<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><b>From:</b> Brian Buhrow via NFBC-Info <nfbc-info@nfbnet.org><br><b>Date:</b> August 3, 2022 at 12:39:13 AM PDT<br><b>To:</b> nfbc-info@nfbnet.org<br><b>Cc:</b> Brian Buhrow <buhrow@nfbcal.org><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>[NFBC-Info] From the New Yorker: Annals of Sound</b><br><b>Reply-To:</b> NFB of California List <nfbc-info@nfbnet.org><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span> Hello fellow Federationists. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the work the NFB</span><br><span>did to pass the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act, the article below tells the story of this</span><br><span>act and the NFB's involvement. I personally worked in the test groups they mention, as well as</span><br><span>walking alongside the rest of you in Congress to get the legislation passed. this act is the</span><br><span>single most important reason why hybrid and electric vehicle sold since 2020 and beyond are</span><br><span>loud enough to let us hear them before they run us over in the streets. I am proud of the work</span><br><span>the NFB did to get this very important piece of legislation passed and the regulations written</span><br><span>so we can continue to travel safely on our streets and byways. And now that you know about it,</span><br><span>you should be too!</span><br><span></span><br><span>Link and text pasted below.</span><br><span></span><br><span>-Brian</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span>https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/08/what-should-a-nine-thousand-pound-electric-vehicle-sound-like?campaign_id=4&emc=edit_dk_20220802&instance_id=68225&nl=dealbook®i_id=27757237&segment_id=100212&te=1&user_id=cfbe3c49635d1550df5aa13245dda31d</span><br><span></span><br><span> Annals of Sound</span><br><span> August 8, 2022 Issue</span><br><span></span><br><span>What Should a Nine-Thousand-Pound Electric Vehicle Sound Like?</span><br><span></span><br><span> E.V.s are virtually silent, so acoustic designers are creating alerts for them. A</span><br><span> symphony--or a cacophony--of car noise could be coming to city streets.</span><br><span></span><br><span> By John Seabrook</span><br><span></span><br><span> August 1, 2022</span><br><span></span><br><span> I sleep on the second floor, in a bedroom facing a residential street in Brooklyn. Through</span><br><span> the years, my sleeping brain has grown used to the nighttime noises of motor vehicles:</span><br><span> mainly the growls of engines, but also the squeaks of truck springs wheezing over the</span><br><span> street's speed hump, and the wheedling of open-door chimes from late-night Uber drop-offs.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Fire engines, cop cars, unmuffled Harley-Davidson motorcycles, not to mention unhappy</span><br><span> couples arguing and the occasional lost soul screaming at ghosts--none of that noise</span><br><span> bothers me. On my first night in the country, however, I'm like Joe Pesci in "My Cousin</span><br><span> Vinny," trying to sleep in rural Alabama: "What the fuck is that?"</span><br><span></span><br><span> Unlike vision, smell, and taste, all of which dim when consciousness shuts down for the</span><br><span> night, hearing is a 24/7 operation. For early humans, who were trying to rest outdoors with</span><br><span> predators around, this trait was presumably a lifesaver. For people trying to sleep in the</span><br><span> city that never does, though, all-night listening is mostly a liability. The brain must</span><br><span> disregard a lot of ordinary metropolitan white noise, while remaining alert to unusual</span><br><span> sounds that might be of vital importance. The waking brain performs a similar filtering</span><br><span> function in the urban soundscape, ignoring as many of the meaningless noises as possible.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Researchers into the neurobiology of hearing explain this phenomenon in terms of novelty</span><br><span> and adaptation. Familiar and regularly patterned sounds, such as internal-combustion</span><br><span> engines and air-conditioners, don't wake us; a new or irregular disturbance stands out, at</span><br><span> least at first, amid the sonic clutter. In a 2005 paper, Ellen Covey, a psychologist at the</span><br><span> University of Washington, and her co-authors identified these subconscious arbiters of</span><br><span> sound and noise as the brain's "novelty detector neurons."</span><br><span></span><br><span> But a novel or useful alert can become a meaningless repetitive noise over time. The</span><br><span> beeping emitted by the new Walk / Don't Walk signals, which were recently installed on the</span><br><span> corners of my block, initially struck me as abrasive; now I tune it out. Other, more</span><br><span> aggressive sounds, such as back-up beepers on trucks, have been designed to resist</span><br><span> assimilation, because that would diminish their efficacy as audible beacons. Far from</span><br><span> blending together into a kind of acoustic ecosystem, city noises tend to compete with one</span><br><span> another to be heard--an auditory cage match wherein the loudest sound eventually wins.