Patent ID: 8710974

Claim:
A sound producing apparatus for a vehicle which notifies an approach of the vehicle outside the vehicle, comprising: an original-tone generating device generating an original tone of a vehicle's approaching sound for recognition of a vehicle's approach; a modulation-tone generating device generating a modulation tone from the original tone generated by said original-tone generating device with a comb filter function which is configured to apply gains to frequency components so that a gain to be applied to a specified frequency component of a times-tone row which has frequencies of n-times (n: an integer which is 2 or greater) of a fundamental frequency constituting the original tone is greater than that to be applied to the other frequency component than the specified frequency component of the times-tone row; a sound-pressure setting device setting a sound pressure of the approaching sound of the modulation tone generated by said modulation-tone generating device; a sound producing device producing outside the vehicle the vehicle's approaching sound of the modulation tone with the sound pressure set by said sound-pressure setting device; and a distance detecting device detecting a distance between the vehicle and a pedestrian, wherein said modulation-tone generating device has a high-pass-filter function which is configured to apply gains to frequency components so that a gain to be applied to a high frequency component which has a higher frequency than a threshold frequency is greater than that to be applied to a low frequency component which has a lower frequency than the threshold frequency, and said modulation-tone generating device generates the modulation tone from the original tone with said comb filter function and said high-pass-filter function, and said modulation-tone generating device is configured to perform at least one of increasing said threshold frequency of the high-pass-filter function and decreasing said gain to be applied to the low frequency component which has the lower frequency than the threshold frequency of the high-pass-filter function when the distance between the vehicle and the pedestrian detected by said distance detecting device is shorter.