why is my engine and road noise swallowing all the bass/ midbass?

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

So I did add sound dampening under the rear seats and under the carpet in the trunk. It actually made a significant improvement

Wow. I'd have said "don't bother" in a convertible, seems like shoveling shit against the tide, but with the butyl/aluminum stuff, CCF, and MLV you can definitely get any car as quiet as an equivalent luxury car.... though I don't know how quiet any convertible will get.

 

[idkcaraudio]

Noice, thanks for the update. From my experience noise dampening never makes anything sound worse, in or out of the car. It just makes it sound more heavy, dense, and further away which always has a positive quality to it at least to my ears. Kinda hard to describe but definitely good.

Road noise is incredibly hard to get rid of. Even in a hard top. Coating the outer skin on the doors will help quite a bit but you'll never not hear it. I was only able to stop being able to hear my tires go through puddles with full wheel well, full door including MLV, and kick panel. I still hear the bumps although they're pretty quiet.

The suspension on new cars is pretty rigid at the tire since there's hardly any clearance, I think shock almost goes right into the frame but the frames have improved their handling of it. It's worst case scenario for noise to have a low profile car with no shock travel.

Yeah, I was worrying that by reducing the interior resonance of the exhaust by putting sound dampening in the trunk, it would lose a bit of the growl, which it did at lower engine speeds during normal driving, which I'm fine with tbh, but it's there when you rev it out and I like that. I think the wheel wells are the last thing I'm going to do and then it is what it is. I just thought that would be the last place to go for the least diminishing returns considering the car and the tires I'm using. After that I'll just crank it up till I can't hear any more road noise lol

 

[idkcaraudio]

Wow. I'd have said "don't bother" in a convertible, seems like shoveling shit against the tide, but with the butyl/aluminum stuff, CCF, and MLV you can definitely get any car as quiet as an equivalent luxury car.... though I don't know how quiet any convertible will get.

I was also skeptical and honestly it's still quite loud inside, but my main issue was the stereo sounding like crap while I was driving because I think the resonance of the exhaust was just making things muddy. Adding sound dampening to the rear seats and the trunk probably helped attenuate the resonance since the exhaust lies directly under them, and that's why I'm guessing the system sounds noticeably better. The short geared 4 banger in my car is also notoriously buzzy and droney at highway speeds and I'm hearing less of that now. I'm sure it wouldn't have really made a difference if this car had a quiet engine or was electric or something.