DESIGNING AND DELIVERING THE RIGHT SOUND FOR QUIET VEHICLES

Creating the right sound for quiet vehicles is extremely important. External warning sounds must reflect the vehicle brand image and be accepted by owners, whilst having good warning characteristics and harmonising with the environment. Internal sounds can be used to convey vehicle status, whilst enhancing the brand and driving pleasure. Since these vehicles are quiet, there is much broader scope for styling the sound that they should make. However, evaluating and selecting alternative sounds is extremely time and labour intensive if done in the real world because of the large number of vehicle and environmental factors which can influence the perception of the sound, especially outside the vehicle. This paper outlines a process where the exterior and interior sounds of vehicles are evaluated efficiently in the virtual world. The consensus derived from subjective jury can be gathered quickly and cheaply, leading to a shortlist of sounds to be tried on a real vehicle. It introduces a toolset which uses the same data and algorithms for designing sounds in the virtual world and validating them in the real world. The same data can also be used directly in a production series by embedding the software algorithms into the production vehicle hardware.