I sent this question to MINI USA:



The response I got was:



I guess I'll just have to ask someone with perfect pitch to help me out :smile:



Proprietary! Honestly - that's just silly!

 

It sounds like any regular GM horn to me.

 

if you know someone with a digital keyboard/piano, just go out and honk the horn and play around until you can reproduce the two sounds.They are probably perfect thirds(harmony).It would actually help if they had perfect pitch. Let us know what you find out so we can thbttt to MINIUSA

 

You lost me...are you replacing your horn because it's not working or you want something else just like the original? Then why the same tone if you're going to replace them?

 

Better yet, unplug one at a time and guess-tune it with the keyboard. That way you don't half to figure out both freqs at once. :smile:

 

Since I don't want to replace them with the same tone, I need to know the tone. But that is, of course, quite beside the point...

 

pro·pri·e·tar·y ([font=verdana, sans-serif] P [/font]) Pronunciation Key (pr-pr-tr)
adj.

1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of a proprietor or to proprietors as a group: had proprietary rights; behaved with a proprietary air in his friend's house.
2. Exclusively owned; private: a proprietary hospital.
3. Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent: a proprietary drug.

What this basically means is that it's trademarked. Kind of like the trademarked sound of a stock Harley Davidson motorcycle exhaust. Though you can mod any motorcycle's exhaust to sound just like it, no other motorcycle can sound like it right off the showroom floor.

Or like the Nintendo Gamecube (I may be 25, but videogames will always be a part of my life!); they have a proprietary DVD minidisc as their format for their games - hard-to-impossible to reproduce, because no mainstream copying machine can burn to the miniature discs, and no blank discs like the ones Nintendo uses are available, either!

So MINI is also trying to prevent other cars from sounding like their own.

 

While the definition is correct, there's no way to keep it a secret! You could plug a microphone into an oscilloscope to get the answers, or a frequency analyzer. Almost any decent electronics lab (professional) would have one. The keyboard or guitar way would work as well. Keeping stuff proprietary (like the formula for coke) only makes sense if it's not easy to find out. The frequency mix is the sound it makes, and there's no way to hide that, short of unplugging the horns!

Matt

 

Yes, in this instance I think proprietary could be accurately defined as "We don't know and don't care enough to find out."

 

So once the MINIUSA lurker gets wind of this thread all future production MINI's will come with silent horns.

 

That's kind of understandable that they wouldn't want to share it, because they don't want anyone to just copy it.

On the same token though.. dude, that's dumb.

 

Just because it is easy to replicate does not mean that it's not proprietary though. The MINIUSA representative is more than likely simply following protocol. They're not allowed to share that information openly. Whether or not it's easy to copy (just like the Harleys' exhaust note) it a moot point.