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Abarth continues to play with its legendary sound on the New 500e thanks to the Sound Generator feature, crafted by a team and studio within Stellantis. The Sound System Generator makes the Abarth 500e into an irreverent and playful electric hot hatch with the roar of a combustion engine directly linked with the driving and speed dynamic experience. This makes the 500e unique in its segment, on par with high segment cars while paying homage to its 75 year long racing engine heritage.
Abarth has continued to amaze and stir up the emotions of all Abarth fans across the world with the New Abarth 500e and its unique Sound Generator feature. The new fully-electric addition to the Scorpion range integrates an exclusive Sound System developed by a dedicated sound engineering team, in collaboration with Sound Design Studios. The sound design, its development, and its integration into the car were carried out at the Stellantis' Italian NVH (Noise Vibration and Harshness) Department, the same entity that validated the sound of the historic Abarth exhaust system, the Record Monza.
The project took around two years, with approximately 6 months of continuous work. Over 6,000 hours were spent analyzing and crafting the perfect sound for each phase of the driving experience by a team of several people involved in the project. The Technical Manager handled the car area and focused on coordinating the various stakeholders. Additionally, NVH Specialists dealt with sound enhancement, concentrating on both the creative and technological part of the sound creation process. They worked on the sound and demo development and as well as on the different steps of sound looping, from software development to creating the sound itself.
Some of the sound tests and studies were performed in a semi-anechoic chamber – a room specifically designed to have extremely low noise levels inside, and a high degree of acoustic insulation from the exterior - which allowed them to make accurate and reliable noise measurements. Thanks to the reflecting floor, it is possible to recreate an acoustically reflecting surface, just like a road. Specific features make the semi-anechoic chamber perfectly quiet, thus allowing the sound specialists to identify the noise from anything in the surroundings.
To output a perfect sound that was as close as possible to the original and other new Abarth vehicles, the current sound of the Abarth petrol engine was recorded over all the different phases of the driving experience—acceleration, deceleration, braking, fast cornering, and many more. Furthermore, specific sound calibrations were carried out. These recordings were then carefully analyzed through dedicated tools and processes to extract all the frequencies that were distinctive to Abarth, in essence the sound's DNA, in order to create a new tone in a virtual matrix that can then be enriched by additional sounds.
The matrix was tested offline in the studio and on a static car through various iterations and configurations to achieve a perfect auditory blend. Specifically, thanks to software, the matrix adapts the many components of the recorded sound to achieve the most immersive result for the driver. Additional sounds were layered onto the matrix to blend the historic sound of Abarth to the feeling of the future found within the New Abarth 500e.
A vital point was to balance the Sound Generator carefully to provide the driver with a pleasant driving experience even at high speeds, respecting all constraints for noise pollution and ensuring a realistic sound. In fact, the intensity of the Sound Generator System is proportional to the speed at which the car is being driven, and at different speeds the sound is processed differently through the exterior rear speaker. It ranges from IDLE, where the engine at its lowest power and the sound generator replicates the noise form the Record Monza exhaust at idling speed, to SIGNATURE, which changes based on the vehicle's speed, maintaining the timbre typical of the Abarth with the internal combustion engine. In short, SIGNATURE contains all the information that gets given to the amplifier - from idle to progressive speed, ignition, and shutdown.
The new Abarth 500e is able to offer every feature of a luxury car in just 3.6 meters without giving up on the irreverence that comes inherent in the DNA of the Brand. Thanks to the Sound Generator, it is the only Hot Hatch capable of evoking the sound of the historic Abarth internal combustion engine, and providing the acoustic power of a sporty ICE engine that reaches the limits allowed by homologation regulations.
The Abarth ‘roar' of the Sound Generator can be turned on-off by the driver when the car is stopped via the cluster settings.
