I can’t put any race machines in my list of best-sounding bikes because it's too easy. All of them, basically. The terrifying bark of a Desmosedici warming up in the pits at Jerez at 9.00am, like a fucked-off T-Rex into a megaphone.
Or the catastrophic roar of Aprilia’s RS Cube GP bike, which was the same but louder and with added flames.
Or the sharp-edged, spine-shilling purity of any 500 GP two-stroke.
Or, best of all, at the 1992 Bol d’Or, standing at the top of the Mistral Straight at Paul Ricard in the south of France at 2.00am and listening as a Ducati 888, Honda RC30 and Kawasaki ZXR750 power away simultaneously into the distance, V-twin, V4 and inline four revs falling in and out of tune with each other in the still night air. That was probably the finest mechanically informed aural experience of my life.