There’s a “fantastic cackle” from the Jaguar F-Type’s V8 engine, while the new Ford Mustang makes a beautiful “wub-wub”, according to motoring broadcaster Quentin Willson. Increasingly, however, the throb of a high-performance engine is faked or artificially boosted and then piped into a car’s cockpit. A new invention developed by Ford for “generating engine noise” has been lodged with the US Patent and Trademark Office, demonstrating that artificial sounds are now a big global business.
We live in a world of ersatz noise, where computers mimic sounds once made by machinery, from the old-fashioned shutter-style click of the camera on phones to websites that shuffle like paper when we turn a page.
In computer design, audio skeuomorphism is usually used to help make new technology explicable to new users or celebrate retro inventions.
Computer-generated noise has plenty of critics, particularly among petrolheads, for whom the fake noise euphemistically named Active Sound Design (BMW) or Soundaktor (VW) is the car industry’s “dirty little secret”.
Willson says it is noise-pollution legislation that is motivating the car-noise-fakers. In 2014, the EU introduced new rules to reduce new-car noise by 25% (and also proposed sound-generating devices for electric cars to make these much quieter vehicles safer for pedestrians and the visually impaired). “There’s no demand from consumers and there’s no demand from the car industry or lobby groups that I’m aware of saying that cars driving around are too noisy,” says Willson.
Piping synthetic noise through a car’s speakers into the cabin sounds like a pragmatic solution to such regulations and quiet modern engines, allowing petrolheads to enjoy the roar of their engine without disturbing anyone. And Ford claims its technology will reduce emissions because revving sounds will nudge drivers into changing gear at the appropriate speed.
Motoring romantics despair, but Willson isn’t too worried, as long as classic cars are allowed to keep their va-va-voom. “Whether the noise is fake or real I don’t think it really matters,” he says. “As long as it stirs the soul and fires up the senses.”
