This episode was written and produced by Nick Spradlin.
When was the last time you turned off your radio and just listened to your car? What’s really going on under the hood? We chat with our own Nick Spradlin about the simple force at the heart of every gasoline engine and talk with legendary recordist Watson Wu about how the sound of wild and powerful sports cars are captured.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
The Zone by Makeup and Vanity Set
HWY 103 Traveling Trail by Makeup and Vanity Set
Everytime (instrumental) by Chair Model
HWY 101 Ancient Archives by Makeup and Vanity Set
Got the Feeling (instrumental) by Juliet Roberts
Dusk by Kyle McEvoy
Hideout (instrumental) by Kingslynn
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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View Transcript ▶︎
[SFX: V8 Engine Start]
[music in]
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I’m Dallas Taylor.
[SFX: Car montage]
For the last century our society has been car crazy. Here in the US, the average person spends 220 hours each year, just driving to work and back.
Now, I’m the type who likes to drown out the sounds of my car with music and podcasts. But there’s a lot of sonic stuff going on under the hood. I’ve also met so many people who absolutely adore the sounds that a car can make. Now, I’ve neer been much of a car enthusiast myself. I don’t know why… I love sound and it seems like a natural fit. So, right now is the time for me to finally get to the bottom of this and figure out why the sounds of car engines can be so visceral to so many people. If you’re a skeptic like me, this is especially for you. First things first, I really need some help. Luckily we have a resident car enthusiast right here in the office. Nick Spradlin. Hey Nick!
Nick: Hey, Dallas.
[music out]
So, tell me… How did you come to enjoy the sound of a car engine?
Nick: You know, I started by just liking cars. When I was a kid, I was at a car show with my dad every weekend, I was just always around them. You can't help but notice the sound of a powerful car when you go to a hot rod show or any kind of car show. You're standing there just watching the cars parade by and one comes by, and it's just like thundering [SFX: Hot rod engine rev] and just feels so powerful. It's so visceral and alive sounding. As a car person, you just enjoy that. I think later in life when I became a sound professional, I started to think about where those sounds were coming from and understood it in a little bit different way.
So you're a sound designer, and I'm a sound designer - What have I been missing out by not being this car enthusiast?
Nick: I think we have to start from a place of if an engine is the soul of a car, or the heart of a car, then the sound of the engine is the voice of the car, and you can learn things and understand things about that car by the sound of it, [SFX: Race cars pass by] the way that it changes gears and revs up and revs down [SFX: Race cars pass by]. So as a sound designer, I think that's where it is for us. We do a car advertisement, or we do car sound design for a movie or a game, and we just use that to make it sound exciting, to reach out and grab you. And I think the average person can just understand that because it's like a voice.
I think the most basic question is I have no idea what actually makes the sound of a car. My entire mechanical history is limited to like changing my oil when I was a teenager, so I don't even know how a car makes a “blugblublubgblug" sound. On the most basic level, can you explain that?
Nick: Yeah, the most basic thing is explosions [SFX]
Explosions. [SFX]
Nick: Explosions. [SFX]
Like every single [SFX: Car idling], is that an explosion? [SFX]
Nick: Yeah, basically.
Okay...how in the world does that work?
Nick: So “engine” is the short name and the real name for it is “internal combustion engine.”
Internal explosions. [SFX]
Nick: Yeah, it means exactly what it sounds. Things are combusting internally in the engine.
Ok...
Nick: So you have gasoline in your tank [SFX: combustion engine cycle] and then a pump will take that gasoline and turn it into vapor and it will spray that gasoline mist into a cylinder. And then a piston will move up, compress that gas, spark plugs do their thing and they set that gasoline on fire. It makes a big explosion, but in a tiny space, so it just causes that piston to slide downward again. Then, they're all connected together, so one explosion in one cylinder causes another piston to move and then the whole sequence starts again. [SFX: Repeat cycle and speedup] You have a car with a V6 if I remember right?
Yea, I think I have a sticker on the back of my Toyota that says V6.
Nick: It means there are 6 pistons inside of that. So once all six have exploded [SFX], that's one revolution, so that's an RPM.
Now, is that the RPM, each individual explosion [SFX] or is it the six cycle?
Nick: Every six makes one RPM, one revolution. And then you measure that every minute, so revolutions per minute.
Okay, so six cycles pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop [SFX: Cartoon car engine], is my one RPM, but then I have a little dial on my car that says RPMs and it pops faster [SFX: cartoon car engine] and higher when I push down the gas.