</span><br><span></span><br><span> The electrification of mobility presents humanity with a rare opportunity to reimagine the</span><br><span> way cities might sound. Electric motorcycles, cars, trucks, and vans are legally mandated</span><br><span> to replace all internal-combustion-engine (I.C.E.) vehicles in New York, L.A., and other</span><br><span> cities by mid-century--a shift that will profoundly alter the acoustic texture of urban</span><br><span> life. The internal-combustion engine, in addition to being the single largest source of</span><br><span> CO[2] emissions, is the leading cause of global noise pollution, which studies have shown</span><br><span> to have a similarly corrosive effect on human health. When moving at higher speeds,</span><br><span> electric vehicles, or E.V.s, produce roughly the same wind and road noise that I.C.E.</span><br><span> vehicles do, but at lower speeds they operate in near-silence: electricity flows from the</span><br><span> battery to the motor, which spins with a barely audible hum. Therein lie the promise and</span><br><span> the peril of E.V.s for city dwellers.</span><br><span></span><br><span> A zero-emissions vehicle has obvious benefits for the environment, but a quiet car is a</span><br><span> mixed blessing for the public good. Automobile engines, however annoying non-driving</span><br><span> citizens find them, are rich in information, providing a protective web of sound that</span><br><span> cushions us from collisions as we navigate the streets. Not only does engine noise announce</span><br><span> a vehicle's presence; it can also convey its direction, its speed, and whether it is</span><br><span> accelerating or decelerating. The same disturbances that my brain ignores while I'm</span><br><span> sleeping help guide me when I'm cycling in traffic and can't take my eyes off the road to</span><br><span> glance back. And, for pedestrians distracted by their phones, engine sounds are everyday</span><br><span> lifesavers, as the tiger's distant roar was for napping early humans. Except that the</span><br><span> predators are motor vehicles--and the new ones are virtually silent.</span><br><span></span><br><span> In response to this threat, Congress passed the 2010 Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act, a</span><br><span> law that few Americans paid attention to at the time, and that took almost ten years to</span><br><span> implement. As a result of the legislation, every E.V. and hybrid manufactured since 2020</span><br><span> and sold in the U.S. must come equipped with a pedestrian-warning system, also known as an</span><br><span> acoustic vehicle alerting system (AVAS), which emits noises from external speakers when the</span><br><span> car is travelling below eighteen and a half miles per hour. (Similar regulations apply in</span><br><span> Europe and Asia.)</span><br><span></span><br><span> Automakers have enlisted musicians and composers to assist in crafting pleasing and</span><br><span> proprietary alert systems, as well as in-cabin chimes and tones. Hans Zimmer, the film</span><br><span> composer, was involved in scoring branded sounds for BMW's Vision M Next car. The</span><br><span> Volkswagen ID.3's sound was created by Leslie Mándoki, a German-Hungarian</span><br><span> prog-rock/jazz-adjacent producer. The Atlanta-based electronic musician Richard Devine was</span><br><span> brought in to help in making the Jaguar I-Pace's voltaic purr. Some automakers cooked up</span><br><span> sounds entirely in-house. The Porsche Taycan Turbo S has one of the boldest alerts: you're</span><br><span> in Dr. Frankenstein's lab as he flips the switch to animate the monster. Engineers in the</span><br><span> Audi Sound Lab made the lower frequencies of the Audi E-Tron GT Quattro's alert by</span><br><span> algorithmically mixing different tones produced by recording an electric fan through a long</span><br><span> metal pipe; the full alert references the sumptuous soundscapes of the film "Tron" and its</span><br><span> sequel.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Other alerts tilt more toward nature. Danni Venne, the head designer behind the Nissan</span><br><span> Leaf's Canto sound palette, said in a Business Insider video that "you really have to go</span><br><span> for instruments that don't have a hard attack to them. Wind instruments, flutes, oboes,</span><br><span> clarinets . . . can kind of waver a bit." Elon Musk has suggested that Teslas could make</span><br><span> goat noises, or, perhaps, clopping-coconut sounds, like those made by the crusaders in</span><br><span> "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" because they lack actual steeds.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Only one in twenty new cars sold in the U.S. is an E.V., so these alerts are still a rarity</span><br><span> in New York, but one day everyone will live with them. I'm already wondering how I'm going</span><br><span> to sleep.