My stock exhaust note with sports catalyst is for me good enough for most of the driving, its subtile enough and there is no drone whatsoever which I would like to retain. With the roof down roof down it is also loud enough and gives a good experience, and I wouldn't want to make the car any louder from the outside, its already good enough for me.

However I wouldn’t mind for now and then to experience more of the sounds inside, and the one way I can see would be to make use of cars speaker system.

Haven’t thought it thru, but I think it would be great if you could record on 1 or some places the lower tones , and have that signal amplify and sounded over the normal speaker system for example.

My electronica skills would only allow me to make something very rudimentary, and am not even sure what I can achieve, so it would be great if someone with audio skills and/or electronica skills could participate in making something.

Maybe something like this already exists, haven’t searched yet, so if anyone knows something, or would be willing to participate to make something that would be great

 

I have actually planned to do something like this myself. A colleague of mine is doing exactly this for BMW. They actually also use microphones inside the engine compartment, to actively cancel out engine sounds inside the coupe in "silent mode".

I am also a software engineer, so I planned to handle it by installing a credit-card sized computer, like the Raspberry Pi, hook it up to the stock GPS display and audio system, then connect it to the ODB port with the help of an ELM adapter.

By connecting to the ODB port, I can extract required controller information. Using this information, I can then build a little audio sampler software, which controls pitch and level from the ODB information about RPM, torque and throttle. RPM would control the pitch, torque/throttle would control the level and harmonics of various samples.

I have no issues with writing the software, since I do music sampler software for a living. I would still need some more knowledge about the hardware connections required.

Perhaps you're interested in some collaboration?

 

Sounds great, although I would like to have the odbii port free, I like the fact that you can control the sound better, so count me in. What I also like is that with your solution you can actually use different style of sounds, so way more sophisticated as I had in mind ;-)

 

You might consider something other than a Raspberry Pi that has a sound card built in. That would allow you to handle line level input/output. Or, you could stream over bluetooth just like a music file. See mp3car.com

Do you know where there might be source code for gdi+ or directdraw dials and gauges in c/c++?

 

There are commerically available "Y" cables for the DLC connection. That is how some people reverse engineer the CAN bus using ELM327 adapters. One adapter is set to read at all times, and the other adapter is used to inject commands.

They go for under $20.

 

Thanks, 20$ is cheap enough add to the bunch.

I actually already have a Y cable (borough though) to crack the code for the ECU programming.

 

The Pi actually has a 3.5mm output jack, the drivers for its chip are in beta stage. I haven't received my Pi's yet however, so how it works in practice remains to be seen. A simple USB sound card could also be used, since the Model B has an integrated USB hub. I would however want to minimize peripheral components, to keep the cost down - so more Jag owners could install it without too much of a financial hit.

Regarding sources for dials and gauges, I have no idea. It is not very complex graphics programming however, the actual gauges (with some spiffy graphics) should be done in an hour or two. I plan to do graphics using Qt.

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