A virtual reconstruction of the trumpet

Abstract

Virtual reconstructions of musical/instruments have already been analyzed in past years on violins. The ‘‘virtual’’ instruments can be used in subjective listening tests for the evaluation of the sound quality of different instruments, as well as in the restoration of ancient instruments, and for preliminary listening