Nick: Yeah.
So what's happening there?
Nick: So when you add more gasoline into the cylinder, you'll get a bigger explosion [SFX] and that will cause the engine to run faster. [SFX]
Oh, so that's how you go.
Nick: Yeah. that's why it's called a gas pedal. You're just pushing more gas into the engine.
That sounds terrifying. So basically, three or feet in front of us we have a ton of explosions [SFX] going off?
Nick: Yes, Let's figure out how many explosions [SFX] that is. You have a V6 and say it idles at 1,500 RPM?
Let's say that...
Nick: So every minute, if you're just sitting at stoplight, every minute there are 9,000 explosions [SFX] in your car in front of you
[SFX: tape stop]
Nick: Hey all, this is Nick from the future. After we first aired this episode, I realized I got my math wrong, and the real number is actually half that. In a V6, there are 4,500 explosions every minute at 1,500 RPM.
Nick: Basically I got excited telling my story to Dallas, and forgot about the exhaust cycle. What happens is, the piston will move 1 more time and push the exhaust out of your tail pipe. But there’s no explosion then.
Nick: And I want to say a quick thank you to all of our awesome listeners who wrote in to help me get this right.
Nick: Anyway, back to the story.
[SFX: tape start up]
Why don’t… H-How does… How does the engine keep the whole thing from just exploding [SFX] everywhere?
Nick: It's made of steel. It's just really strong, so people don't have to be scared of that. They're safe to drive.
Okay…Okay, so my Toyota sounds terrible. [SFX] How come it doesn't sound cooler with the pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop? [SFX] How come that and then another six-cylinder luxury car [SFX], one sounds very pleasant, and the other one sounds like white noise? [SFX]
Nick: It's been designed that way. So, for a car that is just meant to get you around town, it doesn't need to be very powerful, it needs to not annoy your neighbors, so they put a muffler on there that makes it more quiet.
Except for that one person who decides to take the muffler off and annoy everyone. [SFX: junky car]
Nick: Right. That happens. Like, you'll get to a stop light, and you'll hear a car that's just so loud…
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop...
Nick: ...and you look at it and it doesn't look very nice, it's just a really loud car. [SFX: car speeds away]
It's always a not nice one.
Nick: Yeah, and that's just somebody who is equating loud sounds to performance, which is not true.
Okay, so those are our everyday, household type of get around town cars. So, to go to the other extreme, I'm thinking like NASCAR and it sounds like vroom ,vroom [SFX: NASCAR whoosh past]. What's happening there?
Nick: Take the same basic way that your car works and max it all out. NASCAR runs on a V8, and it’s run at 9,000 RPMs constantly, they're going 180 miles an hour, just at the limit. They never slow down. Those cars also don't have a muffler on them. They're really loud and then they go really fast, so that vroom [SFX] sound is just a factor of them going past you so fast and if you were just on the car, it's just a continual loud roar from the engine. [SFX]
So a V8... times 9,000 RPMs, is 72,000 explosions [SFX] per minute.
Nick: Yeah, per one NASCAR.
[SFX: tape stop]
Nick:Hey it’s Nick from the future again. Same deal here, take half that number. So it’s actually 36,000. Thanks!
[SFX: tape start, multiple NASCARs zoom past]
[SFX: multiple NASCARs zoom past]
It's starting to come together for me for the first time ever in my entire life. Now, let's go to another direction, like drag racing. A drag race car doesn't sound like vroom [SFX: NASCAR zoom past].
Nick: Yeah. You're talking about when the cars are getting ready to go?
Definitely when it's starting because then you have “blugblublubgblug” [SFX].
Nick: Yeah.
Then, you see the thing go to red, and it goes “blugblublug!” [SFX]. Like, sometimes you'll see fire coming out of the engine. Are those just bigger explosions?
Nick: I'm glad you brought up drag racing because cars that are purpose built for drag racing are some of the most insane cars in the world. Like a Top Fuel dragster doesn't even run gasoline. It runs nitro methane.
That sounds dangerous.
Nick: It's so dangerous. If you look at a Top Fuel dragster, there are these giant straps that go around the engine and hold it together because sometimes they do just blow up. [SFX]
Are drag race cars like a monument to our human arrogance?
Nick: You could say yes, but you could also say they're a monument to our ingenuity.
So it's like as far as we can go before we literally explode an engine, we're going to do that with a drag race car.
