----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Airy" <stephen_airy@yahoo.com> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: December 30, 2000 1:56 AM Subject: RE: Decibel Levels > I'd like to know what a Bosendorfer Imperial with the lid open played as > loud as possible (but no so loud you break the strings/hammers) in a medium > sized living room (like 15 by 25 or something like that) would sound like. :) ----------------------------------------------------- This brings up an interesting question. Are physically larger pianos necessarily louder than their smaller counterparts? Fortunately, I can give a definitive answer to this question: and that is definitely maybe. Some years ago I was able to directly compare--an un-rehearsed demonstration before a live audience of piano teachers and piano players, along with a few technicians thrown in for good measure--the upright piano we were then making with a Bosendorfer Imperial. From C=88 down to something below C=28 the upright had both more acoustical power and longer sustain. In other words, through most of the musical range normally used in normal music. There are a lot of different elements of design and construction that go into determining a piano's potential power output, but physical size is not one of them. Most commonly it is assumed that the longer scales of the large piano makes them potentially louder. But through most of the scale there is not all that much difference in scale length. At least not in their potential scale length. Nor does the potentially larger size of the soundboard help. Piano soundboards are not amplifiers and bigger is not better. Most piano soundboards are larger than necessary. The functional area of the soundboard used in the upright was one the smallest of any piano I know of--various cutoff bars limited its functional size. Certainly it was smaller that that of the Bosendorfer Imperial. There is clearly an advantage to having shear size available when building a piano, but absolute power output is not one of them. What the extra size of pianos such as the Bosendorfer Imperial does give--at least potentially--is tone quality and clarity through the first two to two-and-a-half octaves that comes from the much longer, and less massively loaded, bass string. But this advantage disappears about two to two-and-a-half octaves up the scale. Del
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