Door speaker baffling and sealing

[davidpartay]

Due to one of the coaxials blowing in my NA6 I am going to ditch them and replace them with a pair of 6.5" Response woofers from Jaycar, and a pair of tweeters which I already have.

Now, something I noticed when I removed the existing speaker to see what the fit was like was that it uses the whole door as an enclosure - and obviously, the door is not completely sealed.

I haven't checked what the clearance is when the window is wound down yet as I ran out of daylight, but I'm curious if anyone has put any extra work into doing some sealing and baffling of the doors in an NA?

When I do the new Response splits I'm going to make sure they get a decent seal when mounted as the current speakers have slightly bent frames and there is not a good seal around them, and I have the foam needed to do baffles.

Has anyone got experience with sealing a small area around the speakers in order to improve the sound quality? Or is there just simply not enough window clearance to do so?

[davidpartay]

Err, it seems I've been getting my terminology mixed up.

What I meant by 'baffle' I'm talking about the foam you put inside speaker enclosures to tighten up the sound.

I'll be using a silicon strip which I've used in the past for the actual baffle, but I'm thinking I'll use some plastic sheeting coated in foam to create sealed enclosures, which should sound better than using the whole unsealed door.

I'll have to check the window gap first... It's just going to be a bodgy job for now anyway.

[Jeo]

Don't bother with internal baffling, it won't achieve much. If you're keen, sound deadening the doors is the way to go. You can normally pick up a door kit for around $100 which will more than cover both doors. You'll only need a few hours, a heat gun (or hair dryer if you take the extra time) and some degreaser.

If you've already upgraded some of your audio system and aren't worried about the extra weight (a few kilos at most) I'd recommend it. Makes the music sound a bit crisper and blocks out a little road noise (and makes the doors sound awesome when they close).

The tools + product


Door skin off, dust guard off, degrease everything, remove all that black sticky stuff


Nice clean door


the finished product

[davidpartay]

Hmm, fair enough. It just seems to me that creating a smaller sealed area around the speaker itself would improve the sound quality.

I might look into doing this at a later point in time though, as part of my goal of removing all the rattling from the car

[Jeo]

The majority of car speakers are designed with car doors in mind. This means that unlike your home audio system, they actually want a large open space both in front and behind the driver (known as an infinite baffle). Putting them in a small sealed enclosure will do horrible things to the sound.

[davidpartay]

Fair enough then! I guess I'll try putting a better seal around the current speakers (it's pretty bad) to see how much of a difference it makes.

[davidpartay]

Ok, well ditching the rubbish Sony head unit and putting the Pioneer 3350 in made a difference .