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Why Not Asphalt?

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Sticky!

I vote Don to be on the SSA Tech Team dedicated to the Sound Deadening Forum.

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Sticky!

I vote Don to be on the SSA Tech Team dedicated to the Sound Deadening Forum.

Stuck!

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Or moderator of this section! Excellent post Don, we're all lucky to have such a knowledgeable asset to the forum.

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Don, that is a fantastic write up. I enjoyed reading it.

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Great read! And another point to mention, Asphalt based "dampeners" smell like a freshly paved road. Not something I wanna smell every time I am in the car. Real hot days and the smell is even worse! I don't care what they claim. When I had some the smell never went away!

Don is the man and I use his products! Wont use anything else as long as he is around! :drink40:

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Great information man and the last paragraph/analogy was killer, keep up the good work man.

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this was really awesome....it helped and made me watch caddy shack to figure out what you were talking about. anywhay i wam thinking of using something for my car to help with the vibrations and sound. we havent started it yet, but i want to know as much as i can before i start.

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Everyone better +1 for this topic. :)

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its funny how those of us that grew up in the dynomat era dont have a clue as to what a real deadener/barrier really is. atleast myself. :suicide-santa: back then everything was the same. now we have some great products to chose from. Cheers to Don at Sound Deadener Showdown!

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Good read :) makes me want to learn more about this stuff. :bigok:

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Good read, very informative without being boring. +1 to you, sir.

I do have a question but I'm not sure how well it would fit into this.

Weather stripping?

I'm not sure if it's asphalt based or what but I've heard of a few people using this with supposedly great results. But it seems like it would only add mass since it's not meant for this line of business and like you said, raise the resonant frequency.

Thoughts?

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:+1: for you sir!!! Look forward to using some of your products in my next build.

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Good read, very informative without being boring. +1 to you, sir.

I do have a question but I'm not sure how well it would fit into this.

Weather stripping?

I'm not sure if it's asphalt based or what but I've heard of a few people using this with supposedly great results. But it seems like it would only add mass since it's not meant for this line of business and like you said, raise the resonant frequency.

Thoughts?

Adding mass lowers resonant frequency, stiffening a panel raises the resonant frequency. So if you add some mass and lower the Fs a little, but at the same time stiffen the panel some which raises the Fs a little, then the net result is virtually no change in Fs :) If you add mass without stiffening, then Fs will decrease. It takes a 4x increase in mass to decrease Fs by one octave. If you stiffen without adding mass, then Fs increases.

As for results with weather stripping......Don has mentioned over the years as well as in this thread that the viscoelastic properties of the adhesive layer are going determine it's effectiveness as a vibration damper (in addition to some other things). My guess would be that a material designed for the construction industry is probably not going to utilize a compound ideally suited to vibration damping, and that's before we even discuss differences in the other important factors to CLD performance.

But Don could go into much more detail.

:drink40: Great thread Don!! Sound deadening is one of the areas in this hobby that needs a lot more accurate information being presented and a lot less voodoo and mysticism about what works and why. Glad it was you who stepped up to fill that role extremely well for the past few years.

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Good read, very informative without being boring. +1 to you, sir.

I do have a question but I'm not sure how well it would fit into this.

Weather stripping?

I'm not sure if it's asphalt based or what but I've heard of a few people using this with supposedly great results. But it seems like it would only add mass since it's not meant for this line of business and like you said, raise the resonant frequency.

Thoughts?

I usually think of weatherstripping as self adhesive foam. Do you mean flashing tape? Some is asphalt, some is butyl and it all has a thin foil layer or no foil layer at all. As Impious stated, an adhesive designed for waterproofing is not going to be ideal for vibration damping. Even though the butyl blends are less likely to fall off, they don't perform any better than asphalt. It's really important to understand that "butyl" is just the base component of these adhesives. It is essentially a synthetic rubber. By itself, it would be a terrible vibration damper. Like rubber, it is almost purely elastic and will simply return any energy it receives. That's why claims of "highest butyl content" and highest rubber content" are silly. That's like claiming your mathematical formula is superior because it use more numbers or your song is better because it uses more notes.

Viscoelasticity is the key to all of this. If anybody is really interested, PM me with a shipping address and I'll send you a sample of a viscoelastic adhesive. There's nothing better than stretching and releasing a viscoelastic material to understand what is going on. Stretch and release it repeatedly and it starts to get warm. Light bulb moment.

I think you'll find that people using flashing tape and reporting great results haven't used a true vibration damper before. With no basis for comparison, a barely noticeable change can be perceived as "great", especially if you've just spent 2 days on the project and really want to believe it was worth the effort.

Impious made an extremely important point for anybody who believes it doesn't matter what you use since you are just "mass loading" - quadruple the mass to lower resonant frequency one octave. That for EACH octave - the second will require 16 times the original mass, and so on.

