Can an enhanced driving experience still be authentic? | Articles

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Hyundai’s recently unveiled Ioniq 5 N. Yeah, it’s generating lots of chatter over Hyundai’s claims that it’s a truly track-capable EV, with full-session capabilities and quick charging for multiple shots at those apexes during that track day. 

[Hyundai debuts Ioniq 5 N at Goodwood]

Until more of them are out in the wild, we won’t be able to verify those claims or whether a 2-plus-ton EV truly makes for a good track toy. But those really aren’t the aspects of the Ioniq 5 N that are filling our email inbox and lighting up comment sections.

For that, we have the sounds of the 5 N to thank.

For a refresher, the Ioniq 5 N, as part of a strategy to improve the in-car experience, can produce a simulated combustion-engine soundtrack, timed to the acceleration and deceleration of the car as well as throttle application and lift. People–as they tend to do–are losing their motherslappin’ minds.

Many of the comments, dripping in the sort of outrage usually reserved for war crimes or egg prices, employ some variation of the sentiment, “Fake noise is stupid. I will never accept fake noise in my performance car, and they will have to launch me into the sun before I will allow the affrontery to sully my ears.”

Okay, cool.

But come on, man. Let’s take a step back off the soapboxes and reevaluate a little bit before we declare that an enhanced experience can’t be “authentic,” whatever that means. For everyone who says vinyl is infinitely superior to CDs, there’s a guy just waiting to bust out his wax cylinders and prove everyone wrong, at least until his claim at ultimate realness is challenged by someone with an original de Martinville phonautograph. 

Sound is a huge part of the way we experience the world, and our brains are wired to react to certain sounds, regardless of whether the waveform defining that sound was produced by synthesis or first-order generation. 

I had a chat with my buddy Matthew Setzer–a dude who literally makes a living as a musician designing sounds to stir the soul–whether he thought our reaction to sounds was hard-wired into our DNA or based on our lived experience. His position was basically, “I think a lot of our reaction to sound comes from an ingrained survival instinct. The sound of a predator, for example, or a powerful storm is going to tend to make most creatures, us included, react in a similar way.”

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