2014 Engines: Do they sound right?

[Coefficient]

Now we've heard the Renault F1 hybrid what do you think and does the future of F1 horsepower look bright?

[WhiteBlue]

I'm not a fan of a particular sound. They are apparently loud and sound a bit different. That is ok with me. It is more important that we get a development challenge back into the power train and some good technology. A slight change in engine noise is immaterial to me compared with that.

[Phillyred]

Our ears will evolve. We "tolerated" the change from V10s to V8s. I just hope there is a development race with these new engines that takes the focus off aero so much and tires.

[Emerson.F]

It sounds terrible. Sounds like they went the gt5

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8jz_Dgb8D4[/youtube]

Please listen to this.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW-aQqDZgeA[/youtube]

[Neno]

there is no better sound then this. Now i can at least when i play rfactor, turn off sounds in game and turn on my vacum cleaner. It will sound more realistic and bring that feeling of real simulation

[Just_a_fan]

F1 engines have sounded differently throughout the history of the sport. Those who want to remain with the current sound are forgetting this fact. They also forget that F1 has had V6 turbo engines in the past - listen to Senna wringing the Honda V6 turbo for an idea of how these things can sound.

Go and listen to the variety of V6, V8, V10 and V12 engine notes around the planet. A V12 F1 engine and a V12 aero engine (e.g. Rolls Royce Merlin) sound very different but both are good.

The new engines won't sound "crap", they'll sound different. Different isn't necessarily bad...

So far we've heard one particular restricted V6 engine from one manufacturer - let's listen to them at flat chat before we make any decisions.

[Kiril Varbanov]

Certainly, the sound that Renault has released is very limited in terms of RPM and it was short-shifted, so no real inference.
That's understandable, as you do not want ex-sound engineers like me to jump on it, deconstruct the file and send the sound analysis to the engine department. I'm certainly going to make a large piece of comparison once all the engines are out.

Also, a while ago TopGear colleague Dan Reed was at the Merc AMG factory, along with other media people, to get a preview of their new engine. His comment was that the engine sounds great, whatever that means, so I suppose we are still going to get a great roar, albeit different from the current V8 breed, but we will get used to that. Even if we don't, i.e. start to complain, it is unlikely something dramatic to be done on the rules side. Bear in mind that different teams will have different sounds.

[sknguy]

You can hear from that Youtube clip how much smoother an engine sounds with higher cylinder counts. The BRM had a top RPM pushing 12,000. The V12 topped out at 14,500. And the V10 was creeping into the 19,000 rpm range.

Really impressed with the V16 BRM sound. I wonder if it was as smooth to race as it sounded? Something that sounded odd to me was that even at the much higher 17,800ish rpm speed the V10 still had a slightly lower voice than either the V12 or V16.

Too bad the FIA didn't up the rev limit a bit more for the V6 rules. But I don't mind the sound of the V6 otherwise.

[Holm86]

You can hear from that Youtube clip how much smoother an engine sounds with higher cylinder counts. The BRM had a top RPM pushing 12,000. The V12 topped out at 14,500. And the V10 was creeping into the 19,000 rpm range.

Really impressed with the V16 BRM sound. I wonder if it was as smooth to race as it sounded? Something that sounded odd to me was that even at the much higher 17,800ish rpm speed the V10 still had a slightly lower voice than either the V12 or V16.

Too bad the FIA didn't up the rev limit a bit more for the V6 rules. But I don't mind the sound of the V6 otherwise.

The BRM was not smooth at all to drive. But that was because of old fuel systems. I have read that the carburetors wasn't that good on the engine. It had a lot of dead areas in the rev band.

[sknguy]

Ah... at the lower rpms it did actually sound hesitant. I checked out the Wikipedia story about the motor. Mike Hawthorn's comments about a drop in performance below 8,000 rpm and full power returning at 8,000 was interesting. Fangio had some high praise for it though. Too bad it only raced four formula one races before the formula changed.

[WillerZ]

You can hear from that Youtube clip how much smoother an engine sounds with higher cylinder counts. The BRM had a top RPM pushing 12,000. The V12 topped out at 14,500. And the V10 was creeping into the 19,000 rpm range.

Really impressed with the V16 BRM sound. I wonder if it was as smooth to race as it sounded? Something that sounded odd to me was that even at the much higher 17,800ish rpm speed the V10 still had a slightly lower voice than either the V12 or V16.

Slightly surprising; the V16 should be highest-pitched by quite some margin and of the other two, although they should be very similar, the V10 should sound higher by my calculations (below).

I would expect the tonal pitch of the engine to be strongly related to the number of cylinders filled and emptied per unit time. The tone is actually two tones each at 1/4 this value because you only move a cylinder's content through the intake when the inlet valve is open and you only move it through the exhaust when the exhaust valve is open. Interference between these two tones is guaranteed to occur and will have a strong effect on the sound, and the intake/exhaust design will affect the harmonics you hear above and below the main frequency.

16 * 12000 = 192 000 cylinders/minute = 3.20 c/second (tone 800 Hz)
12 * 14500 = 174 000 cylinders/minute = 2.90 c/second (tone 725 Hz)
10 * 17800 = 178 000 cylinders/minute = 2.97 c/second (tone 742 Hz)

[Holm86]

I also remember the V10's as being more high pitch than the V12's. But I don't know how to calculate that so I don't know if your calculations is correct ...

[piast9]

The pitch doesn't depend that simply on the number of cylinders. It would if firing in all cylinders was distributed uniformly in the time but in many cases it isn't. For example flat-4 has twice lower pitch than inline-4 because in flat-4 two cylinders fire at the same time. In the V-s the pitch depend on the number of cyliders, type of the crank and the V-angle.

[Holm86]

The pitch doesn't depend that simply on the number of cylinders. It would if firing in all cylinders was distributed uniformly in the time but in many cases it isn't. For example flat-4 has twice lower pitch than inline-4 because in flat-4 two cylinders fire at the same time. In the V-s the pitch depend on the number of cyliders, type of the crank and the V-angle.

That is not entirely correct. The sound does depend on firing order, V angles etc. But in a flat 4 engine 2 cylinders doesn't fire at the same time. In a flat 4 engine one cylinder fires every 180°. Just as an inline 4.

[rjsa]

Pretty cool:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... kGdU#at=97[/youtube]