# Sound Dampened Steel



## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

File this one under _I'm not sure what to do with it, but if sure seems useful._ I found this video that illustrates the sound-dampening characteristics of _sound dampened steel._






Does anyone have ideas for how to make use of it?


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## Lumen (May 17, 2014)

Don't have my earphones at work today, so haven't watched the video and am just going by your description, Wayne. I'll try to re-visit this at home, but for now the first thing that comes to mind would make high-end marketing teams salivate with delight: 

_"Robust chassis for audio components virtually eliminates micro-vibrations from sensitive circuitry. No smearing of detail! And now for a limited time only, take a 10% discount on our magishy-kote treatment and keep stray microwaves from adding heat to your cherished electronics. Everyone knows heat kills!"_ :R


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## Medi0gre (Oct 30, 2012)

Good for late night/ early morning plinking with the silenced weapons


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## bpape (Sep 14, 2006)

I guess it might help if your room was made of steel? All that's showing is how to damp the resonance of the steel, not the room.


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

Far be I from having expertise in this area. Without thinking through all the details, a few random possibilities came to mind:

Chassis for HTPC.
For high sound isolation, in a room-within-a-room design, I would be curious how its isolation capabilities compare to other materials at critical construction points where some kind of special "isolator" is typically used.
Possibly useful as a constraining layer in speaker enclosure design, high density and high absorption at the same time (idea for a different thread)?
Layer for construction of custom speaker stands??

Just looking to get ya'll thinking about it, that's all.


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## dgmartin (Oct 29, 2011)

From their website. "DSD consists of two metal skins separated by a 0.05mm layer of viscoelastic polymer. This forms a constrained layer which converts vibrational energy into negligable heat". 

This is otherwise known as CLD (Constrained layer damping). My main speakers use that same concept (with silicon between inner and outer panels). Not my idea (Earl's). Interesting to see it sells as a sheet. Something to keep in mind... steel probably not for audio. 

Some people built their rooms with two layers of gypsum bonded by liquid nails.


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## lcaillo (May 2, 2006)

I'd like to see the transient response and excitation in a sweep. All we see here is the damping of the resonance, but I wonder how it behaves over the spectrum.


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## dgmartin (Oct 29, 2011)

lcaillo said:


> I'd like to see the transient response and excitation in a sweep. All we see here is the damping of the resonance, but I wonder how it behaves over the spectrum.



If I get what you mean, a polymeric damping is going to be more effective at high frequency. So it does a good job damping the steel plate's transient response which is composed of high pitched modes of the steel plate and its harmonics. Under a sweep, the damped steel will yield forced response displacements larger than the steel plate itself.


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

Good point, Leonard. It would be good to see that function over the audio frequency range, especially low frequencies. Likely very little damping going on there.


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