Acoustic Comfort Package??
















Last edited by HBerman; Dec 31, 2016 at 08:22 PM.
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In additon to the special glass, the rear seat and rear floorpan get extra sound deadening material. This rear area is the source of much of the noise in modern cars, now that mirror shapes, other aerodynamic tricks and dual rubber door seals have become standard. One used to not notice it. Now that cars are already quiet, the acoustic comfort pack attempt to put the icing on the cake, as it were, with regard to noise, by tacking this remaining noise source.
About the only thing we hear now is tire noise on rough surfaces. This is tire noise issue very difficult problem no one has been able to tune out of cars yet. They may never find a way.
Hope this helps.
-=m=-




In additon to the special glass, the rear seat and rear floorpan get extra sound deadening material. This rear area is the source of much of the noise in modern cars, now that mirror shapes, other aerodynamic tricks and dual rubber door seals have become standard. One used to not notice it. Now that cars are already quiet, the acoustic comfort pack attempt to put the icing on the cake, as it were, with regard to noise, by tacking this remaining noise source.
About the only thing we hear now is tire noise on rough surfaces. This is tire noise issue very difficult problem no one has been able to tune out of cars yet. They may never find a way.
Hope this helps.
-=m=-
Last edited by HBerman; Dec 31, 2016 at 11:40 PM.
I test drove an E300 "Luxury" with Airmatic and the acoustic package last month. The tire noise was all one really noticed. That alone was pretty impressive.
But, why tire noise? Tire makers vary the tread block shapes to make "white noise" as much as possible, otherwise we would have huge periods of humming or whining noise at various speeds. The fact remans, the tread blocks make some noise even on a smooth surface, and we have to have the tread blocks incase of rain. This white noise would not be so bad by itself.
However, there is the problem of running on pitted concrete and some crushed rock asphalt surfaces cause tires to make a huge amount of this noise. In addition there are the extra sharp noise tires make when they 'slap' unto bumps, pot holes, seams and other surface irregularities. Inflated tires are perfect resonators of sound, and the stiffer the side walls (high performance, low profile tires) the worse this problem becomes.
The surface irregularities are particularly high energy events in the suspension. It can be dampened down by insulation, but the energy (as both sound and motion) comes into the chassis via the suspension though the bushings.
Bushing of rubber or sometimes a hydraulic design using silicon or other fluid dampens noise, absorbs shock, but they cannot be too soft or the car will not track down the road and the steering and cornering feel will be more than just imprecise. It is impossible to dampen all of this sound energy or keep it from entering the chassis.
NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harmonics) control has come a long way in the last twenty years, but tire noise still gets through. One of the biggest problems is getting governments to build quiet, and at least non-slippery road surfaces. In the era of poor budget planning for road infrastructure maintenance, we are getting huge section of highway either in disrepair or roadway repaired with the lease expensive surface possible irrespective of its sound properties.
This noise source is both tire design and roadway surface dependent. Keeping all that high energy noise out of the cabin at higher vehicle speeds is always very problematic. Within the suspension and the chassis there are a host of design compromises that do not allow complete isolation of all road sound propagation. Why would I say this?-> We would figure someone, somewhere, standing in a warm shower one morning would have already thought how to eliminate it! Alas, we just keep thinking of ways to minimize it.
Last edited by Mike__S; Jan 1, 2017 at 01:26 AM.




There are optically transparent IR coatings for glass. Glass does not have to be tinted to reflect IR radiation.




The IR reflection is built into the membrane for the laminated glass. The windshield has two locations for radar detectors and easy-pass transponders. You can easily see the locations from outside the car. The side glass is marked 30% for light transmission and it is how the glass is formulated. I don't believe that there is a coating or there would be special cleaning instructions to prevent damage.












It's not clear. It's definitely darker than clear. You'll have to make the determination yourself.
Last edited by HBerman; Jan 1, 2017 at 03:05 PM.
The IR reflection is built into the membrane for the laminated glass. The windshield has two locations for radar detectors and easy-pass transponders. You can easily see the locations from outside the car. The side glass is marked 30% for light transmission and it is how the glass is formulated. I don't believe that there is a coating or there would be special cleaning instructions to prevent damage.
IR coatings can be on the interior side of laminated glass.