</span><br><span></span><br><span> It took a lot of effort to make naturally quiet vehicles noisier. The campaign that led to</span><br><span> the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act began at the grassroots level. One November morning</span><br><span> in 2003, a friend dropped by the Illinois home of Deborah Kent Stein, a blind writer and an</span><br><span> activist with the National Federation of the Blind, or N.F.B. The friend wanted to show</span><br><span> Stein and her family his new Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle. "It's completely silent when</span><br><span> it's running on its battery," he announced. "No kidding--you can't hear a thing."</span><br><span></span><br><span> Stein later described this fateful encounter with the automotive future in an essay she</span><br><span> published on the N.F.B.'s Web site:</span><br><span></span><br><span> Two men in togas walk through Pompeii as Mount Vesuvius erupts</span><br><span> "I'm really trying not to freak out about every little cataclysm."</span><br><span> *</span><br><span> *</span><br><span> *</span><br><span> *</span><br><span></span><br><span> Cartoon by Lars Kenseth</span><br><span></span><br><span> I stood at the curb and listened as our friend climbed into the driver's seat and slammed</span><br><span> the door. I waited to hear the Prius hum into life and move forward. I heard the chatter of</span><br><span> sparrows; the distant roar of a leaf blower; and, after a minute or two, the opening of the</span><br><span> car door.</span><br><span></span><br><span> "When are you going to start?" I asked.</span><br><span></span><br><span> "I did start," our friend answered. "I drove down to the end of the block, and then I</span><br><span> backed past you and drove up in front of you again." I felt a cold sense of dread. I</span><br><span> thought, we've got a real problem.</span><br><span></span><br><span> A few years later, Lawrence D. Rosenblum, a professor of psychology at the University of</span><br><span> California, Riverside, read something about the danger of quiet cars. He had done acoustic</span><br><span> research showing that the brain pays special attention to sounds moving toward the</span><br><span> listener, automatically calculating what Rosenblum calls "time-to-arrival." He published an</span><br><span> account of his work in a 2010 book, "See What I'm Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our</span><br><span> Five Senses."</span><br><span></span><br><span> With a grant from the N.F.B., Rosenblum set up an experiment in which blindfolded subjects</span><br><span> stood next to a roadway and listened as both a gas-powered Honda Civic and a hybrid Prius</span><br><span> running on its battery drove past. Subjects were told to press buttons on a device to</span><br><span> indicate when they could hear a vehicle and to identify its direction. The results,</span><br><span> Rosenblum told me, "couldn't have been clearer. People could hear the Honda when it was</span><br><span> still twenty feet away, whereas they couldn't hear the Prius until it had passed them."</span><br><span></span><br><span> At its headquarters, in Baltimore, the N.F.B. established a committee to investigate the</span><br><span> problem of quiet cars. Discussions were held with automotive regulators and auto-industry</span><br><span> engineers. "Smart" solutions were proposed involving sensors, cameras, and in-cabin alerts</span><br><span> that would warn an E.V.'s driver of an impending collision. The sonic plague of back-up</span><br><span> beepers unleashed by Ed Peterson's mid-sixties invention, the Bac-A-Larm, has been tempered</span><br><span> by back-up cameras in newer trucks and vans, which warn only the driver, and not the rest</span><br><span> of the street, if someone is behind the vehicle. Couldn't E.V. alert systems work</span><br><span> similarly, especially with the proliferation of sensors and cameras in the latest models?</span><br><span> But the blind community strongly opposed that approach, in part because it was predicated</span><br><span> on an imminent collision, rather than on preventing such incidents from occurring in the</span><br><span> first place.</span><br><span></span><br><span> At one meeting, an automotive engineer made a suggestion. Since maximum-noise laws for</span><br><span> gas-powered automobiles already existed, why not establish a minimum-noise standard that</span><br><span> E.V.s had to meet? "It was a revolutionary idea," Stein wrote.</span><br><span></span><br><span> But, in order to convince Congress to consider a law requiring a minimum-noise standard,</span><br><span> the N.F.B. needed data. And in the nineties and early two-thousands, with so few hybrids</span><br><span> and E.V.s on the road, the number of accidents involving pedestrians, visually impaired or</span><br><span> not, was statistically negligible. The N.F.B. did collect many anecdotal reports about</span><br><span> close calls, and even accounts of minor injuries. "But anecdotal evidence isn't statistical</span><br><span> engineering evidence," John Paré, the N.F.B.'s executive director for advocacy and policy,</span><br><span> who served as the national coördinator of the campaign against quiet cars, told me.