Nick: Yeah.
Okay, so we have normal cars, we have NASCAR, we have drag race - what other types of cars make interesting sounds?
Nick: Do you know what a Formula One car sounds like?
I know a Formula One car looks like a hammerhead shark at the front.
Nick: Okay.
I know this is sad, even as a sound designer, in my mind it sounds like a NASCAR car, but I know that that's wrong and you're disapproving right now. How does it actually sound?
Nick: Well... you're not wrong, I guess. I mean...
[SFX: Formula 1 cars racing by with Dallas’ own interpretation]
Nick: That was perfect ...the reason that it sounds different, but kind of similar, is because it's the same basic principle of explosions [SFX] happening. But, the shape of all of the parts of the engine on the inside will change how the explosion [SFX] sounds. That's what gives each car its voice is that they're all made a certain way and the more you learn about cars, the more you can identify which parts are being used by the sound of the car. In a Formula One or any road race, you're going to hear the car shifting up through the gears and down through the gears a lot more often. [SFX: Formula 1 car shifting gears]
These are different engines inherently. Right?
Nick: Yeah.
How does that affect the engine sounds?
Nick: Formula One now is actually a hybrid, so they have a combination of electric motors, turbochargers, and a V6 engine. [SFX] They kind of sound futuristic in a way. I like the sound of them and that might not be a popular opinion. I think a lot of the people really prefer the older Formula One engines, which were V12s. [SFX] So after these cars are done driving, they'll take them back into the shop and hook it up to a computer and the computer can kind of drive the engine to do all these diagnostics tests [SFX: engine testing]. And also, kind of a party trick that some of the Formula 1 teams were doing for a while was programming in songs into the engine. So the engine would change RPM and hold it there, just like you would do with a musical note.
[SFX: Formula 1 engine playing “God Save the Queen”...]
Oh that’s a real engine? That’s not just the computer simulating it?
Nick: Correct.
[SFX: Formula 1 engine playing “God Save the Queen” continues]
Wow ok so… we're going to veer towards sound design. Obviously, we work together, you're a sound designer. Do you hear cars on television or in films and stuff that just don't match the proper car and how does that make you feel?
Nick: Yes. I definitely hear that. It doesn't make me mad at anybody, but it just makes me feel off-balance and takes me out of the moment of whatever I'm watching because they're sounds that are so familiar to you and when you hear it wrong, it just really sticks out. There is some leeway there. As a sound designer, I know that sometimes you just want a really exciting car sound. That's more important than absolute realism.
[music in]
And cars change every single year, so it's just an ongoing progression of changing sounds, better manufacturing techniques, like things are going to change continuously, so you need someone who specializes in that because there's just this giant wealth of car sounds that need to be captured.
Nick: There are people who specialize in recording cars. So like in the movie Baby Driver, they're hopping in and out of all these different kinds of cars and they recorded that real car to do the stunts, so it sounds both authentic and larger than life.
Maybe I should talk to the person who recorded that car.
Nick: That sounds like a great idea.
Who did that?
Nick: ha I could tell you...but it’s the perfect time to take a little break.
[music out]
[MIDROLL]
[music in]
So to break it down, the sound of a car is basically made by a ton of explosions. [SFX] Albeit small, controlled, and ...”safe” explosions [SFX]. For myself, and the other sound designers at Defacto Sound, it’s critical to understand how car sounds work. And how they are recorded. So with that in mind, I reached out to one of the worlds best automotive recording engineers.
Watson: My name is Waston Wu. I am a sound effects producer and sound effects recording artist.
Watson is something of an ‘Audio Stuntman.’ When you hear an amazing car in a movie you might think that’s how it sounded on the set. But a movie set is a busy place. It’s almost impossible to get a good audio recording of anything, so the cars especially have to be added later.
[music out]
Watson: People come to me for the extreme sounds. Things that are loud [SFX: Jet Plane], too hard to manage. [SFX: WWII Fighter Plane] Such as weapon fire, loud cars [SFX]. It is a very small, small niche. Only a very few of us can control those sounds and record in a pleasant way [SFX: Ford GT500] you can hear them rather than just loud distortions. [SFX: car sounds distorting].
Watson: I had to go through a lot of recording equipment, a lot of different microphones to find what works and what doesn’t work. Just to manage all those really loud, harsh sounds.
[music in]
Watson travels around the world recording sports cars, weapons, roller coasters, and tons of other unique things.
