Don Rose wrote: >>A sound board fits the definition of a transducer very well--it changes one type of vibrational energy into another.<< I agree completely. This is often misunderstood, because people tend to focus on what they _hear_ instead of what is actually happening to the energy in the vibrating system. Since we can hardly hear a bare wire vibrating, but we _can_ hear it when the soundboard is moving, it's easy to get trapped into thinking that the soundboard is amplifying the sound. Actually it is just transducing it, as Don Rose said. The string has a very small area and is extremely inefficient at moving the air around it. The soundboard takes this motion and changes it into a much smaller amplitude vibration, but over a much larger area, and is much more efficient at moving the air. Don Mannino
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