where is TS?

My small contribution to suppress over priced sound proof services in Malaysia.

Just a click away to Taobao and buy the sound proof materials here:
https://world.taobao.com/search/search.htm?...517-PR854-PR895

Then watch Youtube tutorial and DIY.
The cost ? Maybe just few hundred ringgit.

anything that can be diy is cheaper. the price came with labour charge and their expertise (to install). i agree with u...but not all of us here have the time to diy (some claimed it's easy based on youtube).

Your money, your call. No doubt about it.
Pay the hefty price if you are not a handy man or no time to diy.
Those who can DIY and want to save a one month salary over a weekend can try this option.

Hi guys. I agree with aeiou288...if you really want to soundproof, buy the material and DIY better.

just done a lot of research.
Soundproofing really works even on proton Saga. but not those cheap one...eg. few K. cause the material price will be around that. They need to earn a profit too. so few K soundproofing only improve very little.

For example, STP product are used in Aircraft too.
What are soundproofing.
Previously I was naive, and no experience in it. I though it literally mean Sound diminishing. stop the sound from coming in. hence the car will be a lot quieter.

But in fact. A full soundproofing consist a lot of works in it, like :

1. Deadening/Damping : to make the car surface material solid, hence cut the vibration and resonance.

2. Sound Insulation : to insulate the sound from outer to inner.

3. Sound absorption : to absorb other noise that came into the car after insulation, or created within the car.


For my door plan, RM 480 actually only did the Vibration damping work. Ok la, I mean it is fair, cause if using the very good material like STP Gold without labour also cost around RM 140+, they are using some OEM material, I don't know how much is the cost. But if they need to make profit, u can just guess what is the difference of the afterwork effect.
Moreover, only damping is made, no insulation and absorption work. So technically, it doesn't count as a Soundproofing also. it is like 1/3 of the work done....
Marketing trick I think...to hide the fact. Wont let you know too much....

For the car floor also same. they did not stick the whole bottom. some spaces remain gap, around 20% I think. The fire wall part no damping was made. Save cost? maybe? And then put a layer of wool on it for sound absorption. wool density is very low, compare to foam. so it is a low cost low effect work too...

I don't blame them for the pricing. cause their dismantle and installing work of car interior body is complex and need experience. I just dislike them for being secretive, do not explain their work well.

Guess what...I paid almost 1/15 of the car cost to do 10% sound proofing work...and I still think that I am already on the stage of 50% soundproofing...Sure la will feel cheated.

A good soundproofing could diminish the sound from 30db(100-3150Hz) to 90db(250-6300Hz). No wonder my engine sound still same as before, what improve is only the noise had been cut down. Total db cut down? maybe 1~2db...

yes,continental car mostly only tire noise,after doing fender+wheel arch then will damn good already...but nowadays getting more and more ckd cars,so not really applicable on all continental car

C and D segment cars wont be far from the price i quoted,other shops easily charge 15-20k just for the full car soundproofing,and yes,for my saga for sure is at least 50% noise reduction,and yea,is depend on the owner whether really worth it or not,normally i recommend fender+wheel arch flooring and 4 doors for a sedan,then when need to service air cond only do the soundproofing along..

The penang one is it A**x auto? They quote 2k plus for wheel arch coating only.

1.5 days labour X 2 person? With this amount of time , your labour cost is going to be high.

How high? Bangla 2 persons RM90 only
Scam of accessory .Do 1week researh before buy

50% or -6 db is achievable for this class as there isn't much soundproofing in the first place.

You think shop owner will charge RM90 a day for his labour + shop rental.
He takes the risk dismantling all your car stuff for RM90, be realistic nobody is going to do such business.




This post has been edited by Drian: Nov 29 2016, 12:11 AM

In future NO more accessory scam shop business .we can buy tools online & ask Bangla to install

I've been doing soundproofing on my cars since 15 years ago, and I myself do trial and error on what reduces road noise and what doesn't. I've also gone through letting those audio shops do the soundproofing.

Firstly the labour cost will roughly dominate the soundproofing cost, not the material. For this eg, I expect maybe 1.5K to 2k worth of materials and the rest are all labour cost.

Secondly looking at the pictures some of the soundproofing installers, they just follow a standard operating procedure of pasting tonnes of sound deadening and putting some close cell foam that doesn't anything. That's actually an outdated and inefficient way of doing soundproofing. You don't need that much to deadened the panels and if you use too much you join all the panels together to create one huge resonant frequency instead of multiple ones which increases road noise.

Yes bro. Thats the one.

Its absurb the price they quote. Due to lack of competition in Penang, they charge insane price.

Not only that, the example of a car they are working on that they charge over 20k, they show me every single holes that they are covering up.
Double layers, triple layers, crazy.

Its really throwing away customer's money to get to the point of diminishing returns.

You know, even the car bonnet is injected with foam, I am seriously wondering, how much can that help? That bonnet is an external piece of metal outside of the car's cabin enclosure, I doubt its going to make any noticeable difference.
No matter how much you soundproof that piece, you still can't get rid of engine noise that is transmitted thru the structure such as the engine mounting and so on.
Simply paste anything they can paste on

Drian, you are really on to something.

I think with your years of trial and error experience you really do know something.

I am agreeing with what you are saying.

