David Burgess

"Swarthy":

I don't think they will really tell us anything. So much depends on the equipment used in both the recording and playback paths, and also on the acoustics of a particular room.

Wow, 99 cents at Ikea stores in the US right now!

It means that automotive LED lighting controls the perceived level of brightness by turning the lights on and off very quickly, varying the ratio of on time to off time. My most recent car turns the lights on and off 90 times per second.

I"d expect so. But battery-powered incandescent bulbs get pretty difficult to apply to the majority of artificial lighting situations.

Sorry, what I meant to ask about in that question were what we call "compact fluorescent bulbs", which are not LEDs, but basically use an electrical discharge through mercury vapor to produce UV, which excites a phosphor light-emitting coating.

Thanks again! Have you tested any of the screw-in replacement fluorescent bulbs? One of the things I was trying to figure out was whether these would be better or worse than LED screw-in replacement bulbs. I suppose nothing can be done about pulsing from existing pulse width modulation LED automotive lighting.

I have no doubt that the feel can change. But the feel can change due to many other factors than a measured tension change. Feel can change with an infinitesimal soundpost movement, with no changes whatsoever to string tension.

Thanks so much! I wasn't able to expand the graphs enough to see high detail, and It would appear that you have much more accurate measuring systems than I have managed to cheaply rig into place. The Ikea replacement bulbs were pretty good? The last time I witnessed someone having a severe seizure, there was cheap LED string lighting all over the place (which probably turned from maximum brightness to zero 60 times per second). There were also ceiling fans, which were noticeably strobing, to me. I didn't catch it, but other witnesses said that the guy who went into emergency mode looked up briefly in the direction of the ceiling fans, before collapsing on the floor.

I think that Don Noon has been one of the most valuable engineer/physicists here. He has taken it way beyond pages upon pages of math (baffle 'em with bullshit"?), and does a really good job of putting explanations into an "ordinary person" environment. I don't know whether a shorter and stiffer string will require more energy to produce the same volume. What I am fairly certain of is that harmonic alignment changes with stiffness, so greater playing effort might be required to produce the same perceived volume (not measured volume) as the string length shortens, since the harmonics won't line up as well and reinforce each other as well.

Durn violists, she probably tuned an octave high without realizing it. (Sorry Dwight)

Yes. For a given string, a shorter vibrating length at the same tension has a higher pitch, and a longer vibrating length at the same tension has a lower pitch.

Luis, I don't know how to interpret those graphs. What was the percentage of brightness change with the various bulbs? Did any of them have light output go to zero during the cycle?

Tension and bridge downforce remain the same.

Keith Hill might be a fruitcake. I haven't had the time or motivation to sort all his stuff out yet.