The fourth and final official step and category of sound treatment application is noise barriers. While they can be hugely beneficial and arguably the most effective wide-band sound treatment you can apply when installed correctly, they are almost always difficult to install, very picky about the installation, and can be costly. The point of them and how they work is simple. They are made from a material to act as a limp and decoupled mass, and said mass is used to block, reflect, deflect, whatever you prefer to call it, acoustic energy away from the area you are shielding with it. The only driving factors in the performance of a noise barrier product are its weight, and how non-resonant it is. The heavier the noise barrier is and the less inert it is, the more noise it will block. What makes them very picky is the fact that it ideally needs FULL coverage to be effective. While not having full coverage can still yield some improvement, it will be minuscule compared to full coverage. When you do not have full coverage, sound acoustic energy will travel around and take the path of least resistance right past the noise barrier.

       The most popular type of noise barrier is Mass Loaded Vinyl, aka MLV. It is popular because it is heavy, limp, and, most importantly, cheap. The downsides are how thick it needs to be to achieve the desired weight and its poor flexibility and moldability. Most MLV is 1/8″ thick and weighs 1 pound per square foot. Couple that with a decoupling layer on both sides, and you have an extremely thick product that is not moldable to complex contours. In short, you end up with a product that will be extremely difficult to work with and fit behind the panels of almost all newer and even many older vehicles.  

       ResoNix’s solution to this is our ResoNix Barrier, which is comprised of 1/32″ sheet lead encapsulated in our 3mm thick CCF Decoupler 3S. This gives us a product that is much thinner yet twice as heavy per square foot as the standard 1/8″ thick MLV, is much more flexible, and is moldable to complex contours. Long story short, ResoNix Barrier is much higher-performing and is much easier to work with than MLV. The downside, it is admittedly not nearly as inexpensive as MLV.