116 replies to this topic

[ardbeg]

http://plus.autospor...r-in-formula-1/

"And not having to protect my ears with super-strength earplugs to deaden all the sounds had one huge benefit: you could actually hear what the drivers were doing."

 

"Heck, you could even hear the screech of the tyres as the drivers locked up their fronts on entry, or spun up the rears as they disappeared from view in a flurry of sideways action. "

 

What I always claimed - F1 is, or at least used to be, a symphony where one instrument dwarfed, killed, all the others. Like Ray Charles used to have a big orchestra with him but he was the only one amplified, the only one the audience could hear.

 

I think that if we can hear the tires, the floor touching the kerbs, the ground and the air particles being violently thrown in, for them, unexpected directions, then we get a much bigger sense of speed. Both trackside and in front of our monitors at home.

[eronrules]

all people (complaining one's that is) will come round and embrace the changes ... they're just reluctant to let go the nostalgia values i guess. i'll say by mid season, we'll hear little to no complains regarding lack of whiny V8 shrieks and people will actually enjoy the silence. 

 

to that end ... here's my tribute to the things that are gone and things to come ... 

 

 

at 0:05, it's kimi raikkonen   

[rhukkas]

It's like saying One Direction is better than Rage Against the Machine

[Imateria]

^That's like picking the lesser of two evils.

[RoutariEnjinu]

For TV they'll just turn the gain up, and it probably won't seem much different. Hopefully along with that we'll hear all these other auxiliary sounds, along with the whistles and whines or turbines and compressors and motors and generators.

I think the main thing lost will be the experience at the actual circuit. The first time I went to Le Mans it was the defining and most surprising part of it. I think I'd be more disappointed seeing an F1 race at a circuit now, but on TV, it's not really going to be any different. Only the pitch will be different, and I never liked the V8's anyway. V10's sounded far more choral.

I'd have prefered it if they went for a higher revving turbo inline-5, like the 1980's Sport Quattro, but ah well.

[SenorSjon]

F1 sound on tv is usually horrible. But F1 should be loud. I say, bolt two engines together for a twinturbo V12.

[Jovanotti]

It's like saying One Direction is better than Rage Against the Machine

Or that Mark Knopfler (the only concert to date I was able to comfortably listen to without earplugs, and absolutely loved it) is better than AC/DC. Think about it!

[TheUltimateWorrier]

What you mean to say is, Louder is not better than Lauda.

 

[uffen]

That's funny because I've always been able to hear the tires and the cars bottoming out. Sometimes writers assume everyone is like them and so they make incorrect assumptions.

Edited by uffen, 06 February 2014 - 14:10.

[rhukkas]

Headline Autosport 2020

 

"Why electric is better than V6 Turbos"

 

Headline Autosport 2030

 

"Why AI drives can provide better racing than humans"

 

It's click bate/survival articles.

[olliek88]

"Louder is not better"

 

Opinion is not fact.

[Jon83]

I love the sound of a loud F1 engine. It is the greatest memory I have of seeing F1 in person.

 

These new engines don't sound good from what I've heard that isn't just down to them being quiet IMO.

 

If people aren't bothered about the sound then good for them. They'd be just as happy if they are all electric I'd guess.

[chunder27]

I have to agree with them

 

Seeing these things live will change peoples mind.

 

I cant think of anything worse in previous years than hearing some test driver at Goodwood or somewhere sitting on the limiter making a terrible racket, those engines dont sound good, they sound like bike engines, and bike engines sound better in bikes put simply!

 

I admire the engineering, but just as much ingenuity went in the early 90's and turbo era, more in fact. Who cna imagine a 1.5 litre V8 turbo!  OK it didnt work but how awesome that it was on the grid with 4's and 6's.

 

My only greivance is that the teams werent allowed to try 4's aswell, I realise the cost implications, but there are far more 4 cylinder turbo's around, and it all inks in with other motorsport WRC and WTCC too, albeit tuned to a far lesser level.

