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Step 14Install dappening material
Once the glue has dried it's time to install dampening material. Some people use polyester fill, others use acoustic foam, and others use pre-made adhesive backed foam products (pictured below). Different designs call for different types of dampening, in different quantities.
Follow your kit guidelines or contact the system designer to find out how much dampening you should use.
Black Hole 5 is the top-of-the-line name out there. It's a multi-layered dampening material, however from what I've found acoustical foam works equally as well and is a whole lot cheaper.
If your dampening material does not have an adhesive backing, use hot glue, or a construction adhesive to apply it to the walls of the speaker cabinet. The rule of thumb for dampening is that you'll want to dampen most of the inner surfaces of the cabinet, leaving room for your crossovers, drivers, ports and terminal cups.
For subwoofers I use standard polyester that's found in fabric stores.
Follow your kit guidelines or contact the system designer to find out how much dampening you should use.
Black Hole 5 is the top-of-the-line name out there. It's a multi-layered dampening material, however from what I've found acoustical foam works equally as well and is a whole lot cheaper.
If your dampening material does not have an adhesive backing, use hot glue, or a construction adhesive to apply it to the walls of the speaker cabinet. The rule of thumb for dampening is that you'll want to dampen most of the inner surfaces of the cabinet, leaving room for your crossovers, drivers, ports and terminal cups.
For subwoofers I use standard polyester that's found in fabric stores.
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I usually use polyfill which doesn't need to be attached to the sides of the box, but if I use something that does I'd recommend spray or brush/roll on contact adhesive, since it stays soft and rubbery and thin so there is no potential for making noise.
Whatever you use be careful that it doesn't have solvents in it that will attack the suspension material of the drivers.
If you're going with a home made design based on calculations using TS parameters make sure that account for whatever you use for sound deadening since it can have some interesting effects, instead of taking up volume it slows the waves in the box causing it to act larger than it actually is. Also, many calculators out there assume a loose plyfill filling in the numbers they calculate.