Inline-six engine sound

An inline-six is mechanically balanced in a way almost nothing else is. The primary and secondary forces cancel along the length of the crank without needing balance shafts, and you can hear that: it is the quality people mean when they call a straight six creamy.

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.

The preset sets unevenness to 5 and jitter to 5. Only the V12 is lower. Those two parameters produce growl and clatter elsewhere in the library, and pulling them down to the floor is how balance gets represented rather than merely claimed.

Three firings per revolution give the harmonic spacing. Compare the air-cooled flat-six, which also fires three times a rev but carries unevenness of 12 and noise of 135. Same firing count, entirely different engine, and the difference is almost all in those two values.

Bass sits at 90 and brightness at 95, both near neutral, with noise held down at 90. This is a refined engine and the preset does not fight that. Pipe length of 120 gives a longer decay than the sports engines, more GT than track car.

It redlines at 7,200 and shifts at 3,300 across six ratios reaching 46 km/h per 1000 rpm in top. Long-legged. It suits a motorway better than a back road, which is the correct answer for the engine it is modelled on.

At 120 km/h in sixth it turns about 2,600 rpm, quiet and unbothered. First still runs to 61 km/h at the limiter, so it will pull away hard without ever feeling frantic. Refinement here is a design choice rather than a lack of character.

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

• V12 engine sound
• Air-cooled flat-six sound
• Four-cylinder engine 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
  • Diesel
  • 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.