Will sub remove door speaker rattle?
 

I get a lot of rattle from the door speakers from bass. Particularly hip hop music. It's not my favorite genre so I don't listen all the time but when I do the door rattle is really annoying. If I get a sub like the stealthbox will it eliminate the rattle since the bass will be going elsewhere?

Other than the rattle I am happy with the OEM system so not looking for an entire new setup.

Short answer: No, not at the same volume you are experiencing the rattle.

So the deck is powering the dash and the rear speakers. The dash speakers are crossovered at a higher frequency than the other speakers. The rear speakers are full range frequency. The door speakers are mid-bass drivers ran off a small amp in the trunk. The door speakers are crossovered at a low frequency. The stock deck has RCA preoutputs. (wow!) So adding a sub is easy, but won't affect the sound coming out of the other speakers. You would have to add a new amp, and/or new deck, or signal processor, or add crossovers to each speaker.

I am installing 6 new speakers, two crossovers, an amp, and a powered sub this weekend in my FR-S. I have been doing research into what it will take to "fix" the sound. I hope this helps. Good luck. :w00t:

Best thing you could do would be to add something like Dynamat in the doors.

So an amp and sub would do it?

Anyone know the specific areas to dynamat? Not really interested in plastering the car with it.

Someone, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that a sound processor would be necessary to fix the situation.

If just an amp and sub is installed, the original signal is still being routed to the doors. The best way to resolve that would be to have a sound processor limit the frequencies going to the door. That would force the sub to handle the bass and leave the door drivers to mid-bass duties.

If you don't want to build out a setup that includes a processor, you should do what thill suggested. That would save you a lot of money, but the doors and the sub could overlap in the frequencies they generate.

Nah, if you add an amp and sub, you can turn down the bass on the deck which will in turn reduce the amount of bass going to the door speakers which will reduce the buzz. The problem is, there is still some buzz/rattling on those door panels some times even without music. There are threads about this already but I have dealt with the door buzz issue on two of these, one is my brother's stock audio system in which we dynamatted the doors and took care of the infamous rattle on the window switch area. The other is one I did a new pioneer in-dash DVD and replaced the speakers with some Kicker KS series speakers and dynamatted the doors. On that one we did put a Kicker amp and sub in the trunk but on both, the door rattle was eliminated and in my brother's with the stock audio system, road noise was reduced and sound quality and bass response was increased. Whatever way you decide to go, at least explore getting some sound deadening or something near the switch panels in the door which are known for being a problem area. If I remeber I'll pull the pics off of my phone later.

A sound processor could help in the way that dude described but I think there would still be rattles and buzzes.

I forgot about messing with the internal EQ. Sound deadening is a requirement :thumbup:

The door rattle can be totally handled by sound deadening. There are a few good guides on here with pics. Huge improvement to the stock system for a weekend's worth of effort.

Fix the door speaker rattle
 

@Wolfsong is correct. The rattle is caused by a lose fitting inside the door near the window switches. A few pieces of foam tape fixes the problem completely. You just have to take the door card off, no biggie.
@xjohnx 's how-to is in this thread HERE with lots of :coolpics:

Wow, no one giving the old school "add a capacitor in series with the speaker leads" answer. You will need two capacitors. Each will go on one of the cables to/from the speakers. You can place them in the trunk where the wires go to the speakers in the doors. One capacitor per speaker and it does not matter which of the two wires you put in in line with. (Amp -> Cap -> Speaker) A 400 micro farad capacitor will remove anything below 200 hertz from the door speakers. If you want to cross it over at a lower frequency you can get 120 hertz and up with a 660 micro farad capacitor. The higher the frequency you cross it over at the less rattle; however you will also be removing some of the sound frequencies that you normally hear also. Most sub amps can be crossed over to 120 hertz and below so that may be a good place to start if you are just adding the sub and amp. Old School for the win :-)

Short version. You want no door rattle? take apart the door panels, find the rattling parts, add mass loader to those parts. (Dynamat butyl rubber layer).

That's it. Anything else and the door will still rattle. A sub will just cause them to resonate from that rather than the door speaker.

This is exactly what I was wanting to do, and I'm about halfway through the process right now. I added a 12" sub and dynamat in the trunk lid, under the spare, and both doors and license plates.

Notes:
- Rattle/buzz from by the window switches as mentioned by DAEMANO (Fix??)
- Rattle from rear deck that I may or may not have fixed (see thread)
- Rattle from Homelink mirror that I haven't messed with yet
- Turning down the lowest 2 frequencies in the EQ "kind of" helps but they have to be damn near off. And the resulting sound isn't very good.

I'll check out the window switches tonight hopefully. In the meantime I've just been reluctantly turning the volume down.

That's what I feared. I don't know first hand, but I figured using that as a bobo crossover would end up rather meh.

At one point someone recommended just disconnecting the door speakers. I had already done it at one point while I was trying out a pair of speakers I had laying around. You end up with NO mid bass at all, of course.

No and Yes.

Simply adding a sub will do nothing to stop the doors from providing sympathetic harmonics (rattling). But adding a sub and a cross-over network can stop the rattling AND improve the sound quality. This works because you can limit the low frequencies that you send to the door speakers (only frequencies between 100 and 3000Hz)

And I said "can" because as others have pointed out, if there is something loose in the door you will still need to address that.

Of course, adding a sub can also make things in the truck rattle...but that's a whole new project :)

Where can I purchase a small amount of dynamat? Not looking to cover my whole interior, just those bits pointed out in some of the posts above and see where that gets me.

ebay...amazon...Crutchfield...local car audio shop

Most companies will sell a "door pack" with enough square footage to do a pair of doors, some companies will a single sheet of their product which is typically between 1.5-2 square feet.
Most audio supply places will carry something, and dome places will sell direct to the customers. If you need some suggestions, I use Second Skin Audio products http://store.secondskinaudio.com but Raam Audio also have good products. http://www.raamaudio.com. The only product I can't recommend is Hushmat, but that is due to them taking my money but never fulfilling the products I ordered a long time ago.

If you want to improve the sound from your doors, check out my thread on sealing and deadening the doors, which is a fancy way of saying that you're turning the door into a speaker enclosure. http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28506
It's a bit more work and requires a few more materials, but makes a tremendous improvement in sound quality.