Origin of Clarity Drive/Reverse tone?

4300 Views 18 Replies 10 Participants Last post by [email protected], Dec 2, 2021

MBossK4891

Discussion Starter · Sep 25, 2021

I'm just wondering if anybody knows how Honda came up with the Clarity's distinctive "cyber angel" (as I like to call it) tone when the vehicle is in reverse and creeping in drive. Did they just record a Casio keyboard synth tone or something? I would love to see a "making of" video if such a thing existed!

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fotomoto

· #2 · Sep 25, 2021

I'd bet that just like big Pharma goes thru extensive testing and research to come up with new, patent-free names for every new drug/product roll out, auto manufacturers need to do the same for all beeps, boops, and any other sound effect. NVH(Noise, vibration, harshness) is big thing in the auto world so there's lots of good science already out there; from what's effective at certain db's levels to which hz ranges are better to good ol' customer feedback surveys.

I prefer the Clarity's angel sounding "ahhh" that's mixed with an electrical "whir" combination more than our Prius Prime which, for lack of a better description, sounds cheap.

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Moonmack

· #3 · Sep 26, 2021

I’m guessing that the creepy angel choir as you enter a dark forest sound is partly because it’s independent of speed. The angel choir pitch doesn’t need to be higher or lower as you drive faster or slower.

My kids want to change the sound. Any idea how to do it? My son wants to use a Star Wars speeder sound. My daughter wants to use horse hoof beats. I thought that was brilliant

Anyways, now they’ve taken to imitating the sound. When we are driving slow there are two addition choir members from the back seat in the creepy angel choir as you’re about to drive into the woods on a dark and stormy night …

Any idea how to turn off the sound? I understand the Canadian model used to have a noise off button that reset every time the car turned off, but it looks like that was “improved” in the 2020 model and now I can’t turn it off at all … I noticed I can still turn it off when reversing from the settings but I’m reluctant to do that in case I nearly drive over a pedestrian in a parking lot or something.

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ClarityDave

· #4 · Sep 26, 2021

Moonmack said:
I’m guessing that the creepy angel choir as you enter a dark forest sound is partly because it’s independent of speed. The angel choir pitch doesn’t need to be higher or lower as you drive faster or slower.

My kids want to change the sound. Any idea how to do it? My son wants to use a Star Wars speeder sound. My daughter wants to use horse hoof beats. I thought that was brilliant

Anyways, now they’ve taken to imitating the sound. When we are driving slow there are two addition choir members from the back seat in the creepy angel choir as you’re about to drive into the woods on a dark and stormy night …

Any idea how to turn off the sound? I understand the Canadian model used to have a noise off button that reset every time the car turned off, but it looks like that was “improved” in the 2020 model and now I can’t turn it off at all … I noticed I can still turn it off when reversing from the settings but I’m reluctant to do that in case I nearly drive over a pedestrian in a parking lot or something.

Someone posted here about it not too long ago. It’s basically an 8-ohm speaker that is up under the front driver side of the car. There are only two wires going to it and if you disconnect either or both it should disable it. However, the car is apparently smart enough to know it’s disconnected and sets an error code that appears on the display. So it appears that if you disconnect it you need to put an 8-ohm load on it so that it fakes the car into thinking it’s still hooked up.

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leemell

· #5 · Sep 27, 2021

ClarityDave said:
Someone posted here about it not too long ago. It’s basically an 8-ohm speaker that is up under the front driver side of the car. There are only two wires going to it and if you disconnect either or both it should disable it. However, the car is apparently smart enough to know it’s disconnected and sets an error code that appears on the display. So it appears that if you disconnect it you need to put an 8-ohm load on it so that it fakes the car into thinking it’s still hooked up.

8 Ohm resister ought to do.

EV Nerd

· #6 · Sep 28, 2021

leemell said:
8 Ohm resister ought to do.

Agreed, but you'll need to be careful with the power rating. I have no idea what the output power of the audio amp looks like. If the speaker has any visible part numbers on it, looking up it's specs may give some guidance. The shop manual might have some info, too.

ClarityDave

· #7 · Sep 29, 2021

EV Nerd said:
Agreed, but you'll need to be careful with the power rating. I have no idea what the output power of the audio amp looks like. If the speaker has any visible part numbers on it, looking up it's specs may give some guidance. The shop manual might have some info, too.

