Diesel engine sound

Everything a diesel does happens below 4,600 rpm, and building one is mostly a matter of taking things away. Brightness drops to 70, the lowest of the road cars, so the upper orders never get going. Bass climbs to 120. What is left is weight.

Ten seconds from a standing start. The launch, the gearbox working up through the ratios, then the overrun as the throttle closes. Driven by the same gearbox model the simulator runs, so the shift points are the ones you would hear in the car.

Jitter is the parameter that makes it a diesel rather than a quiet petrol engine. At 18 it is the highest in the library outside the steam locomotive, and cycle-to-cycle jitter is exactly what compression ignition produces: each charge lights when it is ready rather than when a spark tells it to. That irregularity is the clatter you hear at idle, and it is a timing artefact rather than an added noise layer.

Noise sits at 125 and pipe length at 140, a long exhaust with a slow decay. The saturation character drops to 25, the lowest here, keeping it dull rather than harsh under load.

Overrun pops are set to 2, which is to say off. A diesel does not bang on the overrun, and giving it pops would be a lie you would notice within one lift.

The gearing is the other half. It shifts at 2,300 rpm, the earliest of any machine here, and runs six long ratios reaching 50 km/h per 1000 rpm in sixth. At 120 km/h it sits near 2,400 rpm and stays there. That is the point of the thing: it is the only preset on this site that is restful.

Pick it for a long run. It is the one machine on this site that does not ask for your attention, and after an hour with the V10 that turns out to be worth something.

Specification

Every figure above is read from the preset the app actually runs, not retyped.

Drive it

Open the simulator with this engine selected, allow location, and press ignition. See how it works for what happens between GPS and sound.

Related

• Four-cylinder engine sound
• Inline-six engine sound
• Single-cylinder thumper sound

Every other engine

• RECORDED CARS
  • BAC Mono
  • Ferrari 458
  • BMW M1 Procar
• SUPERCARS
  • Muscle V8
  • Modern V8
  • V10
  • V12
  • Anti-lag rally car
  • Air-cooled flat-six
• NORMAL CARS
  • Three-cylinder
  • Four-cylinder
  • Turbo hot hatch
  • Inline-six
  • Flat-four boxer
• FUN SOUNDS
  • Steam locomotive
  • Radial prop plane
  • Jet turbine
  • Alien craft
  • Single-cylinder thumper

All twenty on one page, with redline and gear count for each.