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NOT ALWAYS! HEAVY music-technology theory here!

Posted by John Marks on March 12, 2023 at 09:58:28:

If loudness made for the best test tracks, then the greatest test track of all would the "The Garage Door."

There are two very important musical phenomena where loud volumes are counter-productive.

First is the Tartini Tone that bowed strings produce when one stringed instrument, that is playing a lower purely/justly intoned tone, is excited by a nearby stringed instrument that is playing a higher purely/justly intoned tone that is in a "simple, low-interger mathematical relationship" with the lower tone.

Such as, one violin playing A at 440Hz and the other playing the just-intoned, non-tempered E at 660Hz (rather than at 659.2551Hz). The ratio is Three to Two, so the overtones of the two instruments correspond, but not directly. They are offset. The octave of the higher tone corresponds to the third harmonic of the lower tone, if I remember from a lecture of more than 40 years ago.

The result is that the reinforced harmonics cause our ear-brain system to provide the "Missing Fundamental," which is the difference tone at 220Hz.

There is an optimum volume and balance, so that the violins excite resonances in each other, but they don't drown each other out.

Secondly, and probably easier to hear in real life, the harmonic interactions of piano strings are so complicated that IMHO they are beyond computational fluid dynamics and far into Chaos Theory.

For the strings that come is triplet sets, once the hammer strikes the strings, the tone does not decay or die out in a linear fashion. That is called "Double Decay." "Double decay" describes the reality that the energy-over-time spectrum of a dying-out piano note exhibits two obviously different slopes. A steeper but brief initial slope, followed by a flatter longer terminal slope. That is because of partial cancellation among the three strings.

But it is even more complicated than that, because within the less-steep slope, certain midrange harmonics actually get louder as the sound is dying out in general, because the much higher-frequency strings that had been resonating sympathetically but also imposing destructive cancellation on the lower strings die out more quickly because of Air Absorption. Once the cancellation dies out, those harmonics can be better heard.

Add to that that, especially when the damper-lifting pedal is depressed, the slightly out-of-tuneness of the Equal Temperament (wherein all strings are Equally Out of Tune) makes for a hugely complicated interaction among the harmonics. We call these phenomena "Bloom" and "Shimmer."

Thing is, the best way to hear "Bloom" and "Shimmer" is to play quietly, because the ratio between the SPL levels of Fundamentals and Harmonics, as you play louder, is NON LINEAR.

The best example I know of, for "Bloom" and "Shimmer" being better revealed by quiet playing is Jenny Lin's amazing performance of Marc-Andr� Hamelin's amazing arrangement for solo piano of the (originally, instrumental-only) David Raksin theme music from the film "Laura."

ANYBODY can listen free, no sign-up required, at the link.

Obviously, DUUH, a Steinway recording, but one that was recorded by Daniel Shores at Sono Luminus studio in rural Virginia--the building is a former chapel. Nice!

ciao,

john