Sympathetic resonance

[stratum]

You mean, do all the stuff you'd be doing for a physical model anyway. :sigh:

No, I'm only saying that what you'll be finding under the title "physical modelling" in the literature solves the wrong problem as far as the original poster's goal is concerned. A physical model of a single piano string or a flute is not a physical model of a piano. If that was the case, everybody would be using that model and it would sound like a real piano.

Since that's not the case, something is missing and that missing thing is not necessarily complex, but sure it is counter intuitive. (If it wasn't, somebody would come up with a theory and solve that problem). Since that did not happen, then we are sure it is counter intuitive and hard to measure, perhaps even hard to reproduce even when correctly simulated. Does the best piano recording sound exactly like the real thing? I guess that's not the case either.

[whyterabbyt]

You mean, do all the stuff you'd be doing for a physical model anyway. :sigh:

No, I'm only saying that what you'll be finding under the title "physical modelling" in the literature solves the wrong problem as far as the original poster's goal is concerned. A physical model of a single piano string or a flute is not a physical model of a piano. If that was the case, everybody would be using that model and it would sound like a real piano.

Since that's not the case, something is missing and that missing thing is not necessarily complex, but sure it is counter intuitive. (If it wasn't, somebody would come up with a theory and solve that problem). Since that did not happen, then we are sure it is counter intuitive and hard to measure, perhaps even hard to reproduce even when correctly simulated.

Despite your assertion, the 'literature' covers the solving of that problem.

[cron]

There are definitely certain pieces and techniques which simply don't work when sympathetic resonance is absent. Debussy wrote many piano works that explicitly depend on sympathetic resonance, while Messiaen went as far as including very soft 'wrong' notes in the score to enhance it.

[stratum]

Despite your assertion, the 'literature' covers the solving of that problem.

So what has failed in the end? That they have just filled a few patent files without actually making a working product? Perhaps the product worked and it did not sound right? Greatest guitar amps do not sound right at home either. I haven't seen a recording that did either. In the place where you can play a real piano without disturbing anybody you can play the real thing. In other places the simulation does not sound right either. Now are we going to conclude that they have failed to make a complex enough mathematical model? What about just generating a few simple sinusoids at the resonating strings? what's the difference in the end, what is the failing part? That the fact that most people are living in apartment flats? Which model is going to fix that? Do headphones sound like a good hifi set turned up loud? These are relevant questions, I think.

[aciddose]

Existing transmission models are limited by processing power. Ideally you'd want to use a series of "zero latency" all-pass filters of Nth order to model a medium through which the signal is transmitted.

The result of using a delay line is extremely unrealistic. Transmission whether via gas, liquid or solid is much better modeled with non-linear zero-latency all-pass filters in combination with varied intra-medium feedback paths.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_dynamics Navier–Stokes equations, computation via supercomputer, etc.

[Miles1981]

Despite your assertion, the 'literature' covers the solving of that problem.

So what has failed in the end? That they have just filled a few patent files without actually making a working product? Perhaps the product worked and it did not sound right? Greatest guitar amps do not sound right at home either. I haven't seen a recording that did either. In the place where you can play a real piano without disturbing anybody you can play the real thing. In other places the simulation does not sound right either. Now are we going to conclude that they have failed to make a complex enough mathematical model? What about just generating a few simple sinusoids at the resonating strings? what's the difference in the end, what is the failing part? That the fact that most people are living in apartment flats? Which model is going to fix that? Do headphones sound like a good hifi set turned up loud? These are relevant questions, I think.

The model is too costly, just as for amps??

[whyterabbyt]

Despite your assertion, the 'literature' covers the solving of that problem.

So what has failed in the end?

Nothing.

[stratum]

The model is too costly, just as for amps??

Probably not. It's just that most people live in crappy acoustic spaces. These are the ones who want 'models'. Other people use the real thing. For amps, the models are close, some people complain that you cannot turn up one loud and get physical string sustain (processing delay, probably), perhaps others failed to hear the sound of that particular valve they liked, but that's about it. But the ones who have withnessed that 'close' sound do not live in apartment flats.

[Miles1981]

And yet, the literature is quite adamant about the fact that you can't model a full amp in real-time.

[stratum]

And yet, the literature is quite adamant about the fact that you can't model a full amp in real-time.

