Sound symposers

[blearyeyedboy]

I was thinking...

... most of us wonder if our car's making a funny noise, or use it to diagnose potential faults.

What about the new breed of cars using sound symposers?

• If my car sounds funny, is it broken?
• Is the resonator tube broken (Focus ST)?
• Is the dedicated speaker broken? (Golf GTi)
• If there's something wrong, am I slowly missing that I'm killing an F10 BMW M5 because it's playing recorded samples of perfect engine noise, lulling me into a false sense of security as the engine slowly dies?

Your thoughts please...

Stands back and hopes he's not created his Ambiwlans moment.

[Fastdruid]

How do you know that the F10 isn't so clever that it'll play the sound of a broken engine when there is an issue.

OTOH it would be immensely cruel if the programmer put in the sound of an occasional misfire when it was running fine..

[blearyeyedboy]

Fastdruid said:

OTOH it would be immensely cruel if the programmer put in the sound of an occasional misfire when it was running fine..

That'd be mean... wonder if it'd show up as a fault code?

Perhaps when cars are even more reliable in 50 years they'll have to program in intermittent synthesised "faults" to make people feel like they've bought a car with character...

[Ozzie Osmond]

Please don't get me started on this most fatuous of design features.

[ftrigger]

OP you make a very good point.
This sound enhancing business is really quite retarded and would definitely put me off buying the car completely.
What's next, projecting a motion blurred image of the road on to the windscreen to pretend you're going at mach2 ?

[Pebbles167]

ftrigger said:

OP you make a very good point.
This sound enhancing business is really quite retarded and would definitely put me off buying the car completely.
What's next, projecting a motion blurred image of the road on to the windscreen to pretend you're going at mach2 ?

Whilst I agree that the completely artificial speaker sound is ridiculous, I rather like some of the mechanical devices such as that on the Z4 3.0.

Allows you to hear the great sound of the engine without having to arse about with mods.

[Durzel]

Sound symposers are an abomination.

I don't care if it's even a mic in the engine bay that replays that sound over the speakers (arguably the least offensive symposer - which is a bit like saying the least offensive STD), it's still fake.

The ones that are literally a simulation based on the revs are ridiculous.

[blearyeyedboy]

Mind you, Ford's is just a resonating board, isn't it? No microphones...

[Pebbles167]

Durzel said:

Sound symposers are an abomination.

I don't care if it's even a mic in the engine bay that replays that sound over the speakers (arguably the least offensive symposer - which is a bit like saying the least offensive STD), it's still fake.

The ones that are literally a simulation based on the revs are ridiculous.

Id believe the BMW pipe from the intake was less offensive, or as the previous poster said, fords vibrating pipe.