V12 engine sound

Smoothness is the character of a V12, which makes it the hardest engine here to build. Take the irregularity out of a synthesised engine and you usually get something lifeless. The trick is that a V12 gets its smoothness from twelve cylinders overlapping their power strokes so completely that the gaps disappear.

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.

Firing unevenness is set to 3 and jitter to 4, the lowest pair in the library. Those two parameters are what create growl and clatter elsewhere, so turning them almost off is the whole design. What fills the space instead is the order bank: six firings per revolution stack harmonics densely enough that the result reads as thick rather than as thin.

The sub oscillator runs at 105, the highest of any car, and bass sits at 115. That is the weight underneath. Brightness at 120 keeps the top present without letting it dominate, which would push the sound toward the V10.

It redlines at 8,000 and shifts at 3,800, running eight ratios that stretch to 53 km/h per 1000 rpm in top. That combination gives it the widest usable spread on the site: it will loaf at motorway speed and still pull to the limiter in second.

Overrun pops are set to 15. A big GT engine does not crackle much on a lift, and giving it rally-car bangs would break the illusion faster than any spectral error.

At 100 km/h in top it turns just under 1,900 rpm, so on a motorway it is close to silent and the whole engine is waiting. Drop two gears and it arrives. This is a preset that rewards working the gearbox, and eight ratios give you plenty to work with.

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

• V10 engine sound
• Modern V8 engine sound
• Inline-six engine sound

Every other engine

• RECORDED CARS
  • BAC Mono
  • Ferrari 458
  • BMW M1 Procar
• SUPERCARS
  • Muscle V8
  • Modern V8
  • V10
  • Anti-lag rally car
  • Air-cooled flat-six
• NORMAL CARS
  • Three-cylinder
  • Four-cylinder
  • Turbo hot hatch
  • Inline-six
  • 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.