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Without real-world data proving that quiet cars could be dangerous, the National Highway</span><br><span> Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency charged with reducing deaths, injuries,</span><br><span> and economic losses on the nation's roadways, could do nothing. The breakthrough came later</span><br><span> in the decade, when the N.H.T.S.A. investigated crash rates for hybrids and E.V.s in</span><br><span> incidents involving sighted pedestrians and cyclists, and compared those with crash rates</span><br><span> for I.C.E. vehicles in similar incidents. The results, which were published in a 2009</span><br><span> report, based on limited data from 2000 to 2007, showed that hybrids and E.V.s were twice</span><br><span> as likely as I.C.E. vehicles to be involved in accidents with pedestrians. A follow-up</span><br><span> report in October, 2011, using a larger sample size, found that hybrids and E.V.s had a</span><br><span> thirty-five per cent greater likelihood of accidents with pedestrians, and a fifty per cent</span><br><span> greater likelihood of accidents with cyclists. Most of these incidents occurred not on the</span><br><span> road but in parking lots and driveways, when a driver was reversing or turning.</span><br><span></span><br><span> The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act, calling for a "sound or set of sounds for all</span><br><span> vehicles of the same make and model," was passed in the last hours of the 111th Congress,</span><br><span> and President Barack Obama signed it into law on January 4, 2011. The Act did not specify</span><br><span> what those alerts should sound like. That question took six years for the N.H.T.S.A. to</span><br><span> resolve, and resulted in three hundred and seventy-two pages of mostly numerical acoustic</span><br><span> rules and parameters. What took so long?</span><br><span></span><br><span> "We thought that they had to sound to some degree like cars--otherwise, the alerts won't</span><br><span> provide safety," Paré told me. "Society has already been trained to know what cars sound</span><br><span> like." However, he added, "it's really hard to specify what a car sounds like. How do you</span><br><span> put into regulatory legal language that a car should sound like a car?"</span><br><span></span><br><span> Many electrical appliances make sounds, although few are scored by famous composers. My</span><br><span> family's seven-piece kitchen ensemble, for example--dishwasher, electric oven, microwave,</span><br><span> refrigerator and freezer, electric kettle, and coffee maker--creates a discordant symphony</span><br><span> of simple beeps, tones, and chimes of clashing frequencies and rhythms throughout the day</span><br><span> to inform us when the machines have begun or completed the particular tasks they were</span><br><span> designed for. An acoustic ecosystem it's not.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Electric vehicles offer a vast new stage for sound designers, both inside and outside the</span><br><span> vehicles. As sensors, computer vision, and cloud-based algorithms take over more and more</span><br><span> of the driving, sound will become a user's primary interface with such machines. If a car</span><br><span> can drive, its user won't need to look up from her book or wake from a nap unless there's</span><br><span> an audible alert. Many newer cars, outfitted with semi-autonomous features that assist a</span><br><span> driver in adjusting the speed or changing lanes, already make in-cabin sounds when they</span><br><span> perform these actions, mainly to reassure the driver and any passengers that the vehicle is</span><br><span> executing a plan, and not just randomly drifting. (In psychoacoustic research, these are</span><br><span> known as "priming" sounds.) There are also more urgent collision-avoidance alerts, should a</span><br><span> car's cameras or sensors detect objects close by.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Nicolas Misdariis is the head of the Sound Perception and Design group at the Institute for</span><br><span> Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM), in Paris, a world center of</span><br><span> psychoacoustic research. Since 2008, his team has worked with the Renault Group, designing</span><br><span> sounds for the French automaker's lineup of electric cars, both prototypes and vehicles in</span><br><span> production.</span><br><span></span><br><span> IRCAM's office is next to the Pompidou Center, in Paris's Fourth Arrondissement, and as I</span><br><span> walked there one day in February to visit Misdariis I kept mostly to the streets, because</span><br><span> the narrow sidewalks were overflowing with pedestrians and electric-scooter riders. I</span><br><span> listened to the whine of diesel-fuelled cars and the whokada-whokada of two-stroke mopeds</span><br><span> behind me--engines that give European cities a different audible flavor from American urban</span><br><span> environments--in order to know when to get out of the way. The only close calls I had were</span><br><span> with the shareable e-bikes that Paris, like New York, has embraced since the pandemic.</span><br><span> E-bikes are not legally required to emit sounds when moving--yet--although some proactively</span><br><span> do.