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Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret
HughPickens.com writes Stomp on the gas in a new Ford Mustang or F-150 and you'll hear a meaty, throaty rumble — the same style of roar that Americans have associated with auto power and performance for decades. Now Drew Harwell reports at the Washington Post that the auto industry's dirty little secret is that the engine growl in some of America's best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether. "Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry's dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks," writes Harwell. "Without them, today's more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful, potentially pushing buyers away." For example Ford sound engineers and developers worked on an "Active Noise Control" system on the 2015 Mustang EcoBoost that amplifies the engine's purr through the car speakers. Afterward, the automaker surveyed members of Mustang fan clubs on which processed "sound concepts" they most enjoyed.
Among purists, the trickery has inspired an identity crisis and cut to the heart of American auto legend. The "aural experience" of a car, they argue, is an intangible that's just as priceless as what's revving under the hood. "For a car guy, it's literally music to hear that thing rumble," says Mike Rhynard, "It's a mind-trick. It's something it's not. And no one wants to be deceived." Other drivers ask if it really matters if the sound is fake? A driver who didn't know the difference might enjoy the thrum and thunder of it nonetheless. Is taking the best part of an eight-cylinder rev and cloaking a better engine with it really, for carmakers, so wrong? "It may be a necessary evil in the eyes of Ford," says Andrew Hard, "but it's sad to think that an iconic muscle car like the Mustang, a car famous for its bellowing, guttural soundtrack, has to fake its engine noise in 2015. Welcome to the future."
Among purists, the trickery has inspired an identity crisis and cut to the heart of American auto legend. The "aural experience" of a car, they argue, is an intangible that's just as priceless as what's revving under the hood. "For a car guy, it's literally music to hear that thing rumble," says Mike Rhynard, "It's a mind-trick. It's something it's not. And no one wants to be deceived." Other drivers ask if it really matters if the sound is fake? A driver who didn't know the difference might enjoy the thrum and thunder of it nonetheless. Is taking the best part of an eight-cylinder rev and cloaking a better engine with it really, for carmakers, so wrong? "It may be a necessary evil in the eyes of Ford," says Andrew Hard, "but it's sad to think that an iconic muscle car like the Mustang, a car famous for its bellowing, guttural soundtrack, has to fake its engine noise in 2015. Welcome to the future."
Years ago I saw a doc on Harley Davidson and a part of the design process was ensuring that the bikes made the "correct" HD noise*. What was interesting for a technical perspective was seeing a bike in an anechoic chamber, which had a robot arm waving around an array of microphones so that they could localize sounds emanating from different parts of the bike.
While I had no idea that car manufactures were doing this to such an extreme, it's not surprising when you are selling an image rather than just a product.
* what will be more fun in the future is seeing what the HD sound will be if their electric bike takes off. The reviews I have seen from the test riders have been really positive.
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Entirely different things. In the case of the turn signal that's just part of the UI, not unlike click feedback on keyboards. In the case of blind people that's a safety feature. In either case there is no need for them to be annoying to the driver, which engine noise is to many people. Matter of fact quiet is a feature on luxury cars.
I used to work for a large auto company from Japan, and at the end of the day most of what makes a car or truck is snake oil, but if we quit doing it people stop buying it. We might intentionally introduce inefficiencies in the exhaust to increase that "rally car" sound. Bucket seats and offset head rests trick you into folding your legs and rolling your shoulders in, making the car seem more spacious. Truck tricks include obese front grills despite the engine being efficient enough not to warrant them. And those big bulgy hoods? nowhere near the engine size. To make up for it, and make you feel like our technology is more advanced, we put plastic guards and bezels on top of the engine. It makes the engine look larger for someone who doesnt know what an engine looks like outside of a car or truck, and that sells.
an we never stopped there. to make up for the gearing required to get that 40mpg, we might program the computer to hold a lower gear longer or shorter to make the car seem "peppier" than it really is. simple things like a vertical indicator on the speedometer can help people associate the product they own with the racecar version they saw in the movie. Making that connection is critical, especially in trucks. Most of our trucks cost upwards of 30 grand, something blue collar could never afford. but if we associate it with blue collar, add splash guards and lift, and run a few ads? instant joe six pack. Actual blue collar construction workers drive, in most cases, an old mid nineties hatchback or 4 door sedan. They have kids to feed.
So grow up. no, your new 4 cylinder mustang wont roar like a bored out foxbody with glass packs, but you know what? it also gets 36 mpg and doesnt require 93 octane. It doesnt spew benzene and MTBE from the tailpipe because we gave it a catalytic converter. and it wont roll over and kill your kids because we added stability control, and govenment mandated roofing that can hold the weight of our car.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This isn't a safety issue at all. A comparison would be: People are used to TVs being large CRT tube devices so we're taking our flat panel display and adding a huge back to it so people will think there's more "TV power" in the giant box.
