You can use a number of things, mold panels of fiberglass, boards, damping materials etc.
They usually only have some plastic panels and thin foil from the factory.
There is several tutorials on YouTube on damping doors/cars, they point out things to look for.
You can't seal off doors. The gaskets at the top are not perfect seals and will allow water to leak through. Holes on the bottom allow any leakage to drain.
There is a moisture barrier that seals the inside from the outside. If it flexes enough to be heard (unlikely), you can glue it down on the entire door with spray adhesive or around the openings with various types of rope adhesives that never harden (always tacky).
If you're mounting speakers that will not be in the OEM locations and are something like 4 6" midbass that will be driven with several hundred watts of power, that's entirely different.
If the OEM system has enclosures for the door speakers, it's likely that nothing needs to be done but to change the speakers if that's what's needed to make the system sound better.
If you're mounting speakers that will not be in the OEM locations and are something like 4 6" midbass that will be driven with several hundred watts of power, that's entirely different.
If the OEM system has enclosures for the door speakers, it's likely that nothing needs to be done but to change the speakers if that's what's needed to make the system sound better.
Naturally it depends on how good it is from the factory, more expensive cars is better.
But the difference is massive, in undampened doors $100 speakers sounds the same as $400 ones. The speakers needs to be mounted well and the doors dampened to take advantage of the high end speakers for SQ.
But the difference is massive, in undampened doors $100 speakers sounds the same as $400 ones. The speakers needs to be mounted well and the doors dampened to take advantage of the high end speakers for SQ.
These minis are built by bmw and share the same famously crap sound systems that the BMWs of that era had.
Given the probable commonality of components between the ranges I would suggest starting off by getting a clean, flat signal.
The easiest way is to buy a line out converter/DSP gizmo to take the high level signal from your head unit, convert to line level and correct factory hard wired EQ setting to flat.
The next step is to upgrade the front stage. Pioneer do a nice set of components that fit straight in for around £100, I would probably go for something plug and play after my experience of making speakers fit in my own BMW of that era. While you have the doors apart to fit them put a couple of square feet of sound deafening around where the speaker mounts to the door panel, just behind it on the door skin and some more in the middle of the largest flat area of the door skin. This is more to clear up the midbass than it is to sound deaden the car. At this level cranking the music is the best way to deal with road noise.
A nice amplifier can be had for around the same money if you look for a second hand Kenwood, pioneer, JBL, etc 4 channel amp of at least 50-75W per channel. This leaves some scope for dedicated midbasses in future, especially if the mini has underseat woofers like the BMW does.
Then add a sub when budget allows.
Given the probable commonality of components between the ranges I would suggest starting off by getting a clean, flat signal.
The easiest way is to buy a line out converter/DSP gizmo to take the high level signal from your head unit, convert to line level and correct factory hard wired EQ setting to flat.
The next step is to upgrade the front stage. Pioneer do a nice set of components that fit straight in for around £100, I would probably go for something plug and play after my experience of making speakers fit in my own BMW of that era. While you have the doors apart to fit them put a couple of square feet of sound deafening around where the speaker mounts to the door panel, just behind it on the door skin and some more in the middle of the largest flat area of the door skin. This is more to clear up the midbass than it is to sound deaden the car. At this level cranking the music is the best way to deal with road noise.
A nice amplifier can be had for around the same money if you look for a second hand Kenwood, pioneer, JBL, etc 4 channel amp of at least 50-75W per channel. This leaves some scope for dedicated midbasses in future, especially if the mini has underseat woofers like the BMW does.
Then add a sub when budget allows.
This is what I was wondering, I don't think my car has any sort of sound dampening in the doors or anywhere for that matter.
Thanks, think I might put some coaxials in the rear and some decent component speakers and the front and add a shallow mount sub in the trunk. I was looking at the morel maximo 6's.