Cars and wind noise

[TheBean]

why dont cars use ANC with their audio system? this seems really obvious but I dont think even luxury cars do this. 

 

this would make driving so much more comfortable and nicer. it will also make hearing horns or other important road sounds easier to hear right?

if the ANC only blocks the road and wind noise while amplifying sounds like bike bells or horns or a collision sound, you could make the cars safer. 

 

why is this not implemented?

 

EDIT: if not ANC, why not just a basic NC for the wind/road because that is always the same and predictable

Edited September 10, 2019 by Saksham

[nick name]

What is ANC?

[TheBean]

Just now, nick name said:

What is ANC?

active noise cancellation 

[Gegger]

Just now, nick name said:

What is ANC?

i'm guessing activenoise cancelling

[nick name]

I thought that might be it.  

 

 

[PlayStation 2]

A number of nicer cars actually do use a form of active noise cancelling to help block out outside noise in general. That being said, wind noise generally isn't a huge issue on most modern cars, so there's that.

[Olaf6541]

From a manufacturers point of view its extra costs to implement it and theres no financial benefit...

Also people dont want to drive around with headphones on. (not sure how well NC works without headphones)

As for luxury cars: if you buy a V8/V12 youre not gonna drive with NC, engine noise is usually a feature on those cars.

6 hours ago, Saksham said:

that is always the same and predictable

Wind noise is created when air become turbulent instead of smooth laminar flow, so its far from predictable...

It takes alot of effort to implement NC in something like a car so manufacturers just dont wanna spend their R&D on it...

[Scheer]

I think it is because it isn't necessary, I haven't noticed normal road or wind noise in my recent vehicles, so I don't really see the point. You can hear 50+ MPH winds, but that is a good thing to warn you a gust might push you around at any moment. Honestly, its kind of weird how quiet new vehicles are, I miss road noise lol.

 

One downside I could see is not noticing mechanical issues because they would get cancelled out. Say a strut or bushing starts clunking and just don't hear it, you'd pry still feel it tho I guess...

[WindirBear]

ive once had some cheap headphones have noise cancellation, and it sucked. does that stuff really even work?

[TheBean]

1 hour ago, WindirBear said:

ive once had some cheap headphones have noise cancellation, and it sucked. does that stuff really even work?

key word there is cheap....

cheap ones dont implement it properly. 

[PlayStation 2]

4 hours ago, Saksham said:

key word there is cheap....

cheap ones dont implement it properly. 

For the most part, wind noise isn’t an issue even in most cheap American cars. The big worry would be tire and road noise, which is an issue on car with small and thin tires, like the Mitsubishi Mirage and the Honda Fit. Even still, most modern cars have been able to efficiently engineer out those issues to a decent respect. It only tends to be an issue in big ass file cabinets masquerading as cars, like a G-wagen or an old Cherokee, but most modern cars are generally good about wind noise.

[The1Dickens]

On 9/10/2019 at 2:57 AM, Olaf6541 said:

As for luxury cars: if you buy a V8/V12 youre not gonna drive with NC, engine noise is usually a feature on those cars.

Actually, since a lot of new cars are so quiet from the outside, the engine noises you hear are not actually the engine (entirely) and coming through your speakers. Here, here, and here.

 

So, in a way,

On 9/9/2019 at 7:57 PM, Saksham said:

why dont cars use ANC with their audio system?

They pretty much do, just not in the way you'd think.

 

I thought that was an interesting thing when I found out about it.

[dalekphalm]

Most modern cars - and this is typically even more true with luxury brands - have well insulated cabins that already passively block noise from the outside. Active noise cancellation is typically not required.

 

Even in my very much lower end car, a VW Jetta, cabin wind noise is very minimal when driving at speed. My fiancee's Camry has bad wind noise at highway speeds, but that's because of an accident she was in, and the door frame was bent - therefore the door seal is no longer properly sealing, and is letting in a bunch of noise. But before the accident, her car was pretty quiet inside too.

 

A modern luxury car is incredibly quiet inside.

 

The simple answer is ANC is just not needed.

[Pixel5]

the reason for this is pretty simple, it wont work well as you can only use ANC for one position in the car and also you want to hear the outside noises in order to know whats going on around you.

[straight_stewie]

Another reason cars won't do ANC is because it hurts the sound quality of the sound system, something which consumers are willing to pay thousands of extra dollars for.

tl;dr:
For the same reason that audiophile grade headphones don't offer active noise cancellation as a feature.

Longer Explanation:
Imagine, you have ANC, so the speakers in the car have to put out an inverted signal from various microphones outside the car and in the engine bay. Now, you also expect high quality musical reproductions to come out of the speakers at the same time. Speakers can only do so much at once before distortion becomes a problem. This is the exact reason why high quality sound systems have different speakers for different frequency ranges: Asking speakers to do too much at once significantly reduces reproduction quality: Just turn the bass up in a car with a subwoofer, and compare it to turning the bass all the way up in a car without a subwoofer.

Now, to add to that, the wind noise you are asking them to block is literally white noise. So now you're adding an inverted white noise backing to every song that they play. But because the net effect would be a cancellation of sound, the audio actually sounds like you're using inverted white noise as a compressor control, which would mean that the "volume" (in a way) of the music changes in tune with the inverted white noise, which would actually be quite noticeable to the listener if the noise cancellation is any good.