One product that most car audio retailers offer that can benefit anyone with a car, truck or SUV is sound deadener. If your vehicle is noisy inside, gets hot quickly or people have trouble hearing you during hands-free phone calls, applying sound deadening can help dramatically. In this article, we’ll explain how sound deadening works and talk about the key benefits of adding damping material to your car, truck or SUV.

What is Sound Deadener?

If you have ever had the opportunity to look under the carpet or trim panels inside your car or truck, you may have seen patches of rubber or strips of butyl adhered to the body panels. The addition of this material by the automobile manufacturer adds mass to the metal panel. This added mass makes it harder for noise outside the vehicle to vibrate the panel and transfer noise to the interior of the vehicle.

Aftermarket sound deadening products work the same way. Most sound deadening is sold in sheets or rolls. The material is very dense and has one surface that includes a strong adhesive. Your installer can apply the material to flat metal surfaces like the doors, floor, roof, firewall, rear fenders and trunk of your vehicle.

Many damping materials like Dynamat Xtreme, Stinger RoadKill Expert, Wirez Premium Sound Deadening and Hushmat Ultra include a layer of aluminum on top of the flexible base layer. This aluminum adds strength to the damping material and allows it to span openings in door panels.

Some damping materials include a layer of closed-cell foam on top of the aluminum layer. Focal BAM and SoundSkins Pro are two common examples of damping materials with foam. Wirez, Dynamat and several other companies offer foam on its own as another option. This foam layer helps to reduce vibrations and rattles from objects touching the damping material. Under floors, it can prevent wire harnesses and cabling from buzzing. In doors, it prevents the rods that activate the door release mechanism and locks from rattling.

Another option for sound deadening is a spray-on solution. Cascade Audio Quiet Kote, Boom Mat Spray-On and bedliners like Line-X are a great way to add mass to flat metal surfaces.

Sound Damping Materials Make Your Vehicle Quieter

Several years ago, we took part in a test of the noise reduction capabilities of sound deadening material. The vehicle in question was a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT with the 6.1-liter Hemi. The test started with three baseline measurements of the noise inside the vehicle. We took SPL measurements with the vehicle at idle and cruising at 40 miles per hour and 60 miles per hour. Happy with the measurements, we applied a layer of aluminum-backed damping material to the inner and outer door skins of the truck and repeated the measurements. Impressed by our findings, the last step was to treat the cargo area of the Jeep and repeat the tests once again. As you can see from the chart below, the results are impressive.

Condition Idle Cruise a 40mph Cruise at 60mph

No Deadening 88.5dB 99.0 dB 103dB

Doors 87.9dB 98.1dB 101.4dB

Doors and Cargo Area 84.7dB 94.3dB 98.7dB

Total Noise Reduction -3.8dB -4.7dB -4.3dB

Had we chosen a vehicle that came from the factory without a moderate amount of sound damping, the results would have been even more impressive.

How a Quieter Interior Improves Your Sound System

If you look at any of the sound deadening manufacturers’ websites, it will quickly become apparent that they all claim that adding sound deadening will improve the performance of your sound system. This is absolutely true and it helps in two unique and different ways.

First, by simply reducing the background noise in your car or truck, you improve the effective signal-to-noise ratio of your stereo. What does this mean? Having less background noise makes it easier for you to hear the quiet parts of your music. Imagine if you were listening to a track at a volume level of 100dB. If you have background noise level of 95 dB, any portion of the song that is around the 95dB level will have to battle with the background noise to be heard. If you can reduce the noise level in your car to 90 dB, you can hear more of your music.

The second and perhaps the most significant benefit of sound deadening is to improve the effectiveness of the speakers in your vehicle. In most cases, the doors of your car, truck or SUV have a hole in the inner skin for the speaker, and access holes for the window regulator, door handle and locking mechanism. A speaker produces an equal amount of sound from the front of its cone as from the back. If these two sound sources mix, they cancel each other out. This cancellation happens most often in lower frequencies, say below 300 Hz.

If you were to compare the in-car frequency response of a speaker mounted in the factory door location to that of a vehicle where a layer of sound deadening has been applied to the inner surface of the door, you would see a dramatic increase in bass output.

The graph below shows this very test in that 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The effective output from the factory-installed 6×9 woofer increased by a jaw-dropping 8dB at 240Hz. The gains were visible for all frequencies below about 400Hz, which was, in this application, likely the upper crossover frequency of the speaker.