Watson: What I do, it's not glamorous as you would think. It's a lot of sweating. It's a lack of sleep. It's a lot of hurry up and wait, a lot of flying with heavy gear, but I just love to capture great sounds.
But Watson didn’t originally set out to make sound effects.
Watson: Early on, I was involved with music and got good enough that I was offered a scholarship to continue my practice. I found out that writing music was my strong point, so I started writing more music. And then my client asked me, "Can you also do sound effects?" I had already owned gear and I always loved recording so I designed the sounds, I recorded them, edited them. It got me thinking, "I like this". So I just kept going job after job leading up to working on AAA titles, games, working on movies like Baby Driver.
[music out]
[SFX: Baby Driver clip]
Baby Driver was nominated for an Oscar in both sound categories. The main character is always listening to music as he drives, so the director wanted the music and sound effects to be perfectly synchronized together.
[SFX: Baby Driver clip continues]
It’s an awesome movie and I recommend you check it out. Especially if you’re into sound.
[SFX: Baby Driver clip continues]
Watson was hired to record all of the vehicles in the movie so that the sound editing team would have the best materials to work with. A ton of planning goes into a car recording session. It’s important to record the cars performing exactly the same moves that are happening on screen.
Watson: A lot of times I'm given a shot list of what to record and depending on it's a movie or a game, so movie I do according to what you see, it's linear, so I might have to do the same shot again and again. And in a game I have to do basically everything possible.
That includes the usual forwards and backwards, but also particular gears and specific RPMs. Game developers also need some special sounds to program a virtual car that you can drive.
[SFX: Audi R8 engine start]
Watson: What they call a ramp, put the car in gear and drive it smoothly up to the redline [SFX: engine revs peak] and then smoothly break down to a complete stop [SFX: engine stops]. Those are the most important moments in a car recording session.
In a normal car, Watson sits in the passenger seat with all of his recording gear. But many race cars only have 1 seat. And that presents some interesting challenges for recording.
Watson: For NASCAR, we had to record an actual race car and that is a very loud beast so put some of my best microphones on and inside of vehicles while the vehicle was going 9,000 RPM 190 miles per hour on the track. [SFX NASCAR zoom past] Every time the car would come back [SFX] I would have to hit stop, swap memory cards [SFX] and copy the sound files to my laptop. [SFX] And during the review I could then walk over, adjust the levels on my recorder inside a car, hit record [SFX] and let the car go again. [SFX] And we did that all day long until I was satisfied with what I've captured. [SFX: NASCAR zoom past]
Selecting the right microphone is essential. But choosing where to place them makes an even bigger difference. Cars are so large that they sound different depending on where you’re listen from.
Watson: [SFX: Car start] The onboard sounds is what the driver and passenger hears. [SFX] What we hear in front of us typically it's the engine [SFX] and then behind us is the exhaust sounds. [SFX] So I would put microphones in those areas, and right above the driver. [SFX] So that at all times I could dial in and listen to each of those areas.
The engine also has many different areas that contribute to the sound.
Watson: I use the firewall area to get close as possible to the engine block. [SFX] And then sometimes I put the mic into the air intake box so you get those sucking sounds as you floor the gas pedal. [SFX] And sometimes I'll put the mic really close to the super charger if it has one to get that high pitch belt driven sound [SFX] like you hear with a Dodge Hellcat. If you put two of the different brands of microphones for the exhaust, [SFX] they usually will sound different from each other. [SFX] You could use one or the other or a mix of both to enhance the car sound.
All these different perspectives really add a lot to the realism of a video game or movie.
Watson: If you're playing a racing game, you could change the camera angle so that you're looking at a third-person view of the car [SFX] then you're hearing more exhaust sounds from that point of view. And when you go back to the first-person [SFX] as the driver inside a vehicle you might hear a little more of the engine mixed into it.
Watson: Certain games if you win the race you win fictitious money [SFX: Game winning chime] and you could take that money and enhance your engine, enhance your exhaust. And then when you do afterwards you get on the road, [SFX: Cheesy car game upgrade sound] your car then sounds meaner, more like a beast so that's why we had to use a lot of channels, just in case they do modifications in the game.
[music in]
Tires are the only part of a car to actually touch the road. Sound designers can use tire sounds to let you know the car is sliding [SFX] or doing a sweet drift. [SFX] But to get the sound of high performance tires without a roaring engine is tough.