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Ah, thank you for the clarification, Impious.

I guess I misunderstood the part about mass loading and stiffening.

And actually no, Don, I misrepresented, I guess that's the best way to put it because I completely missed the boat, what I was talking about. I looked up the stuff from the video I saw on it and it's called Peel & Seal. A quick search on Lowes tells me that it's aluminum roll roofing. I'm a bit unsure of that but a roll of three feet by thirty three and a half weighs in at only thirty two pounds. So at 32lbs / 100.5 sqft, less than a third of a pound per square foot.

So it seems that it would only stiffen and not so much add mass with that distribution, am I right with that?

Definitely doesn't seem like a good idea to me, but then again, I only now have a very limited understanding so feel free to correct if need be. :ughdunno:

Here's a linky to it if you're interested;

http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?partNumber=154032-81326-PS36&catalogId=10051&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=3090099

Edited by Nick_W

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Ah, thank you for the clarification, Impious.

I guess I misunderstood the part about mass loading and stiffening.

And actually no, Don, I misrepresented, I guess that's the best way to put it because I completely missed the boat, what I was talking about. I looked up the stuff from the video I saw on it and it's called Peel & Seal. A quick search on Lowes tells me that it's aluminum roll roofing. I'm a bit unsure of that but a roll of three feet by thirty three and a half weighs in at only thirty two pounds. So at 32lbs / 100.5 sqft, less than a third of a pound per square foot.

So it seems that it would only stiffen and not so much add mass with that distribution, am I right with that?

Definitely doesn't seem like a good idea to me, but then again, I only now have a very limited understanding so feel free to correct if need be. :ughdunno:

Here's a linky to it if you're interested;

http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?partNumber=154032-81326-PS36&catalogId=10051&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=3090099

Peel & Seal is asphalt with a very thin foil facing. You really couldn't find a less useful material for automotive applications - good thing that's not what it is intended for :) Several people have resold it as sound deadener over the years and one well known brand still does.

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I was wondering, in the original test I think I remember that RaamMat was your overall winner in the test results. I've learned alot about sound deadening with your answers to other people's questions over time but mostly originally discovered what it was, how it worked and what not from those tests. As a result I used and recommended the RaamMat for quite some time. Recent months have had me questioning it's true nature anyway. I was curious where it stands now. Is it still a worthwhile product, even if a little less effective, or is it like the many other less expensive options out there and not completely unlike the peal 'n seal.

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I was wondering, in the original test I think I remember that RaamMat was your overall winner in the test results.

Damp Pro was the overall winner.

Raammat was listed as being a good alternative "value" deadener.

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Would of been nice to see how the SDS compared to the rest. But we know that isn't going to happen.LOL.

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I was wondering, in the original test I think I remember that RaamMat was your overall winner in the test results. I've learned alot about sound deadening with your answers to other people's questions over time but mostly originally discovered what it was, how it worked and what not from those tests. As a result I used and recommended the RaamMat for quite some time. Recent months have had me questioning it's true nature anyway. I was curious where it stands now. Is it still a worthwhile product, even if a little less effective, or is it like the many other less expensive options out there and not completely unlike the peal 'n seal.

I didn't have any way to test performance when I did the review site. I was really trying to figure out which of the products were what they said the were. At the time, this was important since so many sellers were misrepresenting the absolute basics like what the product was made of, mass/area, heat tolerance and just about everything else. Remember, quite a few were simply taking Peel & Seal out of one box, putting it in another and calling it sound deadener. Some were calling it butyl sound deadener and others were being deliberately misleading with descriptions like "rubberized compound".

I relied on the consensus of forum "experts" and assumed that if many people insisted a product worked, it must. This was a mistake on my part. Getting to the bottom of the gross falsehoods was important, but that's still a pretty low standard to to which to hold products like these. This is what led me to start this business. I started working on an update to the site. I had learned how to test product performance, so that was going to be included. I quickly ran into a dilemma. There are plenty of good products out there, but very few that advocated proper application. I was faced with endorsing a product when the seller was recommending applying it in a manner that was to their advantage and not the consumer's. I'd had enough and decided to try and do better.

I don't want to get into specific competing products, but there are two absolutely critical components to a constrained layer viscoelastic vibration damper. The adhesive needs to be viscoelastic and the constraining layer needs to be capable of constraint :) No thin foil or no foil facing can do this adequately. That's not to say the constraining layer has to be foil, but since it almost always is, you get the point. Anybody designing a vibration damper should know this. It's safe to assume that if you are looking at a thin foil or Mylar facing, you are actually seeing a flashing material with a reflective facing intended to protect the material form UV damage. Another consequence of this is that the adhesive (butyl or asphalt) is optimized for waterproofing, not vibration damping.

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Show me someone from any other brand that has that knowledge and can explain it well to customers. ;)

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