When the sound falls apart at higher volumes

Mark Schecter schecter at pacbell.net
Wed Jun 28 19:53:27 MDT 2006


Hi, Andrew.

I think you've got the clue to the easiest path right in your question. 
In my opinion, knowing nothing more about it than that the floors are 
tile and the walls are bare, I'd say you need to interrupt the 
reflectivity of the space. You have too much noise winging round and 
round through the air and bashing into itself. Put a rug under the 
piano, and hang a couple tapestries or blankets on a two connected 
walls, and see what that does. The idea is to avoid having two parallel 
surfaces both reflecting at each other. Until you've tried some simple 
acoustic treatment in a room that fairly obviously needs it, I think 
modifying the piano is premature and probably a bad idea. Keep it as 
simple as possible (but not simpler).

-Mark Schecter

Andrew and Rebeca Anderson wrote:
> I recall that this phenomenon has been referred to here.  Have a piano 
> in a rather live environment (tile floors, not much on the walls).  At 
> higher volume playing the tone seems to "go out of focus" and gets 
> rough/harsh.  I've wondered about what causes this and what approaches 
> may be used to tame it.
> 
> Would adding impedence to the bridge help this?
> 
> Andrew Anderson
> 
> 


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