Not sure who was first with this idea.... I know the R56 has a sound pipe into the cabin...... I'm thinking BMW came up with the idea of "Lip syncing" through the speakers... America
Back in the 70's Lotus developed an electronic muffler that you could change the sound of by turning a dial....you could make a Mini engine sound like a V-12 Ferrari or a big V-8..... I thought it was the best invention since cars, but it never hit the market....I think the market is ripe for something like this right now. How many different expensive exhaust systems have been on the market for MINIs for guys trying to get just the right sound? What if you could buy a box, put it in your exhaust system, dial a knob and make it sound exactly the way you want it, from a snarl to a bellow - and on those long highway drives dial it down to a whisper! There's a big market out there for this product now, I just know it!
The R56 Justa doesn't have the sound tube. The S has it. That's the first thing I verified after I bought my '13 Justa. My '13 FR-S had a sound tube and that was the first thing I eliminated after I bought the car. I will never understand wanting to turn up the volume on something designed to turn down the volume. Along with other fake things I put them in the category of 'rice'.
I'd rather hear the actual engine... Fake engine noise won't tell me if anything's wrong under the hood.
Next they will have a computer that tells you your oil is ok but it's really not and you can't check it because they removed the dip stick. Oh wait that just happened....
Yeah, the new F56 not having a dipstick drives me a little batty... However, the digital readout is at least easier to read than the dog-penis dipstick that came on the R56. :lol:
Well, these damn things are all gonna be able to drive themselves, so then they can check their damn own oil.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLimv9aL2WQ"]How to Make a Bike Sound Like A Harley Using a Sports Card - YouTube[/ame]
....and to make it sound really good you put a lot of them on there, but then that made it hard to pedal!
To be fair to Lotus, they were experimenting with noise cancellation, so that a noise generator would produce a negative sound wave to match the engine's noise and cancel it out. I think they felt back then that an efficient engine had to make noise, so cancelling it was better than preventing it. This would have been in the era when they were trying to move upmarket to sell more expensive cars that needed more luxury than sportiness.
Sound tubes are one thing. At least they are the engine sound. Through the speakers like BMW, VW, and others is wrong. But it could solve F1s engine noise problem.
Don't need to worry about such nonsense on my R53. All of the intake whoosh and exhaust roar, gurgle and popping are real...along with all the squeaks and rattles.
Absolutely correct, but the cool thing was the result was something any guy would love to have on his car! What they were really going for was reduced back pressure in conjunction with reduced and attenuated noise....my understanding was that it worked, too.