</span><br><span></span><br><span> When the researchers first began working with Renault, Misdariis told me, the collaborators</span><br><span> struggled to find a common language in which to talk about acoustic design. "When a graphic</span><br><span> designer says to you, `This is a red triangle,' there is no different interpretation</span><br><span> possible," he said. "But if you say, `I would like a warm sound'--what is a warm sound?</span><br><span> What is a round sound? What is a rough sound? A green sound? What is a smiling sound? We</span><br><span> know what happy music is, but what is a two-second sound that is happy?" Misdariis added,</span><br><span> "It is the sound designer's job to translate high-level visual representations into sound</span><br><span> parameters--this is a very tricky point of our discipline." The Renault team eventually</span><br><span> developed tools for visually sketching sounds, frequencies, and modulations. "We needed</span><br><span> these tools to create efficient sound design," he said.</span><br><span></span><br><span> The IRCAM researchers also investigated fundamental issues such as whether E.V. sounds</span><br><span> should be sonic metaphors for the noise of internal combustion, similar to a cell phone's</span><br><span> synthetic bell or the reassuring paper-crumpling that indicates you've discarded a document</span><br><span> on your MacBook--a form of acoustic design known as skeuomorphism. Another option was to</span><br><span> use "ear-cons"--audible symbols, such as the abstract clicks a Geiger counter makes, which</span><br><span> everyone recognizes as the sign of radioactivity. Misdariis's team developed and tested</span><br><span> options in both categories. They discovered, he said, that "metaphors are easy to</span><br><span> understand but hard to remember, whereas symbols are harder to understand but easier to</span><br><span> imprint."</span><br><span></span><br><span> The IRCAM team worked with Andrea Cera, an Italian music producer and composer. Cera said</span><br><span> that he views the electrification of mobility as a chance to fundamentally rethink the</span><br><span> chaotic acoustics of a city. He envisions an urban soundscape modelled on birdsong in</span><br><span> nature, in which, instead of competing to be heard, different sounds fit into an over-all</span><br><span> acoustic ecosystem. By analyzing soundscapes around the world, Cera told me, he has</span><br><span> identified "these little niches where you could put a little sound so that you could be</span><br><span> present without being loud. Just a tone, not a melody." The sounds he and the IRCAM team</span><br><span> have designed for Renault aim to complement those niches. He added, "If the soundscape is</span><br><span> very chaotic--cars, phones, horns, radios--the best way to be noticed is to be still."</span><br><span></span><br><span> IRCAM's Renault sounds were, indeed, surprisingly mellow, although perhaps less like</span><br><span> birdsong than like a washing machine set to the delicates cycle. The Parisian soundscape</span><br><span> will surely benefit from them. But would anyone hear these élégantes French alerts in New</span><br><span> York, particularly over the bedlam and blare of all the gas-powered vehicles in its</span><br><span> traffic-clogged streets?</span><br><span></span><br><span> An automobile powered by internal combustion makes a racket. The induction of air, its</span><br><span> compression inside the piston sleeves, the explosion of the vaporized gasoline, and the</span><br><span> expulsion of CO[2] exhaust ("suck, squeeze, bang, and blow," in car talk) produce loud,</span><br><span> low-frequency reports, rumbles, and vibrations.</span><br><span></span><br><span> At General Motors, engineers in the Noise and Vibration Center are responsible for</span><br><span> fine-tuning that din. Douglas Moore, a senior expert in exterior noise at G.M., started</span><br><span> working at the company in 1984, when he was still an undergraduate at Michigan State. He</span><br><span> has spent all but eight years of his career with G.M., where his job, and that of his Noise</span><br><span> and Vibration colleagues, has been to silence, dampen, and modulate the sounds made by</span><br><span> internal combustion, depending on the brand. Traditionally, when tuning a Cadillac, Moore</span><br><span> and his colleagues would try to make the engine as quiet as possible, because quiet</span><br><span> signifies luxury to the classic Cadillac buyer. In tuning a Corvette, Chevrolet's "muscle</span><br><span> car," on the other hand, the engineers want some of the bang-bang-bang of internal</span><br><span> combustion to come through, because that conveys power to the driver.</span><br><span></span><br><span> The engine's sound isn't the only thing that the engineers work on. Many prospective</span><br><span> buyers' first experience of a car or a truck is the CLICK ker-CHUNK that the driver's-side</span><br><span> door makes when they close it, followed by a faint harmonic shiver given off by the</span><br><span> vehicle's metal skin. The door's weight, latches, and seals are carefully calibrated to</span><br><span> create a psychoacoustic experience that conveys comfort, safety, and manufacturing</span><br><span> expertise.