This is all about the auto manufacturers thinking people won't like quiet cars and so intentionally making cars make more noise to trick people into thinking "noisy car" = "powerful car".
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Next up: Car Ringtones.
I'm going to set mine to sound like the TARDIS.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I've driven plenty of modern automatics. And modern manuals.
I still can get significantly better gas mileage in a MT than an auto (no matter what the EPA ratings say... those are dumb anyway because they mandate shift points).
And I can look ahead and anticipate what gear I want to be in. Even these manumatics with paddle shifters or whatever feel terrible when you say... approach a curve and want to preemptively downshift for engine braking and pulling out of the curve. They simply don't know your intent, and don't seem to have the wherewithal to do it smoothly.
I'm not a race car driver, but I am someone who likes their car to be responsive, and M/T is still the only option for me AFAIC.
Sam
Engineers at Samsung, Apple and other marketing conscious companies are sometimes asked to do unusual tasks. At Honda, planning the introduction of the 6 cylinder CBX motorcycle in the 1970s, sound design became important:
"From the beginning," Irimajiri explained, "our Six produced a smooth jetlike exhaust sound. But with an ordinary exhaust arrangement, it wasn't that close to a jet. We thought if we worked on it we could come up with a motorcycle sound like no one has ever heard before.
"So we sent some engineers to the Hyakuri Japanese Air Force base in Chiba prefecture. For ten days they tape-recorded the sound of Phantom jet fighters, and then came back and designed an exhaust system for the CBX that could duplicate that sound. When I heard it for the first time I was amazed; they had captured the Phantom sound perfectly."
from: http://www.motorcyclespecs.co....
short Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
hear the sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
...omphaloskepsis often...
It's more about the sound of a four cylinder turbo engine being annoying as hell. People hate teenage kids with fart boxes on their mom's civic for a reason. A lower exhaust note is more pleasant to the human ear.
Also, anyone driving a manual, or even an auto-manual, needs to hear the engine to know when to shift, because they can't be staring at the tachometer when driving.
As a Leaf Electric car driver, I can say that the lack of engine noise is one of the primary benefits of an electric car.
I hear things on my commute that I didn't even know existed prior to my Leaf. I hear birds chirping, walk ways for the blind clicking, subtle details in my music, and occasionally, total silence. It's calming. It's also kinda cool to accelerate hard off the line (faster than most gas cars can do) with near silence.
The car does chirp externally when backing up, but it's not very audible from within the car. Perhaps a similar chirp when driving forward at a slow speed would work.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I purchased a new Nissan Versa a few years ago with their continuously variable transmission. It runs awesome. From an engineering point of view, it amazes me that they can build a car with such a small engine and make it perform at highway speeds.
However, I did read that when the CVT was new, some people in their focus groups didn't like it because it *sounds* different. The first time I drove it, I thought there was something wrong with it because of the sound, but it didn't bother me once I knew it was supposed to sound different. If I'm not mistaken, they changed the CVT to make it sound more like a conventional automatic transmission.
It seems awfully dumb to me that a piece of equipment that was so carefully engineered should be modified simply to make it sound like the equipment it replaces!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
NASCAR racing is not about efficiency, it's about restricting all the participants to using ancient technology so they can supposedly see who the better driver is without making it a tech-fest like F1 racing. Modern DSG gearboxes were largely pioneered in F1 racing. And even there, where they don't share the same concerns about technology as the primitive people in NASCAR, they still made restrictions so that gear changes weren't made automatically by software; from Wikipedia: "After concerns that the technology allowed software engineers to pre-program the cars to automatically change to the optimum gear according to the position on the track, without any driver intervention, a standardized software system was mandated, ensuring the gears would only change up or down when instructed to by the driver. Buttons on the steering wheel, which go directly to a certain gear—rather than sequentially—are still permitted."
18-wheelers don't have them because 1) automatics can only handle so much torque, so for an application like this involving so much torque, it's a lot cheaper and easier to just a manual with a semi-tractor, and 2) trucks spend most of their time on the highway where gear changing isn't necessary so much. (Plus they don't care much about accelerating quickly on the highway like car buyers do.)
The other thing you're missing is that both these applications involve professional drivers. Your average car driver cannot shift more efficiently than a computer, and if you really think you're the equal of an F1 driver, then you're a fool.
Lastly, it probably won't be long before manual transmissions are gone in semi-tractors. They've been gone in heavy construction equipment for ages now, because they all went to serial-hybrid-electic drivetrains. Trucks are going to go the same way because of efficiency concerns, and there simply won't be a transmission.