Artificial car sounds

[geeman]

Many modern today have exhaust notes piped to the cabin and playing them via the stereo system. What do you guys (and gals) think about this?

Personally from a purists standpoint I would like to say that everything artificial is just silly. But if you think about it the art of making cars sound better is not a new thing. Cars have had exhausts specifically molded to make the car sound louder and more powerful forever. So you have to also think about where the limit goes when the sound is too artificial and when it's just enhancing the real sound.

One thing absolutely has to go though is the stupid farting noises. They make no sense and don't even sound good.

Case in point this BMW M4 with flatulence

 

[CrzRsn]

My Mustang has a sound tube piping engine noise from the intake to the cabin. I actually like it and have the acoustic plugs taken out of it to make it louder, thought I'll probably replug it when I get my side pipes installed in the spring.

As far as generating artificial noise with the speakers, I think thats silly.

Oh, and on the topic of generating noise, I recently found out some Fords actually have microphones to capture and generate an out-of-phase engine noise to make the cabin quieter. That is pretty cool.

 

[Lastsoul]

For some reason the M4 in the video doesn't sound anything like the real thing when I got to drive it, not from the inside anyway. The M4 sounds pretty okay outside, but in the cabin you get a noise from a little rough straight six. Somebody likened it to a really highly tuned diesel, which I think is a really good comparison. Inside it's bit muted and it doesn't sing or howl. It's industrial noise if anything.

Then you get a layer of naturally aspirated straight six over it, which I presume comes from the speakers. Yes, the synthetic noise is really well made. While you can notice part of the soundtrack is synthetic, it's really hard to say which part it really is.

Not my cup of tea.

 

[prizrak]

It kind of depends, I wouldn't mind it if my Z did something like that as long as it sounds like my actual engine, main reason is that the car's design is such that it sounds pretty nice from the outside but the thing you mostly hear on the inside is the wind noise.

 

[captain_70s]

Artificially generated car sounds are lame. The thing is new cars are so packed with sound insulation you'd never hear the exhaust note otherwise, exhausts are also designed to be quieter now-a-days you can barely hear the exhaust note in the Corsa at all from the inside. To be honest you wouldn't really want to, it's devoid of interest, even the Yaris had more character mostly as the exhaust had rattled loose and coupled with the 3-cylinder engine it had started sounding quite gruff by the time I traded it in. :lol:
If I want to hear the exhaust I wind down the window, I can often be found driving the 1850HL with the window fully down and the heater cranked up to full when the temperature is in minus figures!

I was in a Mercedes taxi when I visited the Netherlands and the thing was almost entirely silent inside, all you could hear was a bit of wind noise and that was it. It was quite surreal for somebody used to driving cheap hatchbacks and 35 year old cars!

 

[thevictor390]

Sound insulation too much? Want to hear the engine? Roll down the windows. I don't get the stereo system shenanigans....

 

[prizrak]

^If I do that in my car I end up with very loud wind noise and no engine sound at all

 

[geeman]

^If I do that in my car I end up with very loud wind noise and no engine sound at all

Yeah, opening the window never really works like you want. It just means there will be massive amounts of wind noise and you can't hear anything else.

 

[Labcoatguy]

Speak for yourselves, I get way more turbo whoosh with the window even slightly open. Same when I had open intakes pointed right at the driver-side side scoops in my MR2s. Point is I can get more intake noise from opening the windows, but for exhaust I have to be by a wall.

 

[Cavi Mike]

Even the amount of sound insulation in my 15 y/o car is too much to adequately hear my exhaust for when I rev-match when down-shifting. It's quite annoying. Sometimes I wish there was some sound piped into my cabin. Though I don't agree with artificial noises. If it's not the sound of my actual car, I don't want to hear them.

 

[Thunderchild]

I think it's silly. Piping some of the actual engine and exhaust sound into the interior is one thing, but "sound synthesizers" or whatever other shenanigans to allow you to pick the engine tone that plays through your stereo? No, sorry. I don't get it...

 

[DaBoom]

I think it's silly. Piping some of the actual engine and exhaust sound into the interior is one thing, but "sound synthesizers" or whatever other shenanigans to allow you to pick the engine tone that plays through your stereo? No, sorry. I don't get it...

My thoughts exactly. I prefer induction noise to exhaust noises and had to dig quite a while to get some out of my 130i. They've made plenty of effort to muffle the engine as much as possible, it has to be said..