</span><br><span></span><br><span> In designing electric versions of popular brands, U.S. automakers have to decide whether to</span><br><span> make the E.V.s mimic their gas-driven counterparts or whether, like Renault, to divert from</span><br><span> the familiar sound. The Passenger Safety Enhancement Act directives allow automakers to</span><br><span> craft their own branded alerts, so long as they meet certain specifications.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Moore's first E.V. project was the 2012 Chevy Volt, which emitted a pedestrian alert years</span><br><span> before the law required one--a vacuum-cleaner-like hum that increased in frequency as the</span><br><span> car sped up. "I have new colors to paint with," Moore said. "Instead of a palette of</span><br><span> internal-combustion sounds, I have a palette of AVAS sounds. But it's the same approach.</span><br><span> Now, instead of generating them with the physical components of the car, which has its pros</span><br><span> and cons, we're generating them electronically."</span><br><span></span><br><span> Moore is also the longtime chair of a group within the Society of Automotive Engineers</span><br><span> called the Light Vehicle Exterior Sound Level Standards Committee, which helps develop</span><br><span> tests that regulators use to measure safety on the road in the U.S. His group led the</span><br><span> investigation into developing minimum-sound standards for E.V.s and hybrids, and</span><br><span> establishing parameters to govern the decibel level, pitch, and morphology of the warning</span><br><span> signals. Moore once came to the N.F.B. headquarters and tried navigating in traffic when</span><br><span> blindfolded. His N.F.B. instructor was impressed that the engineer could identify a 2005</span><br><span> Chevrolet Camaro and a 2009 Cadillac Escalade by their distinctive engine sounds.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Moore explained the S.A.E.'s relationship with federal highway-safety regulators by saying,</span><br><span> "We figure out how to measure things. N.H.T.S.A. says how much." I asked Moore why the</span><br><span> regulations don't require that E.V.s more closely resemble I.C.E. vehicles, since, as the</span><br><span> N.F.B.'s John Paré had noted to me, we're already used to those noises. Moore replied, "The</span><br><span> purpose of this sound is to provide information about what the vehicle is doing. And</span><br><span> there's more than one way to provide that." He paused. "Yes, we've learned</span><br><span> internal-combustion sounds over a hundred years," he continued. "But before cars were</span><br><span> around we knew that the clip-clop of horses meant the wagon was coming. So, there's nothing</span><br><span> inherent in those engine sounds."</span><br><span></span><br><span> Lobster arguing its case as its pulled out of tank</span><br><span> "But I'm one of the cool ones!"</span><br><span> Cartoon by Suerynn Lee</span><br><span></span><br><span> A well-designed alert reaches the people who need to hear it, without annoying those who</span><br><span> don't. To thread this sonic needle, engineers can vary a particular sound's decibel level,</span><br><span> which indicates the volume of air pressure that the sound waves displace, and they can also</span><br><span> adjust the sound's pitch, or frequency. Both decibel level and pitch determine the</span><br><span> intrusiveness of that sound. The danger is that you create a sound that cries wolf, as it</span><br><span> were: it works at first, but after a while people tune it out, so you have to pump up the</span><br><span> volume.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Although humans are capable of hearing frequencies between twenty and twenty thousand</span><br><span> hertz, we hear in "octave bands," in which the highest frequency is double the lowest one.</span><br><span> (In a musical C octave, the high C is twice the frequency of the low C.) The regulations</span><br><span> specify that AVAS sounds must cover four separate, nonadjacent octave bands. A so-called</span><br><span> broadband sound of this type, such as the staticky squawk that Amazon delivery vans</span><br><span> recently began making when reversing, is less piercing, more robust, and easier for the</span><br><span> hearer to locate directionally than an alert that occupies a narrow frequency range, such</span><br><span> as the back-up beepers on Con Ed trucks. Not incidentally, the nonadjacent-octave-band rule</span><br><span> precludes using a musical phrase as an alert--the pitch-shifting would sound awful--as well</span><br><span> as any vocal alerts, human or animal. How would the blind tell the street from the sidewalk</span><br><span> if electric cars spoke or barked?</span><br><span></span><br><span> By permitting automakers the latitude to brand their alerts, the N.H.T.S.A. rules have</span><br><span> created a new design form: acoustic automobile styling. Pedestrians and cyclists won't just</span><br><span> hear the vehicle coming; they'll know what kind of car it is. For acoustic designers, both</span><br><span> the pedestrian alerts of E.V.s and their rich in-cabin menus of sonic information represent</span><br><span> the dawn of a new age. "I feel fortunate that I get to work on features that will influence</span><br><span> the way the world will sound," Jigar Kapadia, the creative-sound director for General</span><br><span> Motors, told me.