Lots of possibilities. If you’re like me and you have a bunch of 1/4-watt resistors lying around you could, for instance, tie four 33-ohm resistors in parallel to make the equivalent of an 8-ohm 1-watt resistor. Or you could just buy a 8-ohm 5-watt resistor from Digi-Key. I’m sure 5-watts would be plenty. You could also just tear a voice coil out of an old speaker and just use that.

EV Nerd

· #8 · Sep 29, 2021

ClarityDave said:
Lots of possibilities. If you’re like me and you have a bunch of 1/4-watt resistors lying around you could, for instance, tie four 33-ohm resistors in parallel to make the equivalent of an 8-ohm 1-watt resistor. Or you could just buy a 8-ohm 5-watt resistor from Digi-Key. I’m sure 5-watts would be plenty. You could also just tear a voice coil out of an old speaker and just use that.

Good suggestions. I'm betting, that while there's probably a statistical overabundance of engineers here (I'm an EE), most posters won't have 1/4W resistors lying around (I do). I have several devices around home that have bundles of 1/4W resistors in them.

An 8Ω 5W wirewound from Digikey would likely be the ticket. I'd hate paying their prices, though. Just on principal. Back in the day, I bought components at 10,000 piece quantities, so I got a feel for what they should cost, compared to one-piece pricing like at Radio Shack, Digikey, or (near me) Marvac.

ClarityDave

· #9 · Sep 29, 2021

EV Nerd said:
Good suggestions. I'm betting, that while there's probably a statistical overabundance of engineers here (I'm an EE), most posters won't have 1/4W resistors lying around (I do). I have several devices around home that have bundles of 1/4W resistors in them.

An 8Ω 5W wirewound from Digikey would likely be the ticket. I'd hate paying their prices, though. Just on principal. Back in the day, I bought components at 10,000 piece quantities, so I got a feel for what they should cost, compared to one-piece pricing like at Radio Shack, Digikey, or (near me) Marvac.

I suppose you could just mash a bunch of insulation in around the voice coil/cone of the OEM speaker and just go with that too.

MBossK4891

Discussion Starter · #10 · Oct 3, 2021

Out of curiosity, are you guys just speculating on how to nix the tone as a technical puzzle, or do a lot of owners actually not like it and want to get rid of it? Personally, I think it sounds cool and always seems to turn heads, aside from its practical use of warning pedestrians not to get run over.

Reactions: 2

2002

· #11 · Oct 3, 2021

MBossK4891 said:
Out of curiosity, are you guys just speculating on how to nix the tone as a technical puzzle, or do a lot of owners actually not like it and want to get rid of it? Personally, I think it sounds cool and always seems to turn heads, aside from its practical use of warning pedestrians not to get run over.

One of the complaints has been that non-electric cars can be equally quiet, for example in a parking lot while slowing down. As far as we know there were no studies done showing the danger of electric cars compared to other cars, just someone got an idea that something had to be done and added a new requirement onto EV's. Sort of like they implemented a rule that cars using regenerative braking have to flash their brake lights at certain levels of deceleration, which is fine but they didn't implement the same requirement on manual transmission cars when a driver downshifts to brake. Or the EV tax to make up for lost gas tax revenue, okay that makes sense but why didn't they implement that as a sliding scale on all cars based on mpg rating and vehicle weight.

Reactions: 1

Moonmack

· #12 · Oct 4, 2021

MBossK4891 said:
Out of curiosity, are you guys just speculating on how to nix the tone as a technical puzzle, or do a lot of owners actually not like it and want to get rid of it? Personally, I think it sounds cool and always seems to turn heads, aside from its practical use of warning pedestrians not to get run over.

I’ve wanted to turn off the noise on occasion. Sometimes when I leave in the morning I want to be extra quiet to not wake up my children. I don’t know if the noise is loud enough for that, but it seems to echo off the wall quite loudly.

The other time was when driving through a national park and a bison seemed to be very interested in my car. That’s neat at first, but it started following me down the road until there was nowhere to drive. It seemed to be following the noise as it left the other cars alone. The Clarity is not exactly a big car compared to a bison. My kids started praying out loud in the back seat

. We ended up driving around it and it let us go.