Watson: I hired a guy who has a Tesla, electric car, and this guy is a very professional driver. So I got him to do all kinds of stunt driving just to get the pure tire sounds without the exhaust sounds of a conventional car, the engine sounds leaking into the recording. We had to get burnouts [SFX], skids [SFX], drifting, cornering [SFX].
Watson: The driver is the actor. So the driver has to be very patient, very skilled and willing to do anything to get a great sound.
[music out]
Car recording sessions can actually be dangerous for the sound recordist. Imagine standing close to the side of the road while a sports car drives past you at high speeds [SFX] ...dozens of times [SFX] ...until you get the perfect take. [SFX] You have to place your own safety in the hands of the driver.
Or think about microphone in a hot engine compartment. [SFX: Engine revving] If you place it wrong it could literally melt. [SFX: Sound reduced to static] And there are dozens of other potential hazards.
[music in]
Watson: Let's see, how many microphones have I broken? Anything water related has to be last because when you're done with water, you're done. All the microphones are wet. The wind jammers to block the wind, they're all soaked and potentially your microphones will stop working. Instead of waiting for rain for a wet road, I rented a water pump and pumped water on to the street where I could control the situation. While we were doing the skids I pumped up some water but just enough that we could do slight skids because if you pump too much water onto the road, and you hit the brakes, what happens? You hydroplane, [SFX] which is not good, you're out of control and that's it, this session is over. It's something you'll learn from past experience and talking to people who do stunts. Control the situation.
[music out]
Watson has recorded literally hundreds of cars all around the world. And he makes safety a priority in every recording session. So these sessions happen on race tracks and closed roads away from traffic, but he also has a special recording location all to himself.
Watson: Not far from where I live is what I call my top secret road. I've recorded over 200 cars there. All kinds. Motorcycle, muscle cars, Ferrari's, Bentley. You have smooth asphalt, not so great roads, roads with reflectors to go over, grass, dirt, a little bit of gravel. It's in the middle of nowhere. The longest stretch of road, it's like two miles long. And I like how wide it is so that you could see if anything's coming towards you or not. So it's very safe.
Still, sometimes audio recording does draw some extra attention.
Watson: I'm probably going to get myself in trouble. I've actually met a few very kind law enforcement officers and while we're recording we're just doing simple stuff, maybe driving 20 miles per hour and they ask, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, I'm doing a recording session of this car." And I show them my equipment and they say, "Very good, carry on." And so I just keep going.
Watson: I was recording ambient sounds in Sarasota [SFX: City sounds] some years ago and apparently somebody called on me and said there was a suspicious looking guy with equipment. I knew the look when they were walking towards me and I said, "Well, hello officer. I'm recording sounds of this place." He says, "What? What are you doing?" I said, "I'm recording sounds. I'm recording sounds of the ambience of what it sounds like in this downtown area." So, I show him my equipment and we had a nice chat. And he said, "Yeah, somebody called and we had to check it out." I said, "Good, good. If I saw me I would check me out, too.”
[music in]
The sound of an internal combustion engine has defined a century of automotive history. But race cars retire, new cars come out, and old technologies go away. How we define the sound of a car now will eventually change. Probably sooner than we think. This is a reminder that sound comes and goes without us thinking about it. And zooming out beyond cars, it’s important for us to capture the sound of everything. Sound is incredibly temporary. It’s created, then it’s gone. But with a recording, we can hold on to that history forever.
Watson: I wish I had a recording of my mother when she was alive a long time ago. I remember what she said but I can't recall how she sounded like? What if you had a recording of your grandmother or your grandfather or their parents? If you had something, not just video, but if you have video with sound it becomes very personal. I think sound is documenting what has happened in the past. It’s almost like being a historian.
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound incredible. Check out some of our car sound design at defactosound.com.
This episode was written and produced by Nick Spradlin and me, Dallas Taylor with help from Sam Schneble. It was edited, sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.
An enormous thanks to Watson Wu. Be sure to check out his website watsonwu.com. Also, a huge thanks to our own Nick Spradlin for writing, producing, editing, sound designing and mixing this episode.
The music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. Check them out at Musicbed.com.
Special thanks to Cary Webb from Facebook and Matt Gore from Twitter for helping to name this episode. If you’d like to help name episodes, and keep in touch with me between episodes, go follow our Facebook and Twitter pages. You can find those at facebook.com/20korg and twitter.com/20korg. And, you can always write us by email, at hi at 20k d org.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
