A vibrating body’s sound comes mostly from the attached soundboard, not the string

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible without a soundboard; 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

Related

• A bare vibrating string is nearly inaudible without a soundboard (similarity 0.97)
• A bare vibrating string is nearly silent without impedance-matched coupling (similarity 0.96)
• A bare string radiates almost no sound; the body is what makes music audible. (similarity 0.86)
• 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 0.85)
• A violin string clamped between steel walls would radiate almost no sound (similarity 0.84)
• The string drives the sounding board that produces nearly all the sound. (similarity 0.82)
• A soundboard optimally transfers vibration without being too resonant itself (similarity 0.82)
• Attaching a small vibrating source to a larger surface boosts loudness by 25 dB. (similarity 0.80)
• Every stringed instrument is analyzable as a sound source plus modifiers (similarity 0.79)
• The air column alone vibrates; wall material only sets its shape (similarity 0.79)
• Body size relative to open-string pitch shapes each string instrument’s distinctive timbre. (similarity 0.79)
• A soundboard must avoid too-perfect impedance matching to not drain the strings (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 #corroborates (0.93) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 75