🙋♂️ Please take this the right way. I'm doing my best to answer your question on why noise matters.
Before I could drive, or knew anything about cars, I got a ride from an older guys muscle car. The ground shook, WHILE IDLING. At 16, I could go to the drags to watch. The best time was at night. You rushed to the rails where you could FEEL the earth shake and watch the flames shooting from the open headers. When I got older, that phase passed and I went to a US F1 Grand Prix. 🤯I thought those old Muscle cars were loud?
There is NOTHING like the sound of a F1 car in full song. You can't listen to it on a TV, the speakers NEVER do it justice. Its something you have to listen to live, at the rail. They just SCREAMED.
What does it matter?
If you read through this forum, you will find people who buy the PSE going back to 2014. I asked myself, why? Back in the day, a free flowing exhaust added HP, hence open headers, glass packs, etc. With turbos, that's not clear. AFAIK, the need some back pressure. I doubt you can find any Porsche literature telling you PSE adds a single HP. And yet ... I bet the majority get it standard or buy it as option. Why? Why would ANYONE drop several thousands of dollars on an options that adds NO HP? So curious. And that is across the other pcar models too. Could it be THEY WANT IT LOUD?
Read the mods section. Why do people throw away a perfectly good PSE to buy aftermarket exhausts? How does that make sense? Could it be ... to make it LOUDER?
Why do so many here "LOVE"
the startup sound of a cold Macan V6 and wish it would sound like that all the time
Why does Porsche consider sound so important? Yes Porsche. Read
What a sound. The new Porsche 911 Carrera not only offers driving pleasure and performance, but a wonderful soundtrack as well. The sound engineers in Weissach have done a superb job – as our audition of the 911 orchestra reveals.
www.classicdriver.com
The short version is that the design team made SURE the 911 sounded good, coming off the 997.
"For four long years an engineering team ... head of ... acoustics in Weissach, has researched, perfected and tweaked to make the new Porsche Carrera an auditory treat. Because when exacting Porsche drivers turn up the loud pedal, they expect special Porsche music ..."
This is when the introduced the sound symposer to allow intake noises into the cabin and then followed up introducing it into the Boxster/Cayman GTS cars. They spend FOUR YEARS in the design stage to make sure the car "sounded good?" WHY?
"Sound is especially important in sports cars since they should be giving us entertainment" Some call the Macans the "sportscar" of SUVs.
About very time I've taken my NA 911 out, it went to the redline. The radio is never on, because the "entertainment" is the sound.
there is NOTHING like the wail of a NA flat 6.
I'll leave this with a quote from one of our members from eight years ago. I've never read anything written better than this way so he gets the credit . Its about "emotion".
Guess what an option is for the EV Macan? Yup, a butt cheek massager. Includes five different massages for a mere $1300.
I recently bought a new dishwasher. Older ones were pretty noisy. That could be annoying in a house. It had like three options at best? The new one is so quiet, they had to put a light shining to the floor to let you know its on so you don't accidentally open it and has so many options, the bury them all in an app.
I'm not touching the shifting thing. If you can't understand the feeling of rowing your own gears on the twisties. Then there is no discussion to be had. Call me a luddite, I'm good with that.
Some call EVs smartphones on wheels. I view SUVs as appliances. Making them electric makes its worse. I EXPECT my appliances to be quiet. I EXPECT my appliances to not provide a THRILL. I'm good with that because they serve a purpose. That is their job, to perform their function and the quieter and most unobtrusively as possible. Make a rocket ship, send it to Mars. Be silent. Sounds fine to me. So I'm good with what their purpose in life is.
But they will never have soul.
This video shows sound and rowing the gears. SOUND UP. Try to watch on a home theater system, not a computer, certainly not a mobile device, and still it will NEVER be the same as listening to a V12 Ferrari, never. Its something one either gets or not. There are no right or wrong answers.