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Kapadia, who studied electronics and telecommunications engineering at Mumbai University</span><br><span> and has a master's in music technology from N.Y.U., collaborates with Moore and others at</span><br><span> G.M.'s sound lab in Milford, Michigan. For each sound, the team comes up with about two</span><br><span> hundred variations and then tests them on their colleagues in the jury room, until they</span><br><span> have arrived at a few finalists they can road test on vehicles.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Kapadia likens an alert-system sound to a perfume. "Just like a perfume, it unfolds," he</span><br><span> told me. "The alert has a base note, a middle note, and a top note." He added, "These</span><br><span> layers are amalgamated together to bring out a cohesive organic sound, or a futuristic</span><br><span> sound, based on what kind of brand we are focussing on." He noted that the pedestrian alert</span><br><span> on the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq, the first electric version of G.M.'s long-standing luxury car,</span><br><span> was made with a didgeridoo, an ancient Australian wind instrument that is based on the</span><br><span> musical interval known as a perfect fifth. However, for G.M.'s nine-thousand-pound electric</span><br><span> Hummer, which recently went on sale, Kapadia said, "we wanted a more distorted sound." He</span><br><span> paused, and then added, "A bold Hummer sound." The Hummer's forward-motion alert made me</span><br><span> think of church, when the organist launches into the next hymn. The back-up sound is</span><br><span> something like its dystopian twin.</span><br><span></span><br><span> At the Ford Motor Company, in order to find out what car buyers thought electric vehicles</span><br><span> should sound like, engineers and consultants conducted "customer clinics" and launched a</span><br><span> Facebook campaign. Judging from the number of responses, Ford fans were keen to make their</span><br><span> opinions known. My own survey, largely based on reading comments under YouTube videos of</span><br><span> various branded E.V. sounds, is that most people think that E.V.s should not resemble</span><br><span> I.C.E. cars. Higher frequencies are thought to signify clean energy and software-driven</span><br><span> intelligence; E.V.s ought to whoosh and zoom like the flying personal vehicles of</span><br><span> science-fiction films such as "The Fifth Element," "Gattaca," "Blade Runner," and, of</span><br><span> course, "Star Wars." In many cases, in fact, Foley artists created those futuristic</span><br><span> vehicles' sound effects from recorded I.C.E. noise. In Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner 2049,"</span><br><span> the twist is that Ryan Gosling's flying vehicle sounds like a broken-down I.C.E. jalopy.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Ford's Brian Schabel, a sound engineer who, like Moore at G.M., has spent his career in</span><br><span> Noise and Vibration, was part of the group that worked on the Mustang Mach E, Ford's sporty</span><br><span> but practical electric S.U.V. "We knew we wanted to keep some aspect of that low-frequency</span><br><span> modulation and link it to the past," he told me. "And then we looked at everything out</span><br><span> there. Machinery--what do people associate powerful electric motors with? Formula E</span><br><span> vehicles are very high-pitched, raw-sounding. How can we blend those two pieces together?</span><br><span> We didn't want something that was too `Batman' or `Blade Runner.' " Mach E's forward sound</span><br><span> put me in mind of a hovering dragonfly. The back-up sound is like a broadband cricket.</span><br><span></span><br><span> In creating the company's new palette, Ford collaborated with Listen, an audio-branding</span><br><span> firm based in Brooklyn. One member of the Listen agency, Connor Moore (no relation to</span><br><span> Douglas), is the founder of CMoore Sound, and has worked with Google on Firefly, its</span><br><span> self-driving-car project, as well as with Tesla, Lucid, Uber, and other tech companies. An</span><br><span> electronic musician, Moore explained that he uses the same process and production tools for</span><br><span> cars that he relies on to make music, mixing synthetic tracks with recordings of physical</span><br><span> objects and nature sounds.</span><br><span></span><br><span> "With the F-150 Lightning," Moore said, discussing the electric model of Ford's immensely</span><br><span> popular pickup, "you're thinking about the size and the scale of the car. So some of that</span><br><span> means recording heavy objects: metals, stone, things that have weight. You want something</span><br><span> with low-end distortion that hits you in the chest. We also worked with more organic</span><br><span> elements, like wind and water sounds, and clay and wood. We really leaned on a lot of the</span><br><span> organic material for the in-car alerts."