 

The new cars sound fine, lots will disagree, but they probably ike watching diesels hush round Le Mans too!

[rhukkas]

I do also find it amusing that people say "but it's the future, get used to it"

 

no, no it isn't 'the future'. Full electric or hydrogen power is 'the future'. Still got a very old fashioned internal combustion smashing out 700hp underneath there which places these engines firmly in the 80s eras of technical innovation.

[RoutariEnjinu]

F1 sound on tv is usually horrible.

Also kind of my point. The V8's sounded rubbish no matter how loud you had them on TV, but as far as volume in real life went, it was almost frightening the first time you heard them.

Yet if I listen to a Porsche Carrera GT or a Group B Quattro, or even the V10 on a low volume on a TV, they to me sound brilliant.

In other words, for the TV audience, going from V8 to V6T really isn't going to make any difference at all. But I can imagine it being quite sad to be trackside. Or at least not having the 'first time' massive impact that an otherwise dull sounding V8 had.

[senna da silva]

It's like comparing a Jackson through a Fender Metalhead to a '59 burst through a '55 Fender Champ. I know which tone I want to hear.

Edited by senna da silva, 06 February 2014 - 14:44.

[Option1]

Not sure why anyone thinks something so loud that you can only safely listen to it with earplugs is not a contradictory thought when saying the new engines are too quiet.  Take your earplugs out, and they're relatively just as loud as the old ones. 

 

I don't go to the races for pain, nor the annoyance of having to wear ear protection all the time.

 

Besides, there are far, FAR bigger issues with F1 than some perceived, and totally arbitary/personal noise level standard.  Frankly, this is a somewhat nonsensical topic, that doesn't even reach a "first world problem" standard.

 

Neil

[Tenmantaylor]

Louder might not be more practical, comfortable or indeed nice but it made F1 stand out for the people at the track. I will never forget the sound the of the Renault and Mercedes V10s at the end of the Hangar straight at Silverstone in 2005, a point of the track spectators can get scarily close to an F1 car at full chat. It was as much a feeling as sound, with my fingers pushed in my ears it still was ear drum splitting and no other motorsport has ever come close to that in my experience. I agree volume is not everything and is arguably irrelevant for TV viewers but from what I've heard so far from the test I like the note and the burble of the new engines more than the V8s.

[kraduk]

Also kind of my point. The V8's sounded rubbish no matter how loud you had them on TV, but as far as volume in real life went, it was almost frightening the first time you heard them.

Yet if I listen to a Porsche Carrera GT or a Group B Quattro, or even the V10 on a low volume on a TV, they to me sound brilliant.

In other words, for the TV audience, going from V8 to V6T really isn't going to make any difference at all. But I can imagine it being quite sad to be trackside. Or at least not having the 'first time' massive impact that an otherwise dull sounding V8 had.

 

Dont worry all those missing high pitched sounds will be replaced by all the whining grumpies trackside   

 

With regard to the volume, it will be interesting to see I can still here them at home when they hit the track at silverstone. I quite often can, which is usually really annoying as it reminds me im not there 

Edited by kraduk, 06 February 2014 - 15:26.

[ardbeg]

"Louder is not better"

 

Opinion is not fact.

Actually, I think that statement can stand as a fact. 'Louder' is simply not 'better', that can be easily proven. It is not orange either. It's just louder.

[Rinehart]

We all have opinions I guess.

 

I'm not bothered by the noses or the double points race but I am bothered by the noise. The awesome scream of the 10's and 8's was a big part of the difference between the tv and the track.

[UKP]

The issue of sound is a matter of feelings. I totally disagree with the headline regarding F1 live – louder IS better in my opinion. If we want a mediocre sound, we can go to the local racetrack and watch the races.

