[PD] Future of Motorsounds in Electric Cars and Games

[Andy Farnell]

The translation was so bad you might even get completely 
reversed scores for some of these questions.

An interesting topic though.

I've discussed this with two groups of undergrad and
masters students recently.

It is likely that legislation will quickly be
needed to deal with customised car sounds, because
human nature won't permit some people to have
ordinary, quiet, functional ones. It will
quickly become a race to have the most disturbing
sound once there is a market for this technology.

As an environmental issue, noise pollution is the 
boisterous elephant in the street. 
Nobody wants to tackle it. Because sound is a 
secondary faculty it gets pushed under the carpet
in discussions. For example new London buses with
gas turbo engines cut CO2, but they also reduce the
quality of life by keeping people awake at night with
their much louder screaming engines.

Helath and safety measures have increased the power
output (and perceived loudness by adding more noise
and inharmonics) of sirens, so now the vehicles can
speed even faster. While they may get there 20 seconds
earlier and save a life, 10,000 other people along the
route have their peace and concentration shattered.
Cumulatively the adverse health issues (hearing damage,
stress, sleeplessness) plus the loss of productivity
may outweigh any benefits of louder sirens.
Yes this is Schopenhauer for the 21st Century, but
nothing has changed. You can pump 120 dB of doofcar
noise into the street and nobody looks twice, but
if you started pumping poisonous gas into the street
you'll be thrown in jail. Only one kind of pollution
is trendy to decry. 

Meanwhile, car manufacturers build ever quieter 
interiors that are impervious to external noise.
So there is a 'war' going on. Drivers want to be
cocooned in a private world, while inflicting their
'personality' on the outside. This is a pathological
stance.

New technologies might be optical, or radio, that
allow emergency vehicles to signal ahead to roadside 
beacons or dasboard indicators in cars. Satnavs could be 
modified to prominently indicate nearby emergency
vehicles. 

Directional demodulation sound could be employed for 
sirens as only those in front of the vehicle need to
hear it is coming.








On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 22:35:34 +0200
András Murányi <muranyia at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 9:17 PM, hghoyer <mail at hghoyer.de> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I would be glad if you participate in my brief survey.
> > It is about sounds in computer games and electric cars ...
> > http://research.hghoyer.de/index.php?sid=71581&lang=en
> >
> > Sorry, my question has to do only indirectly related to PD.
> > I am happy you are interested, include evaluation of the survey!
> >
> > Thanks Hans
> >
> 
> Interesting stuff. Please let me just drop my 2 cents in:
> (SPOILER ALERT!)
> - Some of the (english language) questions were really hard for to
> understand (maybe because i'm not native english either)
> - Lot of talk about sound with no sounds! I would have been happy to listen
> to different sounds and express my preferences, but deciding on _loose
> descriptions_ of sounds is much harder for me.
> 
> Andras


-- 
Andy Farnell <padawan12 at obiwannabe.co.uk>