Sound proofing is really a very tedious knowledge and many so called specialist do not really know about the special knowledge. Doing too much of it at wrong place really makes things worse.

Sometimes doing the wrong thing increase cabin pressure feeling.

Hope you can share in details your knowledge, really appreciate it. Hmmm.... what about opening a separate thread for it?

I'm also just doing this out of curiosity and for my own knowledge. I frequent those audio forums and see how they do it . The real pros are those acoustic and chassis engineers working on BMW, Mercedes, Lexus. They not only need to soundproof the vehicles, they also need to know what sounds pleasing to the ears which means knowing which frequency to suppress at the "lowest" amount of soundproofing weight.

This site is good, he really knows what he is talking about. He even mention about the cabin pressure feeling (which is actually exhaust drone) that you're talking about.

https://www.sounddeadenershowdown.com/





So some things I found out through out the years:-

1.) You only need 30% coverage to deadened most panels. Going beyond that is point of diminishing returns.


2.)Those shiny sound deadening sheet does not block sound efficiently. It's meant to dampen vibration. Most installers assume it blocks sound and therefore put tonnes of them.

3.) Road noise is a combination of airborne and structural noise . Chassis/bushing/subframe/tyres design plays an important role on how far you can go on soundproofing this. People don't often understand road noise and assume it comes from noise radiating from the tyres. It's not entirely true. You have to imagine how a speaker work. The speaker cone vibrates and pushes the air back and forth. Now imagine the whole chassis vibrate , the chassis itself acts like a speaker and you get that surround road noise. It only takes a tiny little bit of vibration to generate a lot of noise because the chassis surface area is so big compared to a 6 inch speaker. Take note that this noise does not come from the tyre, it comes from the chassis which vibrates(structural noise) due to the tyre rolling on the road. This is where bushing design, soft tyres(isolate the chassis more), and chassis design works. This is also why changing to softer tyres is the most effective method of reducing road noise. Preventing the chassis from vibrating in the first place is way easier than soundproofing all the noise that come from the whole chassis.

4.) Road noise is predominantly in the 500-1kHz region. It is very hard to filter these frequencies out.

5.) Close cell foam(superlon , insulflex) offers very little soundproofing qualities, usually only in the high frequency region which is useless. However it is good as a decoupler, (prevents things from rattling) and it is use to decouple MLV.

6.)Open cell foam/fibre/jute is better and useful for mid to high frequency. Helps a bit for road noise but not entirely as most of the road noise energy is in the 1khz region. Thinsulate is one of the better open cell fibre in terms of soundproofing performance but even it can't attenuate the 1kHz region very well. Notice from below, a 3M thinsulate spec for 10mm I think from one of the forummers selling in garage sale. The 1kHz is only suppressed 10% compared to 90% at 6kHz.

https://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?act=Atta...post&id=5098597

7.) If you put in too much thinsulate in the wheel arch, you might get more drone for some reason. Also Thinsulate doesn't discriminate road noise or your stereo, so it'll improve or degrade your sound stage audio system as well depending on where you put it. This is through trial and error. I once placed 20mm type thinsulate in the external wheel arch and it made my sound system muddy but putting it at the A pillar improved the sound quality.

8.) If you imagine filling the whole car with thinsulate, you'll filter out all the frequencies above 2-3kHz and leave behind the 1kHz frequency noise. Then your ears only only hear all the noise from 1kHz and below which may sound irritating. You probably need those psychoacoustics experts to know how to deal with this. The way our ears work is that the more prominent sound gets amplified. Hearing someone talking in the mall for eg doesn't sound as irritating than hearing someone talk in a ultra quiet library. Same amount of noise but one feels more irritating. Same goes for soundproofing in the car. I feel thinsulate should be used as targeted areas rather than cover the whole car 100%.

9.) Best way to deal with road noise is to put MLV, doesn't absorb so the only way is to block it from reaching the cabin. And to block it you need a floating mass like MLV. It needs to be decoupled from the metal so that it doesn't vibrate along with the panel so a close cell foam is needed. This is somewhat similar to double pane windows where two glasses are separated by air. The term MLV stands for Mass Loaded Vinyl which means it needs mass/weight to be effective uaually at 1lb/ft2 .This method is heavy and require 100% coverage but it is the most effective method. If you have opening the effectiveness is reduced as noise can escape through the opening. You can see an example how effective it is if you have 100% closure in the youtube below. Some brands of MLV includes Dynamat Dynapad, CAE VB4, and Luxury Liner Pro.



This post has been edited by Drian: Nov 29 2016, 11:39 AM

Car Comfort Shop ?
TS, I personally think that the price is quite ok with full car sound proof system.
Labour charge in 1.5 days isn't cheap, they doing your car for 1.5days and probably wont doing other car in this 1.5days, so their earning in this 1.5days is only from your car, somemore sound insulation isn't cheap either, with hood floor doors and even bonnet fully installed. the price seems ok to me.
but if i were u, i'll rather save up the money to upgrade a better car in future, no way spending 3k - 4k on a saga.

This post has been edited by Corsair0418: Nov 29 2016, 11:11 AM

to be fair , from the prices hes quoting , it looks like he DID go to KLAUTO!

I also think that he went to autokl to do his soundproof.