Loudness vs.string tension

[jezzupe]

1 hour ago, martin swan said:

It's a brilliant clip from the savagely funny film "Spinal Tap".

I don't think he likes our new direction

[GoPractice]

On 3/30/2024 at 6:41 AM, Marty Kasprzyk said:

 ( ... )

He was interested in trying one of my small [ ? ] ight violas (14 1/4 inch, 407g with chin rest and built-in shoulder rest) to see if he could continue playing.  He and another player friend switched playing back and forth with his viola and mine.  The playing was done in a large hall and they thought my small viola was very easy to hold sounded pretty good but all of us thought it wasn't quite as loud as his. I'm quessing it was about 3dB difference.

 ( ... )

If your smaller viola is within 3dB of his viola, that's awesome, incredible.

And I do have to apologize for not responding. Long story, it seemed so close, but now working on getting out there this summer.

[Violinnut]

On 3/29/2024 at 1:32 PM, LCF said:

So higher tension strings play louder?

I would say that there is a point of diminishing return. 

[LCF]

1 minute ago, Violinnut said:

I would say that there is a point of diminishing return. 

Mostly, I was just picking up on what Martin said in the post immediately prior. 

The volin is a complicated beast. Marty's brief equation-free post lifted the lid on another can of worms --- as per Woodhouse and others if you have a 'wolfey' violin ie highly responsive or too responsive then one possible way of taming it is to use lighter  ie lower tension and mass, strings. These have lower mobility at the bowing point so interact less with corpus responsiveness which in turn implies that heavier stringing interacts more with it. 

[Violinnut]

On 3/29/2024 at 2:41 PM, Michael Darnton said:

Yes, we often do this dance in our shop. We have an E string that we really like for the E sound, but it often messes with the other strings and trashes them. And sometimes the opposite, too. You just need to do the work to discover the results on every violin. The interesting thing is that it's theoretically a medium-gauge string, so there shouldn't be this change.

It is the E from Il Canone, they have a strong E with .28. I can tell under the finger it is harder. I will try my old time faverite, the Goldbrockat E 

[Violinnut]

On 3/29/2024 at 4:18 PM, Victor Roman said:

Did you mean Aaron Rosand ?

I ask because from the orchestra I noticed once or twice a strange "buzzing" quality in his tone. I never heard him from the perspective of the public. Ferras' tone was very underwhelming from the orchestra but nothing short of a wave of sound, in the hall. 

I had that experience with my own violin. I loaned it to someone in from that was to play a solo, and the sound from where I was at was less then memorable. 

[Violinnut]

I do also understand the point about perceived loudness. 

When one listens to two violins, both at the same loudness (measured) one will sound to one‘s ear louder and eventually to loud. 

The other one on the other hand would sound a lot quieter. And one could keep on listening to it. 

[Michael Darnton]

1 hour ago, Violinnut said:

It is the E from Il Canone, they have a strong E with .28. I can tell under the finger it is harder. I will try my old time faverite, the Goldbrockat E 

Nope. Tin-plated carbon steel Dominant. I suppose I should gauge it and see what it really is. They imply medium.

[reguz]

No sound from the strings thus no answer. Very simpel. 

What not is simpel is explainin g how sound becomes produced on the violin body and what to do making it better more projecting thus louder. No answer on that neither.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

On 3/30/2024 at 10:16 AM, martin swan said:

On small violas the problem with using regular length strings on a short stop is they are flappy - you can't then bow the strings hard enough to produce volume without making horrible and out of tune sounds.

The "loudness" doesn't relate directly to the string tension, but to the amount of volume a player can generate from them in a musical fashion.

The "sound output" is not generated by the strings but by the player. 

 

String companies seem to just reduce the length of their regular strings to make their shorter versions (same mass per unit length) therefore their tension naturally decreases. This is a cheaper than making several heavier and shorter length ones with the same tension.

So I don't think it is possible to get a small viola to sound as loud as big one--I prefer to blame string companies for my failures.

 

[martin swan]

18 minutes ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

 

String companies seem to just reduce the length of their regular strings to make their shorter versions (same mass per unit length) therefore their tension naturally decreases. This is a cheaper than making several heavier and shorter length ones with the same tension.

So I don't think it is possible to get a small viola to sound as loud as big one--I prefer to blame string companies for my failures.

 

There are a few companies that offer viola strings in different scale lengths with optimal tension for the length.

Smaller violins are not quieter than bigger violins - double basses are not louder than violins (or violas or cellos).

I really think you may have led yourself up the garden path here  

[Marty Kasprzyk]

1 hour ago, martin swan said:

There are a few companies that offer viola strings in different scale lengths with optimal tension for the length.

Smaller violins are not quieter than bigger violins - double basses are not louder than violins (or violas or cellos).

I really think you may have led yourself up the garden path here  

The Peter Infeld package for their PI 200 strings says "viola4/4-37cm", " Perfect for all size violas.  PI strings sound equally great on small and large scales."

Their loudness cannot be equal when their tension is reduced with shorter lengths.