Another cool new product designed to help improve the performance of your sound system is Stinger’s RoadKill Fast Rings. These rings mount around the face of your door or rear parcel shelf speakers and seal up against the trim panel. The concept is that they help to channel all the sound from your speaker into the interior of the vehicle, rather than allowing it to bounce around inside the door. The rings also help reduce panel vibrations for better sound performance.

Sound Deadening Can Make Your Vehicle More Comfortable

If you watch TV shows like “Detroit Muscle,” “Truck Tech” or “Overhaulin’,” you’ve undoubtedly seen the guys apply a thorough layer of sound deadening material to the floor of some of the coolest hot rods ever. Not only do these materials help keep your vehicle quiet, but they also help block heat from the road, engine, transmission and exhaust from heating up the interior of your vehicle. Dynaliner from Dynamic Control of North America, D-Mat from Design Engineering and the aptly named Heat Barrier from Thermo-Tec are specifically designed to prevent heat transfer into the interior of your vehicle.

What to Look For When Buying Sound Deadener

Most shops latch onto a particular brand of sound deadening material that they find effective and reliable. In most cases, you can trust their choice. If you want to get picky, the most important aspect of choosing a high-quality damping material is to select one that will stay adhered to your vehicle.

There are two common problems that occur with damping materials. First, they simply may not have a strong adhesive or they require extensive surface preparation to stay adhered to a panel. Some damping materials will stick to slightly dusty surfaces without any problems. The second and more important concern is that the material itself is thermally stable. You don’t want the deadening to peel off when it gets hot in the summer. We’ve heard of many cases where vehicle carpets and headliners have needed to be replaced because damping materials turned to a liquid and contaminated them.

Install Comfort in Your Vehicle Today

If you want your car doors to close with a thud instead of sounding tinny, if you want to reduce the road and exhaust noise in your car or you want to improve the performance of your hands-free phone system, drop by your local mobile electronics specialist retailer and ask about having sound deadening installed in your vehicle. We know that you will be thoroughly impressed with the improvement.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

With the cold winter behind us and school finished for the year, it’s time to start thinking about getting our cars, trucks and SUVs ready for our summer road trip or vacation. Whether you have toddlers or teens, keeping everyone in the vehicle entertained during the drive will make the entire adventure much more enjoyable. Let’s take a look at some of the options available to keep your passengers happy as you rack up the miles this summer.

Rear Seat Entertainment Solutions

The classic road trip upgrade would be to have an overhead monitor or headrest monitors installed so your passengers can watch movies while you drive. The latest in a rear seat video solution is more of a computer than a TV screen connected to a DVD player. Many systems have video games built in and include wireless controllers. The games are not quite on the level of Fortnight or Minecraft, but they are still entertaining.

The majority of the headrest video systems available can be linked together so one unit can play a DVD on both screens. If you choose units that both include DVD players, make sure the headphones have at least two audio channels so passengers can listen to different soundtracks.

Another feature found on many new rear seat video systems is an HMDI input that is compatible with streaming solutions like Chromecast, Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV. If you have Internet connectivity, your options for entertainment are nearly unlimited. You can also connect a laptop or video game system to the screens. If you need a 120 VAC power inverter to keep that laptop charged or game system going, those are easy additions.

Headrest or Overhead Monitor Selection

There is no specific benefit or drawback to choosing an overhead monitor versus headrest monitors. Of course, with the overhead, everyone will have to watch the same programming. If the ages or interests of your passengers vary, though, this might not be the best choice. A large overhead monitor also can block the view from the rearview mirror when it’s folded down. Finally, in most applications, installing an overhead monitor requires permanent modification to the roof liner of the vehicle. If you leased your car or truck, you probably want to return the vehicle with the video system in place.

If you choose to go with replacement headrest monitors, make sure the units you choose are compliant with vehicle safety standards. Your headrests are fundamental components in preventing neck injuries if you have an accident. Your local specialist mobile enhancement retailer can help ensure the products you choose will keep you safe. Another consideration is that a headrest monitor is much easier to remove from a vehicle at the end of a lease than an overhead one.

