Quote:
Originally Posted by shenglin
Dear haters of the AS, I understand personally from your stand that as a BMW owner or enthusiast, you wish to have a choice or have various opinions on the system itself.
Perhaps you may even feel that BMW has diverge from its path of "Ultimate Driving Machine" and fell into the cult of "fake noise" generation.
However, please, I would like to urge you guys to spare a little thought to the hard work that the BMW and M-division Engineers. They try their every means to bring out the best to us and spent so much time to fine tune the little details for the vehicles out on the roads.
For those who question about "noise insulation", and why on earth should BMW drown out the noise from the outside and muffle the noise of the engine as well. Sit down, have a cup of coffee and think about why M-cars were developed in the first place. Under what category does the M5 fall in? I'm not sure if your answer's a Premium luxury sedan that can function as a track vehicle on weekends. But for the latter, it has to under go stringent engineering development in a field called "Noise Vibration Harshness".
In a nutshell, the engineers of this field goes through many hours to fine tune the tactile response for your seat, drive wheel and vibrations of your vehicle; as well as acoustic response for you and your passengers' ears. They are people who spent many years just to learn the art of doing so. And trust me, its one of the hardest department and a silent workhorse in the automotive industry.
The M5, in order to be luxury in its own right, has to be properly insulated from outside noise to a certain extend. Its targeted to customers who want to enjoy comfort as well as greater performance out of an normal F10 5 series. They are people who wishes to pay premium pricing to enjoy both side of the coins.
Indeed, BMW didn't admit to the fact that there is AS, but I guess its all for marketing purpose. For the purist, I guess you people just wish for them to be honest about it and be able to shut it off. Fair enough.
But I hope that the haters out there can just calm down a little and stop making a huge deal out of the matter. As smaller and economical engines hit the roads, we all have to get used to lesser engine audio. Want some hot rod V8 power? Get a different car. Everyone have a choice. If you wish to have a car that pleases you in terms of noise and harshness and produce the same amount of power, get the GTR or any close models that you can think of. Or you can remove the engine insulation at the front of your dashboard all together.
A car design can only please so many people. If it doesn't suit you, you can always check out the store next door. Just don't hate the car for not being suitable to your taste. 
And artificial car sound is coming to town, we can't stop it. Even Audi has an audio department making exhaust sounds for the e-tron. Its the future of matters and if its hard to swallow, I wish to give you a pat on the shoulders. |
Here's the deal. I'm not a hater, I'm a BMW enthusiast. I've put close to 200,000 miles on BMW's and had extensive track time. I'm also an engineer, and have done work for some of the major auto manufacturers. I know how engineers work, and I think BMW has some of the best engineers in the business. I love their cars.
But people that simply accept whatever BMW does, and make excuses for their mistakes are much, much worse than 'haters'. The reason is that car manufacturers depend on their enthusiast users for real feedback, and if everyone is a fanboy, there's no motivation for BMW to change something that isn't right. Honest, unbiased customer feedback is the most important input companies get to improve their product.
Active Sound is a mistake, and is something that BMW did to solve a problem quickly and inexpensively. It's similar to the SMG transmissions - something that should be looked at as a 'stopgap' measure, but BMW can do much, much better. Porsche solved the problem by incorporating valves into the exhaust, and valved intake tubes routed into the passenger compartment.
As an interim measure, BMW needs to make Active Sound configurable/disabled via Idrive. Then they need to focus on how to get the real sound of the engine/exhaust into the passenger cabin.
Maybe electric cars with F1 soundtracks are the future of autos. But by then the car will be driving itself, so who cares.