Car Engine Synthesis Experiment

The other night i started an experiment to synthesize a car engine in phase plant. I know this has been done before but i wanted to try and build it up from first principles, trying to synthesize the real physics from reading about how engines worked.

Essentially explosions in each cylinder (your average car has 4) and then the sound travels along a pipe and into a muffler and out the exhausts.

So the first attempts were using just noise, distortion, wave shaping, filters, delays.

I then gave in and watched a couple of you tube videos and watched this one:

This convinced me to add in a square wave to my patch and pretty much that’s what i have on track 1. I don’t own convolve like he uses in the video, so i used the free convolution reverb in the melda bundle. It’s not quite as functional as convolve but i am happy enough with the tone i achieved.
On track 2 i have done a version of this youtube tutorial and it just helps add more tonality to the sound.
It’s a fun little experiment which i’m gonna keep on messing about with from time to time. I may try and start emulating specific car engines and i think the main magic is getting IRs from real exhaust systems. So perhaps a trip to my friendly junkyard might be on the cards too.
I hope you guys find this as cool as i did. My wife was literally like “meh sounds like a car… so what?” and i was like “it’s just synthesis though!”