 

[Anesthesia]

My thoughts exactly. I prefer induction noise to exhaust noises and had to dig quite a while to get some out of my 130i. They've made plenty of effort to muffle the engine as much as possible, it has to be said..

That's something I've never had an issue with.
Your 130i does sound nice though.

I prefer the sounds to be real. Fake sounds just tell me that the engineers don't believe that the engine can sound good on it's own.

 

[Perc]

Cars used to crackle and pop because the only way to deliver fuel was to pour random amounts of it into the engine and hope for the best. Nowadays we have electronic fuel injection, and it's beyond silly that cars fart because some guy in the marketing department told another guy with a laptop to make it so.

 

[Cavi Mike]

Cars used to crackle and pop because the only way to deliver fuel was to pour random amounts of it into the engine and hope for the best. Nowadays we have electronic fuel injection, and it's beyond silly that cars fart because some guy in the marketing department told another guy with a laptop to make it so.

Not even close, dude. Not even close. Cars don't crackle anymore because the throttle plate closes completely on modern cars and the ICV (idle control valve) closes completely as well during decel - and the ECU shuts off fuel entering the engine until idle RPM is reached. On old carb'd engines, the throttle plate is always cracked for idle, and fuel is always being fed as long as the engine is running. They would crackle because there wasn't enough cylinder pressure under decel for combustion - so it would just go straight into the exhaust and ignite off the hot piping. But modern cars actually do still crackle briefly before fuel cut if you're running an exhaust that's free-flowing enough, especially on high-output engines.

 

[Lastsoul]

Cars used to crackle and pop because the only way to deliver fuel was to pour random amounts of it into the engine and hope for the best. Nowadays we have electronic fuel injection, and it's beyond silly that cars fart because some guy in the marketing department told another guy with a laptop to make it so.

Yup! The "shift-up bang" seems to be ongoing trend. There is quite a lot of different solutions for this, some annoying and some almost fun, namely the F-type Jag. But the "popcorn in microwave oven" crackle some modern cars fake under engine braking is just silly.

 

[Labcoatguy]

They would crackle because there wasn't enough cylinder pressure under decel for combustion - so it would just go straight into the exhaust and ignite off the hot piping.

No no no, deceleration doesn't change the cylinder pressure, unless you have some fancy variable compression engine that somehow escaped the laboratory. The popping is just due to an air-fuel mixture that runs rich thanks to the sudden throttle change under deceleration and pops as it hits oxygen on its way out of the exhaust.

 

[BerserkerCatSplat]

No no no, deceleration doesn't change the cylinder pressure, unless you have some fancy variable compression engine that somehow escaped the laboratory. The popping is just due to an air-fuel mixture that runs rich thanks to the sudden throttle change under deceleration and pops as it hits oxygen on its way out of the exhaust.

That's not entirely true. Cylinder pressure at TDC on the compression stroke does tend to drop under decel from higher RPMs, as when you are drawing against a closed throttle body and IAC the chamber does not come close to reaching atmospheric pressure before the intake valves close - the cylinder can still be under significant vacuum when the compression stroke begins. Thus you have the same compression ratio but your final chamber pressure can be lower than when drawing against an open throttle body.

 

[Perc]

Not even close, dude. Not even close. Cars don't crackle anymore because the throttle plate closes completely on modern cars and the ICV (idle control valve) closes completely as well during decel - and the ECU shuts off fuel entering the engine until idle RPM is reached. On old carb'd engines, the throttle plate is always cracked for idle, and fuel is always being fed as long as the engine is running. They would crackle because there wasn't enough cylinder pressure under decel for combustion - so it would just go straight into the exhaust and ignite off the hot piping. But modern cars actually do still crackle briefly before fuel cut if you're running an exhaust that's free-flowing enough, especially on high-output engines.

I believe that's exactly what I said, except for the last sentence anyways.

Crackling is a side effect of obsolete fuel delivery systems. No reason to have a hot Golf or something fart on downchanges. Especially if it only happens when sport mode is enabled.

 

[Anesthesia]

I know I like the odd crack and pop my hatch makes after the tuning we've done. It's a side product of tuning an old NA engine(in this case). I sometimes still giggle like a little girl when it does it at random times.

I know what factors play a part in this.

Also: Catalytic converters? We don't need no stinkin' catalytic converters!