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The Sound Design For Modern Automobiles

Posted: August 11th, 2013, 11:27 am
by MikeQuell
A great article about the work that goes into the sound design of a modern automobile. From the hardware to the software.

https://medium.com/thoughtful-design/c23c5fb86266
But as you reduce the speed that the drive shaft is rotating, you lower the frequency of the sound it’s making. There comes a lower limit where the engine is making what Gordon calls “groan-y and moan-y” noises which people find unpleasant. The car sounds broken. So cars had to keep the engine’s RPM above a certain level, hurting their fuel efficiency, or risk alienating customers.

GM’s solution was to implement active noise cancellation, the same technique used in some headphones to quiet ambient noise. Microphones in the body listen to the ambient sounds the car and engine are making, and the car plays the opposite of that over the vehicle’s speakers. The sound waves from the engine are cancelled out by the sound from the entertainment system, netting a quieter ride that can be more fuel efficient without being so bothersome.

Some sounds in the car are completely artificial. The telltale clicking of a turn signal was once an artifact of the mechanical process that turned the light on and off. But that mechanism has long since been replaced by an electronic circuit that operates silently. Still, audible feedback is valuable so the car plays an MP3 file of a turn signal over the speakers.

“It could sound like anything,” says Gordon. “We asked, ‘What if we wanted it to sound like birds?’ They said no.”

Re: The Sound Design For Modern Automobiles

Posted: August 12th, 2013, 1:14 pm
by joe_griffin
Cool stuff. I remember watching a piece about electric cars, which are pretty much silent. They were using mp3 players and speakers on the outside of the cars so that they wouldn't be a danger to pedestrians, and there were discussions about what the sound should be – a motor? Music? And should it be user-selectable? Oddly, birds came up there as well.

I wonder if there might be a whole new market in vehicle engine sound design – make your Prius sound like a Formula One race car, download this mp3 set for $39.