Car door's Damping - Advise required.

[manniraj]

If your door pads didnt rattle in the first place, and later started rattling, then damping is a very expensive fix. What happens is that there are small plastic clips that hold the door pad in place. Some of them break, are misplaced by service centre folks etc, which leads to rattling/vibrations where they are missing. A replacement plastic clip should be 10 rs or so. No need to spend a few K on damping

Yes I agree that the plastic clips get damaged when you open the door pads either for speaker fixing or damping. You should make sure that the guy fixes with the plastic clips without which the damping is useless and I think that majority of the guys in this business take care of this as you tend to go back to them if there is indeed any vibration/rattle again as they are easily accessible

 

[Kannan]

Damping is a must if you have component speakers driven by an amplifier and the midbass speakers are fixed to your front doors.
If you are not using an amp and just your head unit to power your speakers, damping is not needed.
However in the earlier scenario, damping is critical without which your midbass will suffer and the tweeters will sound very bright.
Which product to use depends on your budget. If you want the best results, dynamat and wuerth are both good. Focal also offers an expensive solution. Dampmat, noisekill are all value for money. Simple bitumen sheets which are locally called as tar felt sheet can work but not to great effect on doors but on floor.
If you use a subwoofer in the boot, that are also needs to be damped for good SQ.
Doors are the worst offenders due to reflections and rattles when you install good quality midbass speakers. Damping makes it into a good enclosure to restore the bass effect to the best possible extent.
If you want to avoid asphalt/bitumen in your car, then try thick felt sheets or foam sheets. It is hard to find these materials with self adhesiion and hence will be difficult to install. However these materials will be as good as dynamat and much cheaper.