 

I have been to live Formula 1 for more than 10 consecutive years and we already bought tickets in December for 2014 - Hockenheim, Südtribüne block G as usual. This year my 8-year-old boy should experience the F1 for the first time - we have been watching so many hours of F1 sound-clips on You-tube. I told him post up and down about how insane and impressive it is - the live sound from a Formula 1 car. Then we have this sound in 2014. I agree, it will not make any difference to TV, but live it certainly will. Some new fans might join, but we are leaving the ship and have sold our tickets - with 50 percent discount. We settle for the TV in the future.

 

[ardbeg]

The issue of sound is a matter of feelings. I totally disagree with the headline regarding F1 live – louder IS better in my opinion. If we want a mediocre sound, we can go to the local racetrack and watch the races.

 

I have been to live Formula 1 for more than 10 consecutive years and we already bought tickets in December for 2014 - Hockenheim, Südtribüne block G as usual. This year my 8-year-old boy should experience the F1 for the first time - we have been watching so many hours of F1 sound-clips on You-tube. I told him post up and down about how insane and impressive it is - the live sound from a Formula 1 car. Then we have this sound in 2014. I agree, it will not make any difference to TV, but live it certainly will. Some new fans might join, but we are leaving the ship and have sold our tickets - with 50 percent discount. We settle for the TV in the future.

Without having actually heard the engines, you sell the tickets because it will sound... mediocre? For an 8 year old who would need triple ear protections to be safe for a V10? I don't believe you.

[Imateria]

"Louder is not better"

 

Opinion is not fact.

True, but the same applies to "Louder is better".

[Lazy]

I do also find it amusing that people say "but it's the future, get used to it"

 

no, no it isn't 'the future'. Full electric or hydrogen power is 'the future'. Still got a very old fashioned internal combustion smashing out 700hp underneath there which places these engines firmly in the 80s eras of technical innovation.

True, electric is the future and ERS is the stepping stone to that future. The battery technology doesn't exist yet and the energy recovery systems need to be developed.

[Collombin]

What you mean to say is, Louder is not better than Lauda.

That joke is only acceptable if the attached pic is the strip from Peanuts with Snoopy and Woodstock.

[Andrew Hope]

What you mean to say is, Louder is not better than Lauda.

 

 

I see you your inflatable Lauda and raise you a melted Danica Patrick:

 

[7MGTEsup]

For all the louder is better people, F1 even the V10's sound like a weed whacker compaired to a top fuel dragster. You don't know what loud is till you have stood 10 meters from a top fuel dragster at full load.

[Option1]

   Ah yes, the picture of Danica that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Danica.*

 

Neil

 

* With a nod to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[swerved]

For all the louder is better people, F1 even the V10's sound like a weed whacker compaired to a top fuel dragster. You don't know what loud is till you have stood 10 meters from a top fuel dragster at full load.

 

[Andrew Hope]

   Ah yes, the picture of Danica that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Danica.*

 

Neil

 

* With a nod to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

 

It's those damn teeth. I think someone misunderstood the concept when his buddy asked him to paint something to do with Danica Patrick and a beaver..

[Alfisti]

Louder might not be more practical, comfortable or indeed nice but it made F1 stand out for the people at the track. I will never forget the sound the of the Renault and Mercedes V10s at the end of the Hangar straight at Silverstone in 2005, a point of the track spectators can get scarily close to an F1 car at full chat. It was as much a feeling as sound, with my fingers pushed in my ears it still was ear drum splitting and no other motorsport has ever come close to that in my experience. I agree volume is not everything and is arguably irrelevant for TV viewers but from what I've heard so far from the test I like the note and the burble of the new engines more than the V8s.

Only thing more impressive is Top Fuel drag racing, arma****inggeddon. 

[dau]

I see you your inflatable Lauda and raise you a melted Danica Patrick:

 

Starring Zach Braff.

[Alfisti]

My 5c, I took my then GF (now wife) to a race in 2003 and she'd never been to a motor race before. We walked to the track and Prac 1 just started, her head perked up and said "what the HELL is that noise?". 

 

At the track she was blown away, the noise was immense. Too loud or not, the noise attracts people, helps create spectacle. 

