The integration of experimental models in a real-time virtual car sound engineering environment

The pressure on development cycles in the automotive industry forces the acoustical engineers to create awareness of sound quality in the earliest stages of development. Nowadays, designers have few tools to help them listen to their 'virtual' models. A sound synthesis concept is presented where the total sound of a vehicle is split in a number of components (e.g. engine noise, road/tire noise, wind noise). Sound Quality Equivalent Models have been developed to describe their sound characteristics. The models consist of networks of single- and multireference transfer paths, operational loads and airborne sound sources and allow to evaluate the impact of changes to structural components on the in-vehicle sound quality. The models are integrated in an interactive, real-time Virtual Car Sound environment that synthesizes in-vehicle sound without clicks, without high frequent chirps, without timing problems and with equal sound quality perception.