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Re: Your informants are mistaken…

211.26.1.247

Posted by David Aiken on July 29, 2002 at 14:55:51

In Reply to: Re: Your informants are mistaken… posted by Romy on July 29, 2002 at 05:15:45:

Romy,

I'm an amateur musician as well as an audiophile and music lover. I tune my guitar with an A=440 Hz tuning fork, and I know which note on the piano is tuned with the same fork. The bottom A on the piano is 4 octaves lower than that. The frequency of the note halves with each octave we go lower so, in order as we descend, the frequencies of each of those lower As are 220,110, 55 and finally 27.5 Hz. The low E string of the double bass is tuned to the E in that lowest octave between 27.5 and 55 Hz, hence it's 41.2 hz tuning.

As A.J. states, some instruments and voices concentrate more energy into overtones rather than the fundamental frequency of the note, definitely changing the tonality and perception of pitch that is given. In some cases performers deliberately do this for artistic purposes. There is an interesting table on page 6 of the liner notes for Stereophiles 2nd test disc. The first 2 tracks for channel identification and phasing are a recording of John Atkinson playing a Fender Precision Bass and the table lists the level of the overtones produced in relation to the fundamental.The first overtone, an E at 82.4 Hz, is 11.8 dB LOUDER than the fundamental at 41.2 Hz while the next 2 overtones 9B at 123.6 Hz and E at 164.8 Hz) are 5.8 dB and 7.8 dB softer than the fundamental at 41.2 Hz. This still represents an enormous amount of energy at those frequencies.

What this means in terms of reproduction is that a speaker which is rolling off at 50 or 60 Hz, as many are, would actually reproduce the 2nd and 3rd harmonics at 123.6 and 164.8 Hz much louder than they would reproduce the fundamental 41.2 hz note. In fact, I doubt that listeners would perceive the fundamental at all with many such speakers. Many people can be confused by this because they listen to music and hear a bass part and think that's it, then go to a live performance or hear the same recording on a different system (or even make a change in their own system) and suddenly hear a totally different bass part to what they've been familiar with and wonder where it came from. It need not even be that the notes start to fall an octave or 2 octaves lower but are the same note, they can actually be different notes if harmonics like the 3rd or 5th, for example, have previously been perceived as the fundamental. The whole shape of the melody of the bass part can change as a result.

It's also worth noting - just ask any double bass player, pianist, acoustic guitarist, or anyone who plays an acoustic instrument - that the sound of their instrument which they hear while playing is significantly different to the sound that they hear if they're at a normal listening distance while someone else plays. This is simply because instruments project unevenly, like a loudspeaker lobing, and different surfaces of the instrument project different harmonic patterns. My guitar doesn't sound as deep to me when playing on the lowest strings as it does when I'm somewhere in front of it while someone else plays. The sound board and sound hole project to the front while the sound coming most directly to my ears is from the sides which are stiffer and favour higher overtones. Most acoustic musicians have a similar experience - instruments are basically designed to project sound to the audience rather than the musician. At least electric musicians can stand in front of their speakers and set the speaker stacks up so that they hear a more representative sound if they wish, and can stand the volume :-(

I repeat - check any reputable text for the frequency range of various instruments and you will find that the lowest note of a double bass is at 41.2 hz and the bottom A on a piano is 27.5. There are any number of reputable authorities you can use to confirm this, in fact the Grove Musical Encyclopedia probably even has this sort of information somewhere if you could figure out what to look for in the index.

David Aiken

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