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      01-04-2013, 02:15 PM   #109
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Imagine an alternative history where this fake engine noise through speaker technology was first introduced by, say, Toyota on the Scion tC to make its lame I4 sound like an old school Alfa V6. I wonder how many of you that defend this Active Sound BS would've defended Toyota for that.

My guess is that most of us would've laughed at it as a lame gimmick that only a lame brand like Scion would pull on its lame customer base and declared how great it is that an awesome German company like BMW would never do anything so lame.

Instead, what we have is one of the finest performance car brands in automobile history (///M) spearheading the legitimization of this kind of gimmick. In terms of autotune analogy, this would be like Adele being the first one to popularize autotune.

And as some of us buy into this gimmick out of misplaced love of BMW, we are reducing incentives for automakers to produce engines that actually sound good. If this fad catches up, there will be little connection between the quality of engine noise and the actual quality of the engine. Any Toyota or Hyundai can sound like an Italian flat-plane V8 if they think it'll sell better.

And enough with EU regulation and turbo and all of that. None of that is insurmountable given enough R&D. And unplugging it is not a solution, as this gimmick exists precisely so that they won't have to spend money and time tuning the actual engine noise. So you unplug it, and you have a mediocre sounding car. How's that a solution?

So let's all come together in hatred of the fake engine noise. The general public will never figure it out, but at least we enthusiasts should bitch about it, and bitch about it a lot, because otherwise this thing will spread like a wildfire.
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