</span><br><span></span><br><span> I asked Moore about the possibility that, by allowing for a unique identity for each of the</span><br><span> sixty major auto brands in the world, we were setting ourselves up for a sonic</span><br><span> catastrophe--a cacophony of competing thrums and whirs and chimes and tones. If every car</span><br><span> is emitting a unique branded alert as it passes under my bedroom window, aren't my novelty</span><br><span> detectors going to go haywire? I described my street to Moore, noting that there is a</span><br><span> traffic light about twenty yards away, where there are often six or eight cars waiting.</span><br><span> Once the cars are all E.V.s, will I need to move to an apartment at the top of the nearby</span><br><span> ninety-three-story Brooklyn Tower just to get some sleep?</span><br><span></span><br><span> Moore replied, "I think with intentional-design thinking we can actually, maybe, make the</span><br><span> world quieter. That's my goal." However, he added, "we could wake up in five years with</span><br><span> eighty per cent E.V.s, and it's a cacophony of sound and dissonance if these cars are all</span><br><span> singing different tunes, in different key signatures and pitches." Moore speculated that</span><br><span> cities might one day have to designate a particular key for all the alerts made in their</span><br><span> streets. (I nominate F-sharp major, the key of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys's "Empire State of</span><br><span> Mind.") On second thought, Moore said, "maybe, you know, that would potentially drive</span><br><span> people crazy."</span><br><span></span><br><span> Then there is the question of how customizable a vehicle's alert system should be. In 2017,</span><br><span> automakers petitioned the N.H.T.S.A. to be allowed to offer drivers a range of options that</span><br><span> they could select from. The agency, after a public-review period, denied the request for</span><br><span> safety reasons, but the issue could come up again. If Boombox, a software feature in</span><br><span> Teslas, is any indication of what's on the way, it will be difficult to limit the sounds</span><br><span> that drivers play through E.V.s' external speakers. Boombox, which was released in</span><br><span> December, 2020, as part of a software update, allows Tesla drivers, according to its</span><br><span> promotional literature, to "delight pedestrians with a variety of sounds from your</span><br><span> vehicle's external speaker," including goat bleats, ice-cream-truck music, applause, and</span><br><span> flatulence. In early 2022, the N.H.T.S.A. found the Boombox feature noncompliant with its</span><br><span> rules. Musk called regulators the "fun police," but Tesla nonetheless issued a firmware</span><br><span> update that prohibits the use of Boombox when driving, although hackers will probably find</span><br><span> a way around it. Teslas can still fart when parked.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Another possibility is that New York City is just too loud for the relatively civilized</span><br><span> decibel levels established for the alert systems by N.H.T.S.A. regulations. Douglas Moore</span><br><span> told me that "the levels are set to where a normal person would be able to hear it in a</span><br><span> normal situation. It is not expected to be heard in all places"--such as construction</span><br><span> zones--"at all times. Otherwise, you're in the death spiral of just cranking the levels</span><br><span> up."</span><br><span></span><br><span> But a death spiral could be what we get. Because, after all, what's the point of an alert</span><br><span> if you can't hear it? I borrowed a Mach E not long ago, and took it for a spin around</span><br><span> Brooklyn with a colleague who was planning to record the car in motion. He jumped out on</span><br><span> Kent Street, in Williamsburg, and stood with his microphone as I drove past, but the Mach</span><br><span> E's forward-motion alert barely registered. As a second-story sleeper, I was reassured. As</span><br><span> a cyclist, not so much.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Just before six the other morning, while I was still asleep, my hearing picked up a novel</span><br><span> sound coming toward me: a thud-thUD-THUD, reverberating off the façade of the apartment</span><br><span> building across the street, getting louder as it came closer.</span><br><span></span><br><span> Was it an E.V. alert? I woke up just long enough to grasp that it was someone bouncing a</span><br><span> ball down the middle of the street. After passing under my window, the THUD-THud-thud faded</span><br><span> until the street was quiet again. At 6:45 a.m., the first of the garbage trucks came by. cD</span><br><span></span><br><span> Published in the print edition of the August 8, 2022, issue, with the headline "On Alert."</span><br><span></span><br><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>NFBC-Info mailing list</span><br><span>NFBC-Info@nfbnet.org</span><br><span>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbc-info_nfbnet.org</span><br><span>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NFBC-Info:</span><br><span>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbc-info_nfbnet.org/cweatherly101%40gmail.com</span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>