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Any similarities between F1 and audio?

manisandher

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In a recent interview (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/61374774), Toto Wolff said this of the current Mercedes W13:

"It is a car that is super-difficult to drive and on the edge of dipping in and out of the performance window - more out than in. And dissecting the data with a scalpel is just a painful process because it takes very long and the data sometimes doesn't show us what the drivers tell us.

"They have their hands full with a car that is not comfortable or nice or predictable to drive but the data doesn't show these big swings.

"We haven't had this situation before in any of the years that it didn't correlate what we see on the screens with what the driver feels and that is making it even more difficult."


Are there any similarities with audio here? Can we describe everything we hear with our current measurements? If we hear something as being 'off' but the measurements show nothing untoward, do we go with the measurements or with what we hear?

Interested in people's thoughts...
 

Jimbob54

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I suspect most comments have already been raised here https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...are-measurements-everything-or-nothing.29062/

Or one of the member generated threads on the same lines.

For my 2p if there is something "off" in listening that measurements don't show, it's either a fault in my unit (not the measured one) or some in compatability with it in my chain. Or there is a chance that the device has some wonky attribute that measurements don't flag /test for (see the smsl m500 strange harmonic thread).

The problem with the "trust your ears" line of thinking is it only really works if you then go on to investigate your unit by.... Measuring. Which I am sure is what the f1 guys try and do lots of if driver feedback doesn't correlate.
 

Frgirard

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In a recent interview (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/61374774), Toto Wolff said this of the current Mercedes W13:

"It is a car that is super-difficult to drive and on the edge of dipping in and out of the performance window - more out than in. And dissecting the data with a scalpel is just a painful process because it takes very long and the data sometimes doesn't show us what the drivers tell us.

"They have their hands full with a car that is not comfortable or nice or predictable to drive but the data doesn't show these big swings.

"We haven't had this situation before in any of the years that it didn't correlate what we see on the screens with what the driver feels and that is making it even more difficult."


Are there any similarities with audio here? Can we describe everything we hear with our current measurements? If we hear something as being 'off' but the measurements show nothing untoward, do we go with the measurements or with what we hear?

Interested in people's thoughts...
Take your speakers on a road and try do drive them.

:facepalm:


A macho parallel
 

Katji

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Can we describe everything we hear with our current measurements?
No and Yes.
No, neuropsychology measurements might be helpful. Might try reading about that instead of sucking in any more influence of audiophiles.
Language is also a problem. i.e., it is subjective, not precise, not precisely defined like electrical and acoustic measures.
The F1 guy...let's just say he needs to develop better understanding of what is happening. He needs to talk to the engineers about the sensors and what the sensors are measuring, and how the analysis is done. Which is an ongoing thing anyway, a work in progress.
 
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Katji

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NB: The senses are limited and inaccurate. That is not an opinion.
 

Katji

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Data analysis has advanced a lot in the last 10-12 years. ...Probably more than anything else.
 

alex-z

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As an avid F1 fan, the similarities are less than you may think.

For one, there are new aerodynamic regulations this year. The teams have data, just not the knowledge to make good models with it. With audio, we mostly have good models, and are currently in the era of fine tuning. The previous year F1 regulations were simply minor alterations from 2020, even going back to 2017 the cars were similar, so teams had excellent models to work with.

Additionally, F1 teams have a cap on their wind tunnel time, CFD compute resources, and even overall budget now. So they can't investigate every avenue of performance even if they wanted. If some audio designer wants to sink 10 million dollars and 5000 hours into building the perfect speaker, they can.

Also, there is no governing body for audio like the FIA does to Formula 1. Certain innovations which make the sport "unfair" like tuned mass dampers, active suspension, and flexible wings could make the cars 10 seconds a lap faster. In audio, anything which is better is fair game.

Maybe the closest fair comparison is the aerodynamic decisions of Red Bull vs Ferrari with narrow vs wide directivity speakers. Both are valid approaches, and hold advantages in certain areas.
 

anmpr1

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An erstwhile similarity: what you get when you cross this with that:

mcl36-collage-001.jpg
tag.jpg


tm.jpg
 

Frank Dernie

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It is 40 years since we last had ground effect cars in F1 and only Rory Byrne, retained by Ferrari as a consultant, and to a junior extent, Adrian Newey of Red Bull who was just starting out have any experience of it.

