoustics right and increase what your ear perceives as the overall power of the system.
T-Fade from Everyday Audios Adding Sound Absorption to a Car Door
Luxury Liner Pro (LLP) on the other hand is the best automotive sound barrier material you'll find. Adding an mlv sound barrier inside the door will increase its density and reduce outside noises from resonating through the metal and into the car's cabin.
The end result of using all 3 materials is a soundproofing one-two-three punch made for an audiophile. That car audio system is going to sound straight-up awesome.
- Damplifier Pro deadens the door's metal, and cuts down on all the vibrations coming from road noise and your bumping speakers.
- Mega Zorbe HMF absorbs the unwanted sounds bouncing around in your door panel to further improve acoustics.
- The LLP blocks all sounds from getting through the door to your car's interior, keeping the overall noise level down.
Installation Tip
Use High Temp Spray Adhesive or Super Strong Double Sided Tape to apply these materials on top of your sound deadener. When installing LLP make sure you have at least ⅜” clearance between the inner sheet metal and your door panel. If applying LLP without the Mega Zorbe, we recommend applying it to the to the outer skin instead. Just make sure you use one of our extremely strong adhesives and your window still has room to roll up and down. Sound proof sheets are heavy and will fall down without a strong bond.
Method 4: The Artisan
Ok, we get it, quiet isn’t good enough. You don’t just want to eliminate road noise you want to amplify your audio quality. The inside of your car should rival the recording studio at Abbey Road, concertos at the Sydney Opera House, your 9th grade country-rock band in your neighbor’s garage.
Check out how our friends over at CarAudioFabrication used a combination of Second Skin sound dampening materials to transform their car doors from echo chambers into beautiful speaker enclosures.
Mark from CarAudioFabrication Upgrading the Door Panel
Installation Tip
Cover the holes so that your car door becomes a subwoofer box. Mark does a great job. It's easiest to just watch the video...
The Ultimate Car Door Sound Deadening Bundle
The Second Skin Car Audio Door Kit has everything you need to amp up your car audio and max out your stereo system. You'll be shocked at how loud your speakers sound and will be completely done with that annoying rattling in the background of your music. This combination of materials will get you the results you're looking for.
- Damplifier Pro is the highest performing sound deadener available today. You want your music sounding right, so apply this to the metal on your doors to guarantee you're done with rattles.
- The second protective layer depends on which kit you go with. OverKill Pro closed cell foam decouples rattling plastic and improves acoustics. Luxury Liner Pro will create a noise barrier between you and unwanted outside noise.
- Finish the job with a pair of Speaker Tweakers to break up speaker backwaves.
- Free Shipping and Made in the USA
Quick Tips for Improving Car Audio
Sound deadening for car audio should really start with the doors, as that’s where most of the noise and speaker rattles are coming from. But once you’ve done that, here are a few other ways to utilize cld sound deadening materials to get the most out of your car audio system.
- Use a combination of sound deadener and Luxury Liner Pro to cover your wheel wells and trunk. This keeps out road noise (see our article: sound deadening trunk), and helps your rear speakers and subwoofers perform better.
- Look into roof sound deadening. Remember what we said earlier about your outer skin being a flexible material that loves to vibrate and cause noise? Well... double that for your roof. Adding sound deadener to the roof is absolutely key if you've got roof flex due to high SPL.
- Use liquid deadener on your subwoofer box. Our Spectrum Liquid Deadener adheres great to wood, turning a standard subwoofer box into a professional speaker enclosure.
When it comes to sound deadening car doors the keys are to control vibration, absorb sound, and block out noise. Cars are different, and so are drivers - that’s why we create a variety of products for all needs. Whether you prefer your car to be a quiet getaway, or sold out rock show, you should be in control of the volume of your vehicle.