[agarcia]

Having spent the Thursday test wandering around Jerez track (main grandstand, Turns 1 to 5, the back straight, Senna's S and Turns 14 and 15), the article is quite right. Cars sound great, and you can hear the turbo and the tires. Even as surely nobody was using full power and we had never more than three cars properly running at the same time that day, the sound was quite loud trackside (not that much at grandstands more distanced from the track).

 

However, it is also true that it has lost the appealing of the almost deafening previous levels of dBs. While any V8 (just imagine V10 or V12) fired in the garages could be heard from anywhere around the track, this is now true only if your are sitting in the main grandstand, and you can't hardly hear a car running at the at farthest point of the track. Just as a data, there was almost no sound at all at the outside parking. As a matter of fact, the sound of the V8s was louder at La Cueva (https://maps.google....439348803519000) than the sound of the new V6s at Gates 1 and 2 of the track (you could even hear the V8s while having lunch at La Cueva). I will miss definitively the sound, but not the earplugs

[Andrew Hope]

I don't mind the sounds of the new engines, but they could definitely be better.

 

[slideways]

I love the way the tech is heading and wouldn't change it, but I must agree with alfisti. As a kid in the 80s & 90s, when F1 rolled into town I could hear the cars from more than 10km away, sitting in my classroom heading towards an engineering degree. The sound rang over the entire city for days. It's hard to quantify that to people who didn't experience it.

[d246]

I liked the variety of the V8 / 10 / 12 of years gone by but was starting to tire of the recent V8s. First chicane at Monza 2011, the Red Bull sounded awful farting down the gears using the blown exhaust. Monaco last year wasn't too much better.

 

I look forward to (trying) to hear the new units in the flesh later in the season before judging.

[prty]

It's click bate/survival articles.

 

I never knew how to classify those kind of articles, you described it perfectly

 

[Andrew Hope]

Click-bait, technically.

 

Click-bate is a whole different kettle of fish, one more familiar to most of us..

[chipmcdonald]

Without having actually heard the engines, you sell the tickets because it will sound... mediocre? For an 8 year old who would need triple ear protections to be safe for a V10? I don't believe you.

 

Let's see how well 2015 tickets sell after fans hear the new engines in person....

[chipmcdonald]

True, electric is the future and ERS is the stepping stone to that future. The battery technology doesn't exist yet and the energy recovery systems need to be developed.

 

 

Meanwhile, Formula E goes about it's business "in the future".

[chipmcdonald]

For all the louder is better people, F1 even the V10's sound like a weed whacker compaired to a top fuel dragster. You don't know what loud is till you have stood 10 meters from a top fuel dragster at full load.

 

That's true.

 

Likewise, I'm very sure that the sound has no impact on the popularity of TF trackside attendence whatsoever.....

 

 

Is TF impressive or not because of the sound?  Is that not interesting and thrilling?  Not only  that, but as you point out, *special to TF*?   Formula 1 has had a sound *special to F1*, impressive.  I claim that sound is a big draw, with the plethora of anecdotal evidence that yes, people in general are impressed with the now "old" sound of F1.  If someone thinks that is dumb, that's fine.  The real issue is whether it's important to F1.

 

Louder is, as a rule, considered more impressive than softer.  Do fans care, when they plop down their enormous sum for a ticket?  I do, and I suspect the majority does, and after this season F1 fans will have a new rationale for not bothering with attending races in 2015.   Does the average fan want to hear something very surreal and impressive for their ticket price, or do they not care?

 

We'll see in 2015.

Edited by chipmcdonald, 06 February 2014 - 18:06.

[senna da silva]

Let's see how well 2015 tickets sell after fans hear the new engines in person....

 

I find it hard to believe that someone who plays guitar such as I do places more emphasis on volume than they do on tone.

I can tell you what the loudest concerts and the best concerts I've been to are, and they are not the same.

[Shiroo]

I've been always saying the same thing to myself after hot night (at least in my opinion) with my ex-girlfriend.