Back then there was a plausible explanation for the instability one could have which were taken by many as the explanation but actually was only part of the story - which is why not everybody solved it.

The aero R&D is either done in a wind tunnel with a model held at various ride heights and yaw angles sometimes with steer, depending on the wind tunnel, or using CFD which, up to the point I retired, was incapable of predicting unsteady flow and afaik still can’t. Wheel wakes are unsteady and dominate the flow round an open wheeled car.
Accurate enough CFD models are huge and with the limit in the rules on how much can be done testing at as many height/roll/steer combinations as would be needed for a (IMHO) good enough overall set of data is impossible.

So the inexperienced people didn’t predict the instability and the explanation still being rolled out is not the only problem to be solved. The information I have is that things I know to give instability are being done by some teams who have used static thinking for a dynamic situation - a common fault in engineers IME.

On top of this for decades people have judged the aero difference between cars by looking at the upper bodywork whereas with these cars it has gone back to unseen details under the car - so ”revolutionary” bodywork differences will be having second order effects and this may deflect the less experienced away from the real areas for study. People see the big difference in appearance of the top body between the poor performing Mercedes and the championship leading Ferrari as a big reason for the performance difference but this is very unlikely IMO.

One senior engineer from one of the teams was at a barbecue I was at a few days ago. I have known him since he was a teenager and he is a good engineer but the targets they had given themselves for this years car showed a lack of appreciation for dynamic stability.

I am too old to go back into it now but the problem always was more complex than was made public, and this will always be the case since no company in its right mind makes R&D data available publicly thereby giving free R&D to their competitors.

I watch with interest to see how long it is and which teams resolve their stability problems first. After all when the last big rule change happened, for 2009, the importance of a certain detail in the front wing was completely missed by both Adrian Newey and McLaren, both of whom had developed race winning cars to the older rules. McLaren didn’t have the right detail until quite late and Hamilton was driving for them that year …

It is no surprise to me that the only thorough textbook on speakers is Toole, all the others who know what they are doing probably want to keep their knowledge to themselves. It is certainly my opinion that having a single performance score for a speaker is probably absurd.
 

BDWoody

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I am too old to go back into it now but the problem always was more complex than was made public, and this will always be the case since no company in its right mind makes R&D data available publicly thereby giving free R&D to their competitors.

Thank you for that Frank.

Would you be limited by NDA's if you decided to do a few weeks of consulting? I have to wonder if it at least crossed your mind.
 

FrantzM

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It is 40 years since we last had ground effect cars in F1 and only Rory Byrne, retained by Ferrari as a consultant, and to a junior extent, Adrian Newey of Red Bull who was just starting out have any experience of it.

Back then there was a plausible explanation for the instability one could have which were taken by many as the explanation but actually was only part of the story - which is why not everybody solved it.

The aero R&D is either done in a wind tunnel with a model held at various ride heights and yaw angles sometimes with steer, depending on the wind tunnel, or using CFD which, up to the point I retired, was incapable of predicting unsteady flow and afaik still can’t. Wheel wakes are unsteady and dominate the flow round an open wheeled car.
Accurate enough CFD models are huge and with the limit in the rules on how much can be done testing at as many height/roll/steer combinations as would be needed for a (IMHO) good enough overall set of data is impossible.

So the inexperienced people didn’t predict the instability and the explanation still being rolled out is not the only problem to be solved. The information I have is that things I know to give instability are being done by some teams who have used static thinking for a dynamic situation - a common fault in engineers IME.

On top of this for decades people have judged the aero difference between cars by looking at the upper bodywork whereas with these cars it has gone back to unseen details under the car - so ”revolutionary” bodywork differences will be having second order effects and this may deflect the less experienced away from the real areas for study. People see the big difference in appearance of the top body between the poor performing Mercedes and the championship leading Ferrari as a big reason for the performance difference but this is very unlikely IMO.

One senior engineer from one of the teams was at a barbecue I was at a few days ago. I have known him since he was a teenager and he is a good engineer but the targets they had given themselves for this years car showed a lack of appreciation for dynamic stability.

