We walk through the sound deadening tricks applied to the new CX-5 crossover to keep it quiet.
TranscriptJAMES RISWICK: This is James Riswick for Autoblog, and this is the all new Mazda CX-5, and one of the big differences with this car is the amount of sound deadening that has gone on to make it a much quieter car. And to explain that, here's Mazda engineer Dave Coleman. Dave, what exactly did you do?
DAVE COLEMAN: Well, everyone assumes that the NVH comes from just throwing lots of sound deadening into the car, and actually it's a whole lot more than that. It's hundreds and hundreds of little details. I'm going to walk through as many details as I can remember, and I have no idea how many that's going to be. But let's start seeing what we can point out.
We really wanted to work to reduce the generation of turbulence that will cause noise, so there's things. For example, the windshield wipers are down below the hood line now, so as the air comes up over the hood, it doesn't hit the wipers and generate that turbulence. The windshield's a little bit thicker than it was before too, which you can't really see.
If you look here between the doors, you can see there's a seal right there. There used to be a little gap there. There's two other seals behind it, but the little turbulence created in there would generate some noise.
There's a similar one on the back door that you can't see it on the surface, but right inside here. Previously we had this seal and this seal. Now we have this third one that again stops that turbulence from starting out there. We had a new seal here at the window.
The trim piece here, you can see, there's a tiny little rubber seal down at the bottom there. There used to be just a flush fit, [? and with ?] that flush fit, just a little bit of a high frequency noise could sneak in through there. Similar deal with the plastic panels here are now sealed up against the back of the body because there was a place where noise could sneak in there as well.
The actual gap between the door and the body closes a little bit tighter, so not as much a sound can sneak up through there. Then there's a surprising piece. There's a pinch weld around here, if you actually peel this back. The sound could actually sneak in between those spot welds. The high frequency sound could sneak out through there, and so now there's a gummy bit up inside this seal that seals tight against there and keeps that from coming into the cabin.
There's new seals behind the interior panel here, so noise inside the door can't get into the interior. There's more insulation inside the door. There's more coverage of carpet in places where you can't see it. Used to be the carpet would stop at the center [? cut ?] tunnel because why do we need to put carpet where you can't see it? Well, because you'll hear it. That's why.
JAMES RISWICK: There's a lot more carpet in the trunk too.
DAVE COLEMAN: There is a lot more carpet the trunk. That's easier to see.
So previously, these side panels were hard plastic, which is kind of reflective. And this compartment was open like this, and so there was a sound path down to the rear cargo floor. Now that's covered. This gap is tighter. This is no longer reflective. And even this sound path is kind of blocked by the foam there as well. So there's a lot less noise coming up through the rear floor.
If the cargo cover was in place here, you can see the back seat's now adjustable in two positions. There's a little trapdoor on the back of the cargo cover, so it's always blocking that path even when you move the seat forward a little bit. It's still going to maintain contact, so sound from the back doesn't come up into the front.
You can see another little seal here that we added. Just like the ones between the doors, there's a little gap between the roof and the top of the hatch. We don't want to generate turbulence there.
Well, I could just keep going forever. Let's see.
[LAUGHTER]
If you can see it, the window's down a little too far, but this is actually a dual layer acoustic glass. You can look really closely there at the top of the glass. It's two pieces with a little groove in between. There's actually a sound-deadening layer between those two pieces of glass, and the windshield is made that way as well.
JAMES RISWICK: And there's also now a pad underneath the hood.
DAVE COLEMAN: There's a pad underneath the hood, the engine cover. The sideliner's a new material that sound doesn't reflect as easily. The under-tray, there's an air dynamic under-tray underneath the car, which we had before. But now it's felt-lined, so high frequency sounds coming off the tires get absorbed by that felt.
Pretty much everywhere you look, there's some other little NVH trick to knock the sound level down in the car.
JAMES RISWICK: And having just driven it, I can attest that this is a very quiet car.
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