[pianotech] Cement floors and brick walls with high ceilings

Ben Gac ben at benspianotuning.com
Fri Nov 14 04:50:49 PST 2008


Diane,

What's the SHAPE of this new store?  Incidentally I did a tuning at a high school in their new auditorium which was horribly designed.  The orchestra teacher came up to me and asked immediately, "Have you ever heard of the 'Flutter Effect'?".  He walked out to the center of the stage and clapped his hands.  For the next 3 seconds, is sounded like a crowd of people snapping their fingers as the sound waves bounced all over the auditorium and off of each other.  Cool sounding, but HORRIBLE at the same time!  He claimed that the reason was that the auditorium was a perfect hard box.  The walls were brick and parallel, and the phenomenon followed!  I'm no acoustician, but I wouldn't necessarily write off the building structure as a contributor...

-Ben

Ben Gac, RPT
Ben's Piano Tuning
(708) 660-9331 - office
(630) 291-5654 - mobile
www.benspianotuning.com
ben at benspianotuning.com

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That's a description of the new store.   It sounds terribly reverberant. 
 
 I had to prep an Estonia 9' for a music teachers' recital last
weekend.  Octaves 5 and 6 had fast, fluttering false beats, and little
power. The long side of the piano was along one of the brick walls.  Do
you think the concrete floor could be causing the false beating, and
the bricks absorbing some of the treble brilliance?  
 
The 6' Estonia about 20' away, approximately in the center of the room,
sounded like the bigger, richer piano. I didn't tune it, so don't know
about false beats.
 
 

Diane Hofstetter

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