Terrible Exhaust Sound in Videos: An Epidemic

"uofime-2" (uofime-2) 09/11/2015 at 11:36 • Filed to: None

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Anyone who has ever shopped for an exhaust know that finiding videos of exhaust sounds that are very good knows how hard it is. But good lord Jalopnki’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was a tour de force of horrible exhaust sound videos. Did they not even try?

I know there are some AV aficionados on there, is it really that hard? Of course most of those videos look like they were shot on cell phones so it’s not like they even tried.

And why do they just shoot shots of idle and no load reving? Who cares what the car sounds like in that situation? The sort of knob who goes and parks at car shows revs, which may be a large portion of the exhaust enthusiast market I suppose.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

I know I should stop reading those, but it’s like a train wreck, I cannot stop.

Sorry for the rant.

HammerheadFistpunch > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 11:40

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Bytemite > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 11:41

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Umm, LFA?

uofime-2 > Bytemite 09/11/2015 at 11:45

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It does sound great and there are good sound clips of it, but that was a horrible video of its sound

uofime-2 > HammerheadFistpunch 09/11/2015 at 11:45

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Yes, I am present and accounted for!

Also I just edited the post, now with 70% more old man ranting!

Bytemite > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 11:51

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Yeah they could’ve used a video of the cars on track with the camera at the exhaust.

HammerheadFistpunch > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 11:51

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In all seriousness, I agree that those sound clips aren’t the best. Many of them are clipping badly (hellcat) and some don’t really ever go anywhere.

Justin Hughes > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 11:54

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It can be tricky, as I’m learning myself now that I have a decent external mic for my GoPro (the built-in one is kind of bad). My problem is the sound level overloading the mic. Here’s the best I did at a recent Track Night:

GoPro mounted to the front tow hook, mic taped to the bumper support, some distance from the engine, relatively speaking. Even then it’s still clipping a bit, but it doesn’t cut out completely the way it did in my trunk (right above the exhaust), and wind noise isn’t an issue because the bumper is in front of the mic.

I’m wide open to further suggestions!

uofime-2 > Bytemite 09/11/2015 at 11:55

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That car sounds beautiful that fact that some poor reader may only know it’s sound from that video of it reving in a parking lot (or whatever) is a travesty. Jalopnik should be ashamed.

uofime-2 > HammerheadFistpunch 09/11/2015 at 11:58

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Yeah that was especially egregious.

We get it, the car is really loud. Now step back so you cell phone’s mic isn‘t completely overwhelmed so you can get a better crappy video of it reving.

You do A/V, is it really that hard to get a good recording of a car’s exhaust sound?

uofime-2 > Justin Hughes 09/11/2015 at 12:03

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That’s actually pretty good. You got lots of nice induction noise with the exhaust noise.

I wonder if there is a muffler you can use on the microphone to tone down the volume so the diaphragm isn’t bottomed out. or if they could make special microphones for high volume recording.

HammerheadFistpunch > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 12:08

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I do A/V, its not easy...but its not hard either. This was a few years ago without much effort

uofime-2 > HammerheadFistpunch 09/11/2015 at 12:12

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I was talking about this with Justin and did some googling but couldn’t find any thing, but maybe you know.

Does anyone make a muffler for mics, and I don’t mean to cut wind noise, just to decrease volume, not cut frequencies?

I’m thinking something like a foam filled tube with a smaller hole in one end and the other with the mic shoved in it.

HammerheadFistpunch > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 12:17

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No one makes one that I know of because a professional would never hurt the sound quality of their mic to lower Db’s, they would just turn down gain. The trouble with the idea of a muffler is that the systems that blow out audio will usually have some time of AGC (auto gain control) meaning that if you muffled the mic the AGC would just crank the gain up so you would end up getting the same problem, but compounded with gain noise.

Now you can get devices that are inline to the mic that would change the attenuation (gain) and they aren’t that expensive.

uofime-2 > HammerheadFistpunch 09/11/2015 at 14:34

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Oh, so it isn’t the mic that is being overwhelmed by the sound waves it is the recording equipment?

So on the analog signal side that would just be a resistor, that makes sense. ps forgive my ignorance, I was never good at signal processing

uofime-2 > Justin Hughes 09/11/2015 at 14:40

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Check our HHFP’s reply to my other post, you can get an inline Attenuator that should solve this issue.

HammerheadFistpunch > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 14:42

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You can physically blow out a Mic but it’s very rare. It’s signal attenuation that your looking for, correct. I’m not sure if a resistor is all it is but probably

uofime-2 > HammerheadFistpunch 09/11/2015 at 14:44

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TIL.

Thanks

Justin Hughes > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 14:48

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Interesting. I bought a mic specifically for the GoPro that has a mini-USB connector for about the same price as their adapter to a 1/8” jack, so it may be hard for me to find one. Still an attenuator makes sense. I’ve used them in ham radio applications before, and it’s all waves and frequencies whether it’s sound or radio.

uofime-2 > Justin Hughes 09/11/2015 at 14:56

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I wondeer if the mic converting to digital or is it sending analog over the usb (which doesn’t make sense to me) and that would be a bummer.

Justin Hughes > uofime-2 09/11/2015 at 15:03

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I’ve noticed about a 2 second delay in the audio. It’s a pain but I can split the video and audio tracks in Premiere Elements and synch them up again. I’m wondering if maybe I should try a different mic for loud environments, though. My Googling has led me to look at aircraft applications, since small planes tend to be noisy environments as well.

uofime-2 > Justin Hughes 09/11/2015 at 15:09

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Yeah if they had one with built in attenuation that would solve the issue.

I briefly played that game and the equipment I had apparently didn’t keep time well, because synced at the beginning would go out of sync with in a couple minutes, drove me nuts.