Techno Revolutionizes Car Sound

author: FutureCar Staff    

Electric vehicles are giving automobile companies a chance to reinvent how cars sound – and many are turning to producers to help them create radically new sound palettes.

"I'm driving in a black on black in black Porsche 924." With these words in his classic 1985 track, "Night Drive (Thru-Babylon)," Juan Atkins made explicit the nascent connection between techno and cars.

It was not unprecedented. The first major piece of electronic pop music, Kraftwerk's "Autobahn," was about driving down the highway, and Gary Numan evoked cars as safe spaces in his landmark "Cars."

But Atkins, recording as Model 500, connected the dots between the Detroit automobile assembly lines, the man/machine fusion of the automobile, and techno production, itself a kind of cyborg relationship between musician and electronic instrument.

With the rise in popularity of electric vehicles (EV), car manufacturers are taking the opportunity to redefine the sound of the automobile. Aside from tires rolling on pavement, EV are almost completely quiet. There's no engine noise because there's no combustion engine. Because of various safety concerns, EV are required to make some kind of sound to alert pedestrians to their presence. Just what form that sound will take, however, is up to the companies themselves.

While some manufacturers have stuck with the old script, synthesizing the sound of old-school engines, others are getting more creative. There are cars with samples of the human voice as part of the ‘engine' noise. Another incorporates a didgeridoo. These are not machine sounds but essentially human sounds. And the people championing this redefinition of how a car should sound are often electronic musicians.

Richard Devine, a musician and sound designer, has worked with Jaguar on their C-X75 prototype and I-PACE models. He used various software applications like Symbolic Sound's Kyma, Max/MSP, and Native Instruments Reaktor to design the engine and interior sounds for the cars.

Cars are extremely sophisticated machines, including their audio environments. The sound design for cars goes beyond simply adding waveforms to a sample player. The sound engine has to be dynamic, responding to the driver and providing immediate feedback. Richard Devine spent months analyzing the sound of previous Jaguar engines to incorporate their signature purr into the new system.

Japanese manufacturer Green Lord Motors (GLM) collaborated with Roland to create the audio environment for their 2014 Tommykaira ZZ car. Roland adapted their SuperNATURAL sound synthesis architecture for the electric vehicle, matching the change in sound with acceleration and speed.

Car companies are moving away from recreating the sounds of old engines and instead creating new sound palettes. They are employing musicians as sound designers to evoke emotions and create a more human-friendly and futuristic sound experience. Jean-Michel Jarre has worked with Renault to create sounds that are described as "caring" and "friendly."

EVs also allow for customization of interior sounds, similar to creating a personal playlist. Richard Devine has already started experimenting with creating his own custom sounds for his Tesla Model 3 Performance.

As electric vehicles become more prevalent, automobile manufacturers are redefining the sound of cars to be friendlier and more human-embracing. By incorporating audio from human musicians, they are making cars more human and less dystopian. This collaboration between humans and machines is reminiscent of the techno genre, where musicians work with machines to create a better world.

FutureCar Staff