This is a stupid function

"Spanfeller is a twat" (theaspiringengineer) 01/19/2018 at 19:40 • Filed to: None

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This is stupid, why would you make the volume louder with speed? To confuse the driver/make him less alert.

Btw... No emblems.

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 19:44

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To counter wind noise. Alternatively, if you Max out the effect and put on highway to the danger zone or dejavu it could be awesome.

MM54 > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 19:46

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I had a rental car with that once, I thought it absurd until I realized that I didn’t adjust the volume at all between 70mph on the highway and stopping to pay a toll, then back up to 70.

The Powershift in Steve's '12 Ford Focus killed it's TCM (under warranty!) > Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. 01/19/2018 at 19:47

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And tire noise. It saves you from having to constantly fiddle with the volume settings.

cbell04 > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 19:47

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I hate this function. I turn it off anytime I see it. I get the point but it messes with my mind when it goes up and down in traffic.

AestheticsInMotion > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 19:49

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Because wind/road/car noises increase with speed.

I don’t like it either, because I’m so used to manually adjusting the volume whenever I’m driving. Stop at a light? Volume goes down. Go over 80mph? Volume goes up. With this auto adjust, I always end up adjusting volume anyways at the same time as the machine so it always ends up 2x as loud/quiet as I want. Basically... I don’t trust the computer to do the job better than me. IT DOESN’T KNOW MY PREFERRED VOLUME LEVELS

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 19:49

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Pretty common feature. Makes it a bit louder to counter NVH without you having to adjust manually. Also it quiets it when you slow down. It’s actually a really clever feature.

daender > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 19:57

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I have that in my ‘02 Miata, it’s quite handy since it has various levels of increments I can set it up for. Most of the time I leave it on its loudest setting because I want music, damnit!

Ash78, voting early and often > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 20:00

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My wife’s 1995 F-body Camaro had this. Semi-useful. I’d imagine the modern ones actually monitor noise levels to determine the volume. I hope. Otherwise we’re just recycling old tech and calling it new. Which is what Honda does.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 20:01

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My cobalt has it and it’s nice because I set the sound once and it gets louder on the highway so I can hear it over wind noise and quieter around town.

gin-san - shitpost specialist > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 20:13

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I’ve never used this function myself but it could be useful. You say that it makes the driver less alert, but whether or not this function is active I think that same driver is still going to have that same accident anyway.

Based on zero evidence (apart from the anecdotal variety, also my favourite variety) people react to visuals much more than auditory ones while driving since modern cars generally have great sound insulation (which is why we’re pumping in fake engine noise).

Even my Forte5 has a volume control on the steering wheel, so I just use that since I prefer adjusting on-the-fly.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > AestheticsInMotion 01/19/2018 at 20:49

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Yeah, my biggest complaint about it is that there’s never a setting that makes it match what I would do. You’d think these would just have an on/off setting and train from driver adjustments to the volume.

jimz > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 21:08

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because road noise goes up with speed. not that hard to figure out?

merged-5876237249235911857-hrw8uc > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 01/19/2018 at 21:09

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My Audi volume adjust works about perfect, but it’s the only one that I e had that does it right. It’s all adjustable too, so that helps get it just right.

OpposResidentLexusGuy - USE20, XF20, XU30 and Press Cars > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 21:17

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Both my Lexii have ASL(Auto Sound Leveling). I feel like that is a much better concept. The louder the outside noises the louder the stereo. Danger zone while driving fast does sound great though.

DipodomysDeserti > Spanfeller is a twat 01/19/2018 at 22:43

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Every car I’ve owned made in this millenia has that.

Textured Soy Protein > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 01/19/2018 at 23:53

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My car has several levels of speed volume but I can’t really even tell if it’s doing anything at all, let alone the differences between the levels.

Spanfeller is a twat > DipodomysDeserti 01/20/2018 at 00:49

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First car I’ve sat in that has it

TheRealBicycleBuck > Spanfeller is a twat 01/20/2018 at 00:56

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If you ever want to be a good engineer, it would behoove you to learn to ask questions and understand why things are designed the way they are before rendering an opinion on their value. If you don’t learn this skill, you will become one of those self-important a-holes that nobody wants to work with. Engineers are known for being pompous know-it-alls. You really don’t want to become the engineer that even other engineers don’t like.

I work in an engineering firm and we have a couple of engineers that nobody wants to work with because they’re usually the first to say they think something is stupid. People get tired of having to explain to them why things are the way they are or why a certain design choice was made.

Spanfeller is a twat > TheRealBicycleBuck 01/20/2018 at 08:37

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I guess I over reacted to the function and some users have stressed how it’s used to reduce road noice.

You make quite a valid point and I need to be more open minded about these things

Oppohas given me good engineering advice ever since I joined!

Spanfeller is a twat > jimz 01/20/2018 at 09:16

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It never came to me that it was due to road noise, come to think of it, it makes sense.

Perhaps its how its been sold to me, any time we tested a car with it the sales staff would say it was a feature to feel sporty, not for comfort.

jimz > Spanfeller is a twat 01/20/2018 at 09:36

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when they get stupid is when they’re calibrated wrong. they should be as unobtrusive as possible; but I’ve seen far too many which did things like increase the volume too fast, or “jumped” in big steps as you passed certain speeds.

Spanfeller is a twat > jimz 01/20/2018 at 09:49

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Really? It seems like shoddy programming.

jimz > Spanfeller is a twat 01/20/2018 at 10:14

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at least with the systems I’m familiar with, all it is is a lookup table which maps a certain vehicle speed (broadcast over CAN) to a volume step. it is literally no different than if you were to turn the volume knob up yourself to compensate for road noise. if it does it too aggressively (ramps up and down too steeply) or has too few steps (noticeable big increases in volume) it can be pretty annoying.

it’s actually not an easy problem to solve; the same radio/amplifier can be used in many different vehicle types with different road noise profiles. so how can you come up with a strategy that works equally well in a Lincoln Continental and a Transit van?

Spanfeller is a twat > jimz 01/20/2018 at 10:36

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well, I’d be thinking that with all these new remote functions and info screens you could have any of those computers do it properly. Have a test be made of each car and the loudness of certain parts of the cabin and then plot an X/Y graph of how volume should behave in certain speed ratings (say from 55-85mph), this way its an evolving result rather than just a fixed step-increase parameter. You can literally ask the computer to solve f(x) and it could return a percentage increase, perhaps a stop increase (say from volume 18 to 20 every 5mph).

if you have a particularly F A N C Y car like the Conti, I’m sure you could program the speakers individually to act as noise cancelation rather than increased volume, that way having a conversation with the passengers isn’t impossible at higher speeds. Even only have the speakers near the sills act as noise cancelation or volume compensation.

CaptDale - is secretly British > Spanfeller is a twat 01/22/2018 at 12:09

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It is actually a really nice function in the GTO. It also has variable sensitivity to change how much the volume changes with speed. Now in may car with no mufflers and a cam I find the function useful so I don’t need to fiddle with the volume between street and freeway driving. To me the volume stays “the same” because the driving noise raised as well. Adding to one less thing I needed to mess with while driving.