You know that feeling you get? The one when you hear a Mustang rumble down the street. It takes you back to when you first fell in love with the sound of cars, and that’s just the kind of feeling Ford called upon when designing the sounds emanating from the 2019 Mustang’s Active Valve Performance Exhaust system.

“Our connection to sound begins in our mother’s womb long before other senses,” Steve Venezia, a veteran Los Angeles-based television production engineer, explained. “And later in life, sound is one of the most powerful senses that creates lasting memories, like a song that takes you back to a happy time in your life.”

Plug that guitar into an amp and crank it up to 11, and that’s your aggressive, crackling sound that really rocks your soul. We call that Track mode. — Hani Ayesh, Ford

The adjustable setting available at the touch of a button on the console debuted on the 2015 Shelby GT350 and moved into the 2018 Mustang GT. In 2019 all Mustang models, including the EcoBoost-powered version, have this option, and engineers put in a lot of research to make the exhaust tones offered in the various modes pleasing to the ear.

“We’re probably the few engineers here who do not have to design to a number or a specification,” Hani Ayesh, Ford exhaust development engineer, said. “Instead, we work to identify that signature sound DNA that connects drivers to the emotional expectation they have for a specific car.”

Here’s a look at a 2019 Mustang EcoBoost with the Performance Pack in Velocity Blue. The Active Valve Performance Exhaust with its adjustable modes — Quiet, Normal, Sport, and Track — is an option on the turbo four in the forthcoming model year.

Ford’s engineers design and tune theses systems using computational analysis, but in the end the ear test is what really matters.

“Strum a chord on an acoustic guitar, and you get a clean, simple sound wave – that’s your quiet Brahms’ Lullaby kind of mood,” Hani added. “Plug that guitar into an amp and crank it up to 11, and that’s your aggressive, crackling sound that really rocks your soul. We call that Track mode.”

Of course, the beauty of this system is that it can also keep your car’s sound on the down low when you want it there as well.

“When I pick up my kids from school, they want to hear that growling rev of the engine,” Hani concluded, “but my wife and neighbors, not so much. So I can select the quieter ‘good neighbor’ mode, and keep them happy, too.”

The 2019 Mustangs will hit the streets this summer, so we can all experience what they sound like with an adjustable exhaust system in person.