When we first grabbed an ARK Performance DT-S Exhaust for our project BRZ, we had some pretty specific factors that we were looking for in order to have our ideal exhaust. One of the 2 biggest ones was power and sound. Here's the thing, when we say sound, we don't just mean exhaust tone. BRZ exhausts have a tendency to sound a tad bit, shall we say, farty. There's only a handful of exhausts in the market that avoid this issue and after we installed our new ARK Exhaust we realized, these guys avoid that issue better than anyone.
Our DT-S exhaust tone wasn't just aggressive and musical, but clean and sharp with no drone and NO farts. What time showed us too, is that these exhausts are built to last, but we'll talk more about that in another post.
THIS post, is all about that resonance which owes its success to Helmholtz technology. Helmholtz resonance, also called “wind throb,” is what happens when there’s air resonance in a cavity. Not sure what we mean? Think the wind buffeting problem that brands like AMS solved on the GR Supra when you have your window open while driving at speed, when the whole car seems to vibrate your ears off.
A Helmholtz resonator functions like this: Air moves through the exhaust and past the resonator, a portion of air is pulled in and pushed back out into the main exhaust stream, changing the pressure and consequently the sound. As a result, the exhaust note is effectively changed. The result is a rich, deep, CLEAN note and all those ugly noises go bye bye.
Tuning a Helmholtz resonator is where things get cool. Drones in different cars occur at different frequencies which means that there's no one frequency that address it all. This is why making these application specific is so important. Experts like our friends at ARK will address the frequency in each car they cater to, what frequency the drone occurs at and they will target that frequency using Helmholtz. Pretty nuts right?
So, what if your car makes a very particular sound? Like say, the crackle of an M4? Well, you can rest easy knowing that it would be completely unaffected, this is thanks again to the fact that a specific frequency is targeted, not the whole range. This targets the possibility of drone specifically, not the entirety of the exhaust note.
Exhaust systems that utilize a Helmholtz muffler are cutting edge and something definitely to be desired if you are looking for some of the best, drone free exhausts you can get for your application.
We hope this helps you understand the value of exhausts using this type of resonator. Still have questions? We're an email away :)