Overall inharmonicity, was RE: Call for scaling spreadsheets

[Calin Tantareanu]

Stephane writes about overall inharmonicity and its influence on the piano's
projection. I have read Fenner's book on piano design, and there he divides
pianos in 3 groups according to overall inharmonicity. He cites several
examples among them: Boesendorfer = low inh., Steinway = middle, and
Bechstein (the only one) = high inh. 
Interesting to note that he says that high inharmonicity scales sound better
than the others at low to medium levels of volume, but when played very loud
they start distorting, which he says is typical for Bechstein (I guess he
refers to the older models, since Fenner died a while ago and Bechstein just
brought out new grand models in the last couple of years).
Sclaes with lower inh. Sound les interesting at moderate levels but don't
distort loud playing.
He explained the perceived beauty of tone of scales with high inh. through a
peculiarity of the inner ear, but I don't remember all of it.
Calin Tantareanu
http://calin.haos.ro
--------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Stéphane Collin
Sent: vineri, 29 septembrie 2006 13:15
To: Pianotech List
Subject: Re: Call for scaling spreadsheets

Hi Ric.

While evenness of inharmonicity seems indeed obviously desirable, don't we 
want to be able to evaluate the overall inharmonicity of a piano ?  I mean 
you can desing a scale that will be even in inharmonicity, but whose overall

inharmonicity is so high that the piano sounds funny, same (but less 
probable) for a piano with too low inharmonicity.  Isn't there a link 
between overall inharmonicity and "projection" (ability of the piano to fill

a space with it's sound) ?  There is certainly a link between overall 
inharmonicity and personnality (sorry for that vague and subjective word).

Regards

Stéphane Collin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ric Brekne" <ricbrek at broadpark.no>
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 9:32 AM
Subject: Call for scaling spreadsheets


> Ron Overs gives
>
> (CovDia^2/CoreDia^2-1)*0,89
>
> for B for bass strings in the spreadsheet he posted a while back.  I would

> be really interested in hearing the reasoning behind this.
> Fandrich, and I have heard this many times here as well, underlines that 
> the whole Inharmonicity bit with regard to scaling is to insure evenness. 
> No big jumps from one note or region to the area.  As such, strikes me 
> that it is less important what standard one uses as long as its reasonably

> close.  Relative degrees of overall inharmonicity will be seen from scale 
> to scale as long as you use that same standard.
>
> Cheers
> RicB
>
>