A bare vibrating string is nearly silent without impedance-matched coupling
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
Categorization
- QUESTION: Why is a bare vibrating string almost silent? The dipole-source explanation this alludes to is worth chasing across the cited chapters.
- XREF: Explains why tuning forks need a resonance box and why electric guitars need amplification; strong everyday-sound connection for the reader’s why-we-hear-what-we-hear question. — connects to: A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible without a soundboard; A vibrating body’s sound comes mostly from the attached soundboard, not the string; Luthiers’ informal tap testing is an impulse response probing the full string-to-air chain (+1 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 75
Broader Connections
- A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible; the instrument body amplifies it
#corroborates(0.97)