No Fake Sounds, Just Science: How Lexus Made The LC’s V8 Sing Like An LFA

There are dozens of ‘straight-piped’ videos on YouTube showing how crudely junking your car’s mufflers and emissions equipment in favor of simple sections of tube can make your engine sound more exciting. But Lexus engineers are a sophisticated bunch and turned to a bit of consumer electronics tech you might use every day to help tune the sound of their LC coupe’s V8.

The LC’s chief engineer was Koji Sato, who’s since been promoted to President of Toyota, and he had some big goals for the LC’s 5.0-liter V8 back in the mid 2010s. He wanted to “create an LC sound that inherited the LFA’s DNA,” Toyota Times reports. Yes, the LFA supercar with the screaming V10 that’s routinely cited as one of the greatest sounding cars ever built. No pressure, then.

Related: What Car Has The Most Distinctive Engine Sound?

The LC team began by breaking down the LFA’s noise to find out what it was made from and why it sounded so good, Toyota Times reports. They noted that the exhaust provided the bedrock of the soundtrack, with intake noise piling in as revs rose to add drama, and then turned their attention to the LC’s V8, which had a head start in not having any sound-sapping turbos.

The main mods were the same ones seen on a ton of modern performance cars First came a sound generator or symposer, which is essentially just a tube coming from the intake system into the cabin, though Lexus says finding space to package the length of pipe necessary to crated the desired frequencies was tricky.

Then, came a posh take on the straight-pipe idea: a rear silencer with active flaps that could send exhaust gases through two different routes. A quite one to help pass drive-by noise tests and allow peaceful Lexus-like freeway cruising, and a more liberal route to permit more of the unmuffled V8 sounds to escape.

More: 2025 Lexus LC Gets Fresh Paint And Subtle Tweaks, Keeps The V8 You Love

Sato was against the addition of any fake engine noises but he wasn’t against adding some particular sounds to help silence the undesirable ones. So Lexus equipped the LC with active noise cancellation (ANC), the very same tech that’s in your expensive headphones and ear buds. By pumping anti-phase sounds – an inversion of an undesirable sound’s waves – though the speakers, the team was able to mute unwanted mechanical noises that might have spoiled the experience.

Lexus isn’t the only company to use the ANC tech. Lotus developed a system in 2009 and in recent years automakers including Acura, Buick, Lincoln, Land Rover and Nissan have all fitted it to their cars.

Lexus might have been against using fake engine sounds for the LC, but in recent years its parent company, Toyota, has developed fully synthesized sounds for cars like the three-cylinder GR Yaris. One engineer describes hearing the enhanced Yaris after listening to the stock version sounding as if the hot hatch had been straight-piped. And though we’d rather know that the sounds we hear are real, there are other advantages to ASC, such as the ability to increase volume at speed so you can still hear the ‘engine’ when wearing a helmet at a trackday.

Although previous versions of Active Sound Control (ASC) used dedicated speakers, the latest versions are integrated into the car’s audio system. But because the speakers are positioned differently in every car, each model’s ASC needs careful tuning to get the sound right.

“If this tuning isn’t done right, people would notice that what they thought were engine sounds are actually coming from their speakers,” says Yusuke Nakayama, an assistant manager at the Lexus Performance Development Division’s Sensory Performance Development Department.