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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Audio Shopping vs. Piano Shopping.
Post Subject: Early reflections and the damper pedalPosted by rowuk on: 9/10/2014
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The only issues that I have ever had were putting the piano in a place where the large smooth surfaces did not cause assymmetric reflections that messed with the stereo presentation.
The damper pedal on a piano is "on" when not depressed. The pianos ability to ring is severely coprimised. A guitar, cello, contrabass has no installed damper and rings per design. The damper is the players arm or fingers.
I am sure that Steverinos preference to solo piano has nothing to do with ringing. Any loud playing as a solo instrument would also excite "more" wide band noise if the piano were truly so inferior. The thought did make me smile however. Generally, the real problem with piano is that it is well tempered. This sounds fine alone, but when playing with other "just" tuned instruments, we get sum and difference interference tones. They cause broad band beats that are disturbing to some and part of the art form to others. I feel fortunate that the musicians and composers intentions transcend all of this audiophoolery for my listening. That is probably because my instrument, the trumpet has the most intonation problems of any orchesteal instrument. High Q and very short air column. Not much room for play - especially with a piano.
I would imagine that the piano would be beneficial for a large scale audio system. The soundingboard absorbs resonance and if anything at all, would release a VERY small portion delayed in time. Coupling to the floor is something that the heavy brass wheels do well. For added transmission the brake mechanically couples even more

 Romy the Cat wrote:
An audio guy contacted me today with and an interesting note: “can't put a piano in the same room as a hifi”. When I asked why he wrote: “scott's steinway sounding board would 'ring' like crazy. it was my theory about why his tannoys sounded even muddier than they should. To prove it, we played a very short loud 'impulse' in the room, then turn it off and listen. You could hear the piano vibrate like crazy, for a relatively long time.  Definitely not good. I think there is a big difference between even a cello or a guitar doing some vibrating in the room (almost like your 10" tannoy effect, perhaps) and a huge piano board (mud).”

A valid concern. I did express unhappiness 7 years back about bass overtones when I had my guitar sitting in wrong place.

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=3840

I had a baby grand in my listening room for 3 years and did not detect problems. Perhaps I am not too observant but I do not think that I noted that my sound went does with arrival of piano. Guitar is very “bad” because it is very narrow bandwidth Helmholtz resonator. A  Piano is another hand is wide bandwidth resistor  and it would be less likely that it will be position at the location when acoustic pressure from Hi- Fi would ignite it. Of cause it is only a theory. Did anybody has any practical problem to integrate piano with audio?

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