Earlier in the summer I installed a new system in my Z. I put all the speakers in the stock location, as it was my first install and I was trying to get it done in one day [no garage to work in, not really comfortable having my Z in pieces out on the street].

I installed the following stuff:

AVIC-Z1 w/ XM, ipod, bluetooth, etc.
JL 300/2 amplifier for fronts
JL XR650-CSI components for fronts
JL 500/1 amplifier for sub
Single JL 12W7 sub in Zenclosures box in the rear.
No rear speakers

It's now off the road for the winter, living in a heated garage, so I have all the time in the world to tear it down and get everything squared away. As it stands, I have a few problems with the system:

1) The sound staging is horrible with speakers in the stock locations.
2) Frequency response is all over the place. Lots of boominess, and certain high frequencies are very noticably overrepresented, probably the glass. Sub makes the whole rear end rattle.
3) The doors rattle like crazy, the 6.5" woofers are plenty powerful to vibrate the plastic panels.
4) Noise floor is very high. Part of this is abnormal tire wear which I guess is usual, so I'll get that fixed separately.

So it sounds like what i want to do is dampen the crap out of the car and mount the speakers in kick panels, or at least find some way to harden the plastic door panels so that the woofers can't rattle them. If anybody who has done any of this has any advice, let me know. In particular, does anybody make some decent looking kick panels for the Z? I've seen some decent looking door pods but nobody selling fiber glass kick panels or the like. Anyone have pics of a kick panel install of 6.5"s? The drivers side in particular would be tight, even with the dead pedal removed.

Is there anything I should pay particular attention to with respect to sound dampening after I tear out the interior? I would hate to miss a common rattle or something while I have the interior removed. I get tons and tons of road noise, hopefully I can mitigate some of that, but the main goal is making all the panels stop vibrating. I may go the whole nine yards and silicon all the bolts, etc.

 

I am currently in the process of installing my system and started by sound deadening. I installed 65 sq ft of Raam Matt and followed that up with a layer of 1/8" closed cell neoprene foam. It was a very tedious task, but the differences were noticeable as I completed each step/compartment. The matt and foam were installed from the trunk area up to, and including, the cubby holes. The forward cabin received two layers of foam.

As for kick panels, I had an installer make me a pair, here is a link with some pics:

https://my350z.com/forum/audio-and-video/227450-kicks-vs-door-pods.html

I can't comment on sound quality yet, as the system is not complete yet. I couldn't find any pre-made kicks such as Q-forms and didn't want to drill holes in the factory door panels.

 

Are you using a high-pass filter to block the lowest bass frequencies from your door mounted mid-woofers? Unless you're not doing that, or your door panel fasteners are bad I can't possibly imagine the sound volumes your driving your system to. I've had mine up to +110 dB without a rattle - and wearing hearing protection.

The speakers ought to be very tightly mounted to the door frame itself. Pull the speaker grills off - they snap right off starting from the rear most part. The amount of sound energy needed to vibrate a properly screwed in and snapped in door panel must be huge. I did sound dampen the inside of my plastic door panels just to reduce road noise. I also did the metal door skins.

The darn plastic skin on the inside of the hatch is a beach. I'm temped to run screws down though the plastic and down into the metal of the hatch ... but have resisted the temptation.

As far as "sound stage" and your frequency boomings you've got a very big challenge. You've got to do battle against fundamental acoustical physics. Laws that can not be broken. "Sound stage" requires an absence of early reflections ... good luck.

I would recommend mounting the tweeters to the front windshield, and running 4" acoustical foam over both side windows, the top of the dash, and the ceiling. Now move the seats to the trunk. In a home this is completely possible - wall and floor treatments are four to five feet away. Speakers are seven to ten feet apart and about the same distance away. In the car the left speaker is three feet away and the right is almost twice that. There are windows, legs, dash boards, low ceilings all which will give you early distorting reflections.

As far as boomings a 1/3 band graphic equalizer and spectrum analyser can help. I have documented peaks in the mid-bass caused by another fundamental problem - resonance. I've measured huge peaks from a pink noise generator caused by resonance at the fundamental frequency of the length, width, and height of the car ... now you're talking bass traps which would be bigger than the car itself.

In my humble opinion it's IMPOSSIBLE to achieve the sound quality nearing even a poorly designed home stereo system. You can't reproduce the acoustic stage of a 18 x 25 x 8" home theater in a car 6 x 11 x 4". My home theater room is +25,000 cubic feet, the car is about 100 cubic feet.

My tires are nearly new. I have less that 2600 miles on my Z so far. I have the stock exhaust and even at idle I measured 80 dB. I measured that noise level at two locations - the driver's seat and six feet behind the car. At WOT that noise rises to 86 dB. I can't imagine sitting in my home theater putting up with 86 dB worth of background noise.

I do enjoy tinkering with the car but FULLY understand its limitations. I'd recommend some reading to arm yourself with an understanding what you're facing. You can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear. My favorite acoustic books are:

The Master Handbook of Acoustics - Everest
Audio Systems Design and Installation - Giddings
Sound System Engieering - Davis and Davis

Here's some of my tinkering:

Acoustical measurement
https://my350z.com/forum/showthread....88#post2273288

Noise measurement
https://my350z.com/forum/audio-and-video/210194-acoustic-noise-levels-in-out-of-the-z.html

 

Bjarvis-

I see you're in the metro as well...

Check out this link for a place in Chaska tha sells all kinds of noise reduction materials.
http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/no...heets.htm?d=14

I built kicks for the my 3-way setup, but did keep the 7's in the doors. My car is going into storage as well, but I'll try and take some pics to give you an idea of what it looks like. I still have use of the dead pedal, but cannot go straight from the clutch to the pedal.

Send me a PM with your email when you get a chance and I'll try and give you more detail on what I did.

 

16psibrick built me my kickpods for 6.5" for a fair price.

Sounds great and solidly built (fiberglass).

I'm sure he can dig up some pics with it installed. I broke my cam so can't take one for ya.