[chipmcdonald]

I find it hard to believe that someone who plays guitar such as I do places more emphasis on volume than they do on tone.

I can tell you what the loudest concerts and the best concerts I've been to are, and they are not the same.

 

For starters, Formula 1 car racing has nothing to do with playing guitar.

 

Secondly, it is not the volume itself but as I've said before, the environmtal acoustic effects of the volume.   As a musician I do associate volume with power, as do most rational people, and the translation of the reverberation of the cars at a distance - *no matter where they are on the track* - conveys "power".  As someone pointed out above, when a car fired up in a garage and was louder than Porsche Cup cars going down the straight, that translates aurally as "power".  Hearing a car winding up through gears on the other side of the track, shifting down, that is "impressive" to me.  Hearing the long decay time in the stands after a car has passed impresses me. 

 

It is not the instant the car is in front of you - although that's impressive because it drowns out the RT60 of everything else - it's when it's *not* in front of you. 

 

Is thunder in the distance not impressive?  A jet airplane taking off?  Whether "impressive sound" plays a role in F1 is subjective, but regardless volume plays a role.   Additionally, as a *unique* sound experience, it was a calling card for F1.  That is no longer the case.  "Tone" doesn't have anything to do with the effect of impressiveness. 

[senna da silva]

For starters, Formula 1 car racing has nothing to do with playing guitar.

 

Secondly, it is not the volume itself but as I've said before, the environmtal acoustic effects of the volume.   As a musician I do associate volume with power, as do most rational people, and the translation of the reverberation of the cars at a distance - *no matter where they are on the track* - conveys "power".  As someone pointed out above, when a car fired up in a garage and was louder than Porsche Cup cars going down the straight, that translates aurally as "power".  Hearing a car winding up through gears on the other side of the track, shifting down, that is "impressive" to me.  Hearing the long decay time in the stands after a car has passed impresses me. 

 

It is not the instant the car is in front of you - although that's impressive because it drowns out the RT60 of everything else - it's when it's *not* in front of you. 

 

Is thunder in the distance not impressive?  A jet airplane taking off?  Whether "impressive sound" plays a role in F1 is subjective, but regardless volume plays a role.   Additionally, as a *unique* sound experience, it was a calling card for F1.  That is no longer the case.  "Tone" doesn't have anything to do with the effect of impressiveness. 

 

I don't disagree with any of that. But I also don't believe the new powerplants will be quiet as a church mouse either, more like the difference between 115db and 130db.

In other words, plently loud but not painful.

Edited by senna da silva, 06 February 2014 - 18:39.

[chipmcdonald]

I've never said they'll be quiet.  All I have said is that the volume is impressive, something the Average Person does not experience in everyday life, that for an impressive sound it was unique to F1. 

 

I claim the impressiveness was part of the show, and that the volume's effect acoustically at a distance played an enormous role in that.  Whether I am alone in that thought is debateable, and as I said - we will see with ticket sales in 2015.  F1 is already a pretty hard sale at ticket prices asked, stands are no overflowing, and taking what I claim to be an important part of the show away is asking for trouble.

 

IMO.

 

/ 115/130 doesn't matter; it's the reverberant sound.  As evidenced by video from Jerez, the cars are virtually inaudible once they leave the near vicinity, and are effectively I presume akin to the Audi diesel LMP on approach - you don't know they're there until they've arrived.  That lack of "distant drama" is gone, regardless of the actual measure SPL at a given distance.

[Slartibartfast]

I find it hard to believe that someone who plays guitar such as I do places more emphasis on volume than they do on tone.
I can tell you what the loudest concerts and the best concerts I've been to are, and they are not the same.

I believe it. In my experience, guitarists like you are the exception rather than the rule. Unfortunately.

[TecnoRacing]

Another article by the increasingly gutless F1 apologists of Autosport...

These guys - Noble, Straw etc - cheer-lead anything and claim the 'purist' high ground while doing so....quite irritating...