There's nothing quite like the guttural growl of a high-performance car engine at throttle. It's not only music to the ears of most car lovers, but also gives valuable feedback to drivers, such as when to shift gears or ease off the gas.

But some automakers are using electronically recreated engine sounds inside a vehicle, like a backing track for the car, and hardcore car enthusiasts are not pleased.

Rising fuel efficiency, the increased use of turbochargers, and better insulated vehicle interiors are the main culprits of quieter cars. And while a small but vocal minority of motorheads feel offended that imitation engine sounds have made it into even legendary muscle cars like the Ford Mustang and esteemed sports sedans like the BMW 5 Series, a peaceful interior and great performance and fuel economy are features that appeal to mainstream car buyers—even if the engine sounds are phony.

Is it Live or Is it a Motor Recording?

The phenomenon started with automakers simply channeling engine sounds into a car's interior as cars grew quieter. Several year ago, Ford installed a resonator pipe between the firewall that separates the engine compartment from the cockpit in the Mustang GT, so that the snarl of the car's V8 could be better heard in the interior. Sports car paragon Porsche also employed an exhaust intake noise amplifier called a Sound Symposer in the 911 and Panamera to create what the automaker calls an "acoustic channel" that pumps engine sounds into the cabin.

This eventually evolved into electronically recreating certain engine sounds inside the car. When BMW introduced a new version of its M5 sports sedan several years ago, engineers found that the new vehicle's chassis isolated occupants from the engine's refined roar. The solution: Play a recording of the M5's motor sounds through the car's stereo system, and synchronize it with engine RPMs.

BMW contends that, like the Ashley Simpsons of the world, the engine recording is simply a backing track that augments the sound of the engine to give the driver feedback. And as often happens, this innovation was quickly copied by others.

Volkswagen introduced its own Soundaktor, a speaker the size of a hockey puck that plays engine-sound samples in vehicles such as the GTI and Beetle Turbo. Even the V10 engine sound of the Lexus LFA supercar needed to be boosted and directed toward the driver's seat using electronics developed by Yamaha.

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One of the most recent—and for enthusiasts, most egregious—examples is the Ford Mustang and the big, tough, best-selling F-150 pickup. Ford even recently filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office to protect intellectual property for the "generating engine noise" used in its vehicles.

While driving enthusiasts see this as yet another sign that the automotive apocalypse is neigh and technology is intruding into the cabin, average car buyers likely hardly even notice, and probably even appreciate this audio enhancement. It's also in keeping with other such precedents in the tech world, and there's even a name for it: audio skeuomorphism. You know it as the faux mechanical shutter click when taking a picture using the camera on your smartphone so that you know you got the shot or computer applications that make a paper-rustling sound when turning an electronic page.

Engine sounds going the way of the manual transmission is jus evolution. And with technology set to do most of the driving in the future, perhaps the next step will be adding sounds that yell at other drivers so that you don't have to.

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