I'm not sure it's psychologically relevant. When you are close to a cranked 100W amp it's mostly about sheer power. Guitarists can make use of that power as a physical aid for playing also.

A piano is something quite different, obviously. Yet from a customer perspective the fact that remains is that a piano recording does not sound like a piano through a pair of PC speakers. Through an headphone, it's much better, but not quite the same, something is still missing, a good hifi set at about the right volume level adjusted and positioned properly would be closer, yet in that case most people would prefer the sound of a real but somewhat cheap Chinese piano to a VST emulating the sound of, say, Steinway.

Anyway, there is no way that we could get this right by just arguing. There is something inherently difficult to measure about the way an instrument sounds. Perhaps somebody has a great mathematical model for a piano, but I haven't heard a piano VST that sounded like a real one. They sound like good recordings, instead.

[aciddose]

It's as simple as comparing one to the other. You can argue about "psychological relevance" as much as you like. You'll still fail the test: A == B = (false).

All you're doing is flailing your arms in the air and whining like a bitch. "It doesn't matter if I say it doesn't matter, la-la-la-la-la I don't wanna hear it!"

I'm experiencing something like the opposite of sympathetic resonance here. I'm completely unsympathetic.

[stratum]

I'm experiencing something like the opposite of sympathetic resonance here. I'm completely unsympathetic.

That's actually fine. I do not wish to persuade anyone, I know what I hear, and telling you what it is. You may hear it differently, or care about different aspects of it. For me this has rather obvious reasons, I see an instrument with an 88 keys keyboard, each has multiple strings and a large metal plate to amplify the sound, and the proposal to replace that with a pair of speakers, sound a bit simplistic to me. I know it does not work even when you mike it, and you may claim that it actually does. That's OK, it probably works for the aspects of it you are paying attention to. Given that, I'm not convinced that we are supposed to physically model each string and their interactions to achieve that 'Sympathetic resonance'.

[aciddose]

Your argument is similar to that of those who claim we didn't actually go to the moon, that it was faked. The problem is that the reason we went there was not to impress a bunch of inbred morons. Whether it is possible to do so by faking it is therefore completely irrelevant.

The OP was asking about how we can achieve a reasonable result via loose modelling. He said "physical modelling would be over-kill."

Unfortunately though the reality is that "physical modelling" is a very rough approximation and not anywhere near accurate to begin with due to the computational expense.

If he is interested in some of the best approximations used to "emulate" sympathetic resonance, he should be looking at the most advanced "physical models".

[stratum]

Your argument is similar to that of those who claim we didn't actually go to the moon, that it was faked. The problem is that the reason we went there was not to impress a bunch of inbred morons. Whether it is possible to do so by faking it is therefore completely irrelevant.

That's fine, you could do better by thinking what may go wrong when we model each string and apply an head related transfer function to it to give clues about its location to the listener, and then try to figure out what's goes wrong even that is listened with an headphone. Oh well, each human has a different response to these clues which changes even when they cut their hair, subject to daily neural training and update, not to mention headphones vary a lot and most speakers are hopelessly crappy. Isn't it cheaper and more practical to buy the real thing, instead of dealing with this complexity? I do not even know what I am pointing these to you, aren't they already obvious. NASA may go to moon, but there aren't tourists - I mean ordinary people, going to the moon nowadays, are they?

[hugoderwolf]

Guys, grow up and continue fighting by PM if you absolutely can't let go of each other. This could be a very interesting discussion.

A big issue with sympathetic resonance is that it isn't just resonators that are excited by the strings that are played. The thing is that these are lots of coupled resonators, and if that's not enough nonlinearly so.

It even starts with the three strings of a key. Through the coupling they lock their closely spaced resonances in to each other. So the actual tone in a well tuned piano has nearly no beating, although the strings aren't perfectly in tune. The beating only starts if they are too much out of tune.

What the slight detuning of the strings mainly does is control the two-stage envelope of the tone (how loud it is in the beginning, and how long it decays in the late part).

Check this out:
https://www.speech.kth.se/music/5_lectu ... nreic.html

This means for sympathetic resonance that the original tone is also affected by the resonances (the "passive" resonating strings take energy out of the "active" note and thus alter its envelope).