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Published on January 23, 2008

Regardless of how good your system may be, noise occurring from vibration cannot be ignored. Vehicle noise comes from everywhere - engine whine, wind, exhaust and assorted body rattles - but road noise is universally irritating and can make any system sound like mush in no time. Some people even like to crank up the music loud as well as lay down the accelerator, just to show off, but that does no good to the quality of your car's stereo system.

In a closed environment like a car, there is a lot of vibration and thus a lot of noise competing with the sound of your music.

You may notice your car stereo sounds great sitting in the parking lot, but start driving around town, and the volume drops, forcing you to crank it up more.

It is important to know whether most of the reducible noise in your vehicle is structure-related. Stopping vibration in your car will cause the noise to stop, which will be relaxing to your ears.

Vibration from the exhaust pipe can cause an error in reading the head unit of your in-car CD or DVD player, even though digital processors and digital-to-analogue converters, which reserve and translate digital information, prevent much disc skipping.

Nevertheless, vibration adversely affects the overall sound, so it is always advisable to find a head unit that comes with the best disc-reading and jittering control.

Just as important in many cases is to install the amplifier in a location inside the car that has as little vibration as possible, since vibration can cause amplifier malfunction.

Although most amplifiers today are digital processors and thus immune to normal vibration, very strong vibration can sometimes cause terrible distortion. Securing the amplifier with a board helps.

To cut down on vibration noise in the loudspeakers, installation of sound-dampening materials is necessary.

These dampeners work by absorbing sound-causing vibration energy, eliminating speaker resonance and baffling out excessive sound.

Many installers attach a moulded fibre to the loudspeaker tweeters prior to mounting on the front and rear consoles. In this case, special care must be given to sealing the areas between the moulded material and the surface of the consoles and between the tweeters and the moulded material.

Both of these areas must be completely sealed, or else they can become loose or cracked if done improperly. I once found that my loudspeaker tweeters in the front consoles crackled noisily when making a turn, because of the insecure seals.

In summary, vibration caused by engine whine, exhaust, assorted body rattles and insecure seals contributes considerably to noise inside the car, which can in turn make your car-audio system sound terrible in no time.

Paying extra attention to these important factors is the solution.

By Wijit Boonchoo

The Nation

Ultimate in Luxury

The Luxury LS 460 is a wonderfully comfaortable car fitted with all mod cons, althoough not necessarily the most fun vehicle to drive.