The 2019 Cadillac CT6 Boasts An ‘Engine Sound Enhancement’ Feature

The 2019 Cadillac CT6 now offers an “Engine Sound Enhancement” feature that allows drivers to choose how much engine noise they’re fed inside the cabin – from a little, to a lot. Being able to clearly hear the engine is perhaps most important to those driving cars equipped with manual transmissions, but even in automatic-equipped cars, the purr of a well-tuned internal-combustion engine can be a pleasing thing to hear.

Engine Sound Enhancement is new to the CT6 for the 2019 model year.

What Engine Sound Enhancement Does

Engine noise can be an unwanted racket, or a rewarding stimulus, depending on who’s in the car and what their mood is. Cognizant of this fact, Cadillac has elected to give drivers of the 2019 Cadillac CT6 a choice in just how much they hear the internal-combustion engine under the hood sucking, crushing, banging, and blowing.

The engine’s intake and exhaust systems – as well as the car’s design, Active Noise Cancellation tech, and use of sound-deadening materials – are optimized for low noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH), just as in any proper luxury car. But should that leave you wanting more noise from the engine, three different Engine Sound Enhancement modes are available: Tour, Sport, and Track, the latter of which is exclusive to the V-series. Each mode delivers its own level of aural enhancement.

How Engine Sound Enhancement Works

Where some automakers – including Ford – have in some cars elected to feed more engine noise to the driver through a simple diaphragm-and-tube device, piping real, live intake noise through the dash using something akin to a tin-can telephone, the 2019 Cadillac CT6’s system is a bit more complex. System’s like Ford’s Sound Symposer have a single mode, “full on”, but in order to offer user-selectable noise levels, Cadillac decided to tap into the CT6’s audio system.

So, depending on which Engine Sound Enhancement mode is selected, the speakers inside the cabin will play some amount of intake, combustion, and exhaust noise, alongside whatever song or podcast the driver happens to be listening to. Unlike in some systems, these sounds are not pre-recorded, synthetic approximations of what the engine should sound like at a given moment, but actually electronically-amplified noises being made by the engine in real time.

The 2019 Cadillac CT6 does not represent the first implementation of the automaker’s Engine Sound Enhancement system, but it is the latest. The full-size luxury car has been given a significant refresh for the new model year, receiving new technology, an exterior facelift, and new powertrain options, including the new 4.2-liter, twin-turbo V8 LTA engine that powers the first-ever Cadillac CT6-V.

Check back in with GM Authority for all the latest Cadillac CT6 news.