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Ferrari and Lamborghini following Toyota's lead...:)Suck it down hybrid haters
Jun 17, 2009
24 Replies
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"Both Porsche and Ferrari have also ruled out electric versions of their sports cars, because they feel the sound of a high-revving internal combustion engine is part of their DNA."
Could be solved with a few loud-speakers.
Sylvia.
Short time ago I found out boy racers were using speakers to simulate turbo whine and sound effect from the blowoff valve.
What's the world coming to? That's just plain wrong.
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**It could, until you start crunching the numbers. To achieve the SPLs required, at the desired frequencies, very large speakers and huge amount of power would be required. It would be difficult to fit all the equipment in a two door sports car. You'd squeeze into a small van though.
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Might have to redesign the speakers somewhat. I don't see why they have to be physically large though - the system whose sound output they're emulating isn't that big.
Sylvia.
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Porsche make soft-roaders. As long as there is a market with more than it's fair share of cashed up ignorant wankers, manufacturers will tool up to cater to it.
Your point is?
-- Regards, Noddy.
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So I guess an electric Harley is out of the question...
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A set trembler and a 100W amp from any computer-store would do the job perfectly. You'd just need the controller.
Of course that should've been "seat" trembler......
Lu R:
Sylvia Else:
Trevor Wilson
From a 60's or 70's comedy routine "Speaker? The _whole_ _house_ is a speaker."
I'm sure there are kids in LA that have the creativity to help Ferrari/Porsche/Lamborghini solve their problem--which is to project the sound that the geezers who buy their cars like to hear, in hopes that it will restore their lost er, ah, youth, and feed their pedophilic fantasies.
Davoud
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**It doesn't work that way. Consider the situation for an orchestra: A full orchestra delivers approximately 4 acoustic Watts into a typical hall. To reproduce the same kinds of levels in a normal domestic environment, you would typically require a speaker system weighing around 200kg and occupying around 400 Litres, driven by around 1kW of amplification. HOWEVER, to reproduce those same 4 acoustic Watts in a large hall, would require substantially more. Figure on at least a dozen of the same speakers and several tens of kWatts of amplification. Large areas require VERY large power levels, since there is, effectively no 'room gain'. Most speaker systems possess efficiency figures between 0.1% - 1%. Very high efficiency speakers can manage considerably more, but are HUGE. Really huge. For 20Hz reproduction, think in terms of around 8 - 10 Metres across. For a practically sized speaker, you would require several tens of kWatts of amplification and you'd STILL need, perhaps, 400 Litres of speaker enclosures. Mostly because you need speakers that can cope with all the power. All that will be a big ask for a sports car. MUCH better to just forget the idea, or fit the whole lot into a van.
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Traditional speakers are attempting some reasonable level of fidelity. For this application that's not required, so some improvement should be possible.
Sylvia.
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**What would you suggest? In your suggestion, be aware that the human ear is reasonably sensitive to certain forms of distortion, frequency linearity and phase response. It is, for instance, a trivially simple exercise to pick the sound difference between a 2 Litre Subaru engine and a 2 Litre Toyota one.
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If you measure the actual performance of your speaker, then you can apply reverse distortion to your sound source. What's left are directional effects.
Sylvia.
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**Your suggestion was that "traditional speakers" are not appropriate. What would you suggest? Additionally, how do you propose to apply "reverse distortion"? Where will it be measured?
In your answer, be aware that the modern loudspeaker is not significantly different to those developed by Rice and Kellog in the late 1920s. The only serius change has been WRT material choice and computer aided design. Various inertial and capacitance sensors have been (and still are) tried to varying degrees of success. Even 'stepper motor' designs have been tried (to disasterous effect), in an atempt to gain efficiency despite the use of a small enclosure. The key to understanding this stuff, is to realise that speakers, without horns, are inherently inefficient and always will be. Horns MUST be used for efficiency to be reasonable. A horn can be looked at, as a kind of acoustic transformer, which mates the relatively heavy mass of the speaker to the low mass of the air. And, before you ask, direct modulation of the air has (and still is) be tried. Ozone is a serious problem with many such designs. Due to various factors surrounding such a system, it is both unreliable (air must be dry and of known atmospheric pressure) and innefficient.
Like I said: If you have something new, please let us know. Inquiring minds want to know.
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There are (or were) some particularly annoying car alarm systems, installed primarily by people who were totally up themselves, which produced a long sequence of sounds. They were certainly loud.
Look back at where this discussion started. The issue is whether intending owners of Porsche and Ferrari vehicles who would dislike the silence of an electric vehicle could be placated by replicating the noise of the engine driven vehicles through loadspeakers.
It is less than clear whether the resulting sound would have to be as loud as the original. Indeed, it might be sufficient to play the sound inside the cabin. Depends on the psychology of those who value the noise that the cars make.
So there are too many unanswered issues for it to be possible to arrive at any concluded view that it's not feasible.
Sylvia.
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**Over a VERY restricted frequency range. They use a horn loudspeaker and square waves (lots of harmonics) to acheive the result. Again: Nothing new here. 1920s technology, driven by 1960s electronics. Again, for low frequencies, horns need to be big. VERY big. It's just physics. You either need a horn, or lots of power. Whichever way you slice it, it's gonna be a big box.
**The owners of such vehicles almost always want to make themselves known to all and sundry. Witness the present craze for turbo drivers who lift their foot off the accelerator prematurely, in order to trip the waste gate. The ONLY thing they do is make that waste gate noise. Many people with certain types of vehicles like their vehicles to make specific noises to draw attention to themrselves. Yes, I know: I don't understand it either.
**Certainly IF cabin noise is all that is required, then that is simple enough to achieve. However, I doubt that is the aim.
**I'm still waiting for this new technology you refer to. What type of transducer are you proposing? Or are you assuming that the thousands of engineers, who have been working for the last 9 decades on the problem have no idea? Are you attempting to re-write the laws of physics? Or are you just speculating that something MUST be available, just because it seems like a reasonable idea?
There is nothing wrong with hybrid cars.
There is a lot wrong with the outrageous claims made by the wankers that were stupid enough to buy one.
They sound quite different when heard "free to air" and they sound equally quite different when heard though a common-or-garden sound system. Your point?
Especially if the intended audience for the sound is the car user rather than everyone else.
Fran
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