So it would be nice to be more silent when driving slowly through some parts of national parks, animal preserves, etc..

I mostly just leave the tone on and ignore it. The weird thing is I read it used to be able to be turned off in the Canadian model before the 2020 year.

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rgmomo

· #13 · Oct 4, 2021

Moonmack said:
I’m guessing that the creepy angel choir as you enter a dark forest sound is partly because it’s independent of speed. The angel choir pitch doesn’t need to be higher or lower as you drive faster or slower.

My kids want to change the sound. Any idea how to do it? My son wants to use a Star Wars speeder sound. My daughter wants to use horse hoof beats. I thought that was brilliant

Anyways, now they’ve taken to imitating the sound. When we are driving slow there are two addition choir members from the back seat in the creepy angel choir as you’re about to drive into the woods on a dark and stormy night …

Any idea how to turn off the sound? I understand the Canadian model used to have a noise off button that reset every time the car turned off, but it looks like that was “improved” in the 2020 model and now I can’t turn it off at all … I noticed I can still turn it off when reversing from the settings but I’m reluctant to do that in case I nearly drive over a pedestrian in a parking lot or something.

The noise is there because of federal rules. If the car goes under 20 mph it must emit a noise so that blind people can hear it. It is a recent rule, so not all cars emit that sound. I would not remove it. It may get owners in trouble.

Reactions: 1

Moonmack

· #14 · Oct 4, 2021

rgmomo said:
The noise is there because of federal rules. If the car goes under 20 mph it must emit a noise so that blind people can hear it. It is a recent rule, so not all cars emit that sound. I would not remove it. It may get owners in trouble.

Thanks for the thought. I understand the federal rule is a United States rule, but they've applied it to the Canadian models too.

I'm also thinking that Honda picked the creepy angel choir sound. I wouldn't expect the federal rule to specify what the sound should be, but I don't actually know. Maybe it can be any sound that meets certain parameters or something like that.

ClarityDave

· #15 · Oct 5, 2021

Moonmack said:
Thanks for the thought. I understand the federal rule is a United States rule, but they've applied it to the Canadian models too.

I'm also thinking that Honda picked the creepy angel choir sound. I wouldn't expect the federal rule to specify what the sound should be, but I don't actually know. Maybe it can be any sound that meets certain parameters or something like that.

That may be so. But keep in mind that federal ‘rules’ are generally applicable to interstate commerce. So the manufacturer, Honda, had to put the noisemakers on its cars destined for the US because the US government controls businesses that operate among the states. It does not necessarily control, however, the way in which a car is operated within a state. So it may be a law that says manufacturers must put noisemakers on cars but there may not be a law that says the noisemaker is required in your state.

4sallypat

· #16 · Oct 5, 2021

rgmomo said:
The noise is there because of federal rules. If the car goes under 20 mph it must emit a noise so that blind people can hear it. It is a recent rule, so not all cars emit that sound. I would not remove it. It may get owners in trouble.

Correct, altering or disconnecting the low speed speaker may get you into trouble if you should have a pedestrian or cyclist run into your vehicle at low speeds.
It's like disabling a safety feature of the vehicle that was intended for safety of all....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_sounds

I am currently on the list of Ford F150 Lightning EV and the low speed pedestrian warning speaker is talked about at length:
Pedestrian Alert System - Anyone else annoyed by it?

[email protected]

· #17 · Nov 19, 2021

Tech Info on the Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Control Unit

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EV Nerd

· #18 · Nov 19, 2021

[email protected] said:
Tech Info on the Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Control Unit View attachment 850
View attachment 851
View attachment 852

Great info! Thanks! Is this the kind of info one can get from a one-day subscription to the technical manuals?

In the past, I've always bought a set of shop manuals for every car I own. I found it to be fun to sit down and peruse them at my leisure. All kinds of interesting things are in them. Yes, a complete set was quite pricey. Usually a few hundred dollars, but worth it. Have you ever seen an enthusiast's eyes light up when you mention "Oh, by the way, the purchase of the vehicle includes all official shop manuals"? The shop manuals on a twenty-plus year-old car are priceless.

The subscription model adopted these days sucks.

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[email protected]

· #19 · Dec 2, 2021

Canada AVAS

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- Diagram

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