I am too old to go back into it now but the problem always was more complex than was made public, and this will always be the case since no company in its right mind makes R&D data available publicly thereby giving free R&D to their competitors.

I watch with interest to see how long it is and which teams resolve their stability problems first. After all when the last big rule change happened, for 2009, the importance of a certain detail in the front wing was completely missed by both Adrian Newey and McLaren, both of whom had developed race winning cars to the older rules. McLaren didn’t have the right detail until quite late and Hamilton was driving for them that year …

It is no surprise to me that the only thorough textbook on speakers is Toole, all the others who know what they are doing probably want to keep their knowledge to themselves. It is certainly my opinion that having a single performance score for a speaker is probably absurd.
I have decided after reading lot of your posts and this one in particular , to make sure to meet you in real life.

Peace.
 

Frank Dernie

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Thank you for that Frank.

Would you be limited by NDA's if you decided to do a few weeks of consulting? I have to wonder if it at least crossed your mind.
No, I have been approached but not by a team I want to work for and also to have used my experience for the best I should have been there a year ago, too late to anything properly now working the sort of hours I can cope with these days.

I must say I am very unimpressed how badly most of them have done.

Patrick Head suggested to Williams that they should take me on as a consultant like Ferrari and Rory for the same reasons and they were insulted that he thought their choice of engineers would need help.

A clear indication of the gulf of difference in knowledge between Patrick and the current Williams management in my somewhat biased opinion.
 

clearnfc

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Oh, interesting to see this thread here.... I have posted a few times about what can be measured and what cannot using automotive (yes F1) as an example.
 

clearnfc

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As an avid F1 fan, the similarities are less than you may think.

For one, there are new aerodynamic regulations this year. The teams have data, just not the knowledge to make good models with it. With audio, we mostly have good models, and are currently in the era of fine tuning. The previous year F1 regulations were simply minor alterations from 2020, even going back to 2017 the cars were similar, so teams had excellent models to work with.

Additionally, F1 teams have a cap on their wind tunnel time, CFD compute resources, and even overall budget now. So they can't investigate every avenue of performance even if they wanted. If some audio designer wants to sink 10 million dollars and 5000 hours into building the perfect speaker, they can.

Also, there is no governing body for audio like the FIA does to Formula 1. Certain innovations which make the sport "unfair" like tuned mass dampers, active suspension, and flexible wings could make the cars 10 seconds a lap faster. In audio, anything which is better is fair game.

Maybe the closest fair comparison is the aerodynamic decisions of Red Bull vs Ferrari with narrow vs wide directivity speakers. Both are valid approaches, and hold advantages in certain areas.

One of the biggest problem with ground effect is "porpoising". And this is something which you can't really simulate accurately in wind tunnel and even computer models. However, I would say with time, things will improve. They should be able to develop new methods to simulate this.
 
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clearnfc

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"It is a car that is super-difficult to drive and on the edge of dipping in and out of the performance window - more out than in. And dissecting the data with a scalpel is just a painful process because it takes very long and the data sometimes doesn't show us what the drivers tell us.

"They have their hands full with a car that is not comfortable or nice or predictable to drive but the data doesn't show these big swings.

"We haven't had this situation before in any of the years that it didn't correlate what we see on the screens with what the driver feels and that is making it even more difficult."


Are there any similarities with audio here? Can we describe everything we hear with our current measurements? If we hear something as being 'off' but the measurements show nothing untoward, do we go with the measurements or with what we hear?

Interested in people's thoughts...

The similarity part is there are both measurable and non-measurable components. But its not limited ot audio or automotive, its literally everything. From cars, to food, music to even computers etc...

Given the new rules and new design, I would say its quite obvious that what they had in the past didn't seems to work. It will take quite a lote more time and effort get it right. Of course, Ferrari and Redbull appear to do a much better job this time.
 
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clearnfc

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Maybe not as much as the driver’s salaries.
So why not just blame the car?

If the car is driven by an tom/dick/harry, I think it will be easy to blame the driver.... But a 7 time world champion and one of the very best driver on the planet said so? Then its a different story.
 
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