Mobile Internet Connectivity

There are many ways to provide Internet access while on the road. We all seem to have cellphones with gigabytes of data access each month. Many smartphones will accept Wi-Fi connections from other devices, but if you happen to step away from the vehicle, the show stops. One solution is to have a mobile hotspot installed in your vehicle. Verizon, AT&T and Boost Mobile in the U.S. and Telus, Rogers and Bell in Canada offer portable solutions that work just like a wireless router in your home. Your kids can pair their tablets or computers to stream content to a video screen or play games with their friends over a high-speed 4G LTE connection.

Keep Your Smart Devices Charged

If you are using your phone for navigation, your better half is posting on Facebook and the kids are building landscapes in Minecraft, you will need a way to keep all of those devices charged up while on the road. There are numerous options for adding USB charging ports anywhere in the vehicle. Having a few high-current USB ports for your rear seat passengers negates the need to keep battery packs charged up and can tidy up a lot of wiring clutter. Your installer can wire the USB power ports to the vehicle ignition switch so there is no chance of the devices draining your car battery when the vehicle engine isn’t running.

Travel Safely and Efficiently

If you don’t have a navigation system built into your vehicle, you may want to consider one. Unlike the days of old, when maps from the auto club where the only way to help you get to your destination, modern navigation system provide detailed turn-by-turn directions. If you happen to veer off-course for a little sightseeing or make a wrong turn, the navigation system will update the route almost instantly to get you back on track.

In considering a navigation solution, there are two options. You can opt for a standalone solution like a Garmin, TomTom or Magellan product that sticks to your dash or windshield. While these solutions are reasonably priced, they add clutter to the vehicle’s interior and are dangerous in the event of an accident. The alternative is to upgrade your factory radio with a multimedia receiver with built-in navigation. Not only is the installation much tidier, but these advanced infotainment solutions also offer a lot more than just navigation.

If you are shopping for a new multimedia receiver, you will want to look at a solution that includes Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. These smartphone integration technologies work with the Google or Apple voice recognition system built into your smartphone to allow you to perform commands by talking to the radio. You can make phone calls, listen to incoming text messages, and dictate a response or check your voicemail. Both systems also include navigation systems that monitor traffic flow in real time to ensure you have the most-efficient route. Google and Apple are constantly updating their map data, so you’ll never need to buy a map update again.

If you happen to enjoy listening to podcasts or audiobooks, a multitude of apps for either platform will keep you entertained and informed.

A side benefit of an aftermarket source unit is that you can play digital media files and have built-in hands-free Bluetooth calling. Many source units offer multi-zone functionality that allows you to send video from the DVD mechanism to the monitor for the rear seat passengers. There are hundreds of options for source units, so drop by your local car audio specialist retailer and try some out on their display boards.

SiriusXM Satellite Radio

Although it may seem intuitive to those who already enjoy SiriusXM, satellite radio is a great source of entertainment while you drive. Unlike terrestrial radio that has a range of about 30 to 40 miles, SiriusXM uses a group of five satellites to broadcast directly to receivers all over North America. You can listen to the same broadcast in British Columbia, California, Newfoundland or Florida.

SiriusXM serves up more than 50 genre-specific music channels so you can home in on the music you like. Country, Alternative, Classic Rock, Rap and many more channels are there for your selection. There are also news, sports, comedy and religion channels to keep you informed and entertained. If it suits your fancy, the infamous Howard Stern is alive and well, broadcasting on SiriusXM Channel 100.

Adding satellite radio to your car, truck or SUV is easy, and several transportable solutions or products will integrate with a factory-installed or aftermarket radio.

Cruise in Style with Aftermarket Accessories

Most mobile electronic retailers can help you out with automotive lighting upgrades to make driving at night safer. A quality LED or HID bulb upgrade in the factory lighting system can make a world of difference. If you are looking for fog or driving lights, or maybe a reading light for the kids in the back, they can help with those as well.

If your car didn’t come with cruise control, an aftermarket system can be added relatively easily. Companies like Rostra offer kits for drive-by-wire and cable-controlled accelerator pedal configurations. If you have a Chevy Aveo, Pontiac Wave, Scion xA or xB, Hyundai Accent, Kia Rio, Ford Focus, Honda Civic, or Dodge Ram, cruise control kits for these and many more applications will make crossing the countryside much more enjoyable.

Get Road Trip-ready

Before you pack your bags, drop by your local mobile enhancement specialist retailer and talk to them about the entertainment and convenience options they have available to make your next adventure a lot more fun.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.