I can't find any short scale 345mm viola strings available which equal the tension of the PI 200 strings at their 370mm length.

[David Burgess]

1 hour ago, martin swan said:

Smaller violins are not quieter than bigger violins

How much smaller?

[martin swan]

23 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

How much smaller?

comparing 352 with 362 for example ...

[martin swan]

38 minutes ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

 

I can't find any short scale 345mm viola strings available which equal the tension of the PI 200 strings at their 370mm length.

for 345 maybe you should look at Dominant 3/4 viola strings?

Warchal make Amber violin strings in two lengths with very similar tension, but the "small" strings are aimed at 370mm string length

https://warchal.com/tension_chart_viola.html

[David Beard]

1 hour ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

The Peter Infeld package for their PI 200 strings says "viola4/4-37cm", " Perfect for all size violas.  PI strings sound equally great on small and large scales."

Their loudness cannot be equal when their tension is reduced with shorter lengths.

I can't find any short scale 345mm viola strings available which equal the tension of the PI 200 strings at their 370mm length.

Not all quantities are directly dependent on each other. 

[Aston4]

The answer is here:

 

mu is energy.  T is tension.

 

https://users.physics.ox.ac.uk/~palmerc/Wavesfiles/Energy_Handout.pdf

 

 

 

[Dr. Mark]

28 minutes ago, Aston4 said:

The answer is here:

What's the question, again?

[LCF]

6 hours ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

 

String companies seem to just reduce the length of their regular strings to make their shorter versions (same mass per unit length) therefore their tension naturally decreases. This is a cheaper than making several heavier and shorter length ones with the same tension.

So I don't think it is possible to get a small viola to sound as loud as big one--I prefer to blame string companies for my failures.

 

Marty, how loud and responsive is your shorter scale viola if you tune it higher in pitch from Fo to Fn such that Fn = Fo x ( long scale length ÷ shorter scale lenght) using those strings with the same density?

[LCF]

Is anyone brave enough to venture an opinion about downbearing ( break angle over the bridge ) versus tension? 

Perhaps lower tension string needs a steeper break?

[Aston4]

5 hours ago, Dr. Mark said:

What's the question, again?

Loudness vs string tension.  That is the equation showing the energy of the string, and how string energy changes with mass of string, length of string, frequency of the wave, and tension of string.  It is all interrelated.  It hurts the brain a little to go through the linked explanation, but understandable if you can recall first semester calculus and physics.

 

Here is the kicker: the elastic constant of the string, plays a huge role, just as if it were a spring.  Different strings will have different elastic constants, and so different tensions on different strings at same lengths and tensions and masses will behave differently, and have different energies, because of their different elastic constants!!! 

 

This is the ACTUAL ANSWER.  It is not speculation.  It is physics.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

3 hours ago, LCF said:

Marty, how loud and responsive is your shorter scale viola if you tune it higher in pitch from Fo to Fn such that Fn = Fo x ( long scale length ÷ shorter scale lenght) using those strings with the same density?

I've done the opposite.  I used one of my large violas with a 380mm string length and then played the same C#  note on the C string with shorter fingerings and lower tensions.

There was a lot of scatter.  Sometimes the loudness of the C# decreased a few dB and sometimes it hardly changed at all with the shorter string length fingerings.  My spread from very slow light bowing to very fast heavy bowing was about 30dB.  So Im trying to detect only a few dB of the range and I concluded my bowing control wasn't good enough to reliably detect the small loudness difference the good players had found.

This was discouraging--after all these years practicing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" I'm still not a good enough player to evaluate my instruments.

[LCF]

 I think you might find those scant few extra professional dB if you promote this as a transposing viola in d a e b tuning. 

 

---->  piccolo viola

 

[LCF]

22 minutes ago, Aston4 said:

Loudness vs string tension.  That is the equation showing the energy of the string, and how string energy changes with mass of string, length of string, frequency of the wave, and tension of string.  It is all interrelated.  It hurts the brain a little to go through the linked explanation, but understandable if you can recall first semester calculus and physics.

 

This is the ACTUAL ANSWER.  It is not speculation.  It is physics.

... except when you suck some of the energy out of it at one end namely via a violin bridge and onwards into the corpus, then the boundary conditions change in a very complex way and the assumptions made for the basic string equation are not valid. The louder we get it to be coming out of the violin body then the more the boundary conditions change wrt the simple theory which deals with zeros or infinities at the boundary.

 

You have to use mathematician's glue to hold those PDE's together but Marty uses gorilla glue. 

[Aston4]

17 minutes ago, LCF said:

... except when you suck some of the energy out of it at one end namely via a violin bridge and onwards into the corpus, then the boundary conditions change in a very complex way and the assumptions made for the basic string equation are not valid. The louder we get it to be coming out of the violin body then the more the boundary conditions change wrt the simple theory which deals with zeros or infinities at the boundary.

 

You have to use mathematician's glue to hold those PDE's together but Marty uses gorilla glue. 

A violin is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three dimensional space.  That given point is the center of the violin, and r is the violin's radius.

So the equation works damnit.