A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible without a soundboard

Evidence

As an example of the importance of impedance to sound and music, consider a violin. The body of a violin is much heavier and suffer than a string and has a much higher impedance. Both impedances vary with frequency too. The body needs to tap into the energy of the string in order to make sound. (Vibrating strings by themselves are almost silent—this will be made clear in the following chapters; see especially the discussion of dipole sources—for example, section 7.7). Hypothetically the string could be attached directly to the body, but there are several problems with this (see figure 1.2). The directly connected string may not set the correct body vibrations into play. Worse, there is a large impedance mismatch between string and body, preventing the string from imparting enough of its energy to the violin. (Note: We don’t want the transfer of energy from string to body to be too efficient either, lest the string dump its energy too fast.) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 75 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible; the instrument body amplifies it; A bare vibrating string is nearly silent without impedance-matched coupling — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 75; A vibrating body’s sound comes mostly from the attached soundboard, not the string (+1 more)

Related

• A vibrating body’s sound comes mostly from the attached soundboard, not the string (similarity 0.97)
• A bare vibrating string is nearly silent without impedance-matched coupling (similarity 0.96)
• Strings alone are nearly inaudible; their sounding boards radiate the sound. (similarity 0.86)
• A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible; the instrument body amplifies it (similarity 0.86)
• A bare string radiates almost no sound; the body is what makes music audible. (similarity 0.86)
• A violin string clamped between steel walls would radiate almost no sound (similarity 0.84)
• Small vibrating objects radiate weak sound because source size is far under one wavelength (similarity 0.81)
• A soundboard optimally transfers vibration without being too resonant itself (similarity 0.80)
• The string drives the sounding board that produces nearly all the sound. (similarity 0.80)
• Attaching a small vibrating source to a larger surface boosts loudness by 25 dB. (similarity 0.79)
• Every stringed instrument is analyzable as a sound source plus modifiers (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible; the instrument body amplifies it #corroborates (0.98)
• A bare vibrating string is nearly silent without impedance-matched coupling #expands (0.85) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 75
• A vibrating body’s sound comes mostly from the attached soundboard, not the string #expands (0.85)
• Small vibrating objects radiate weak sound because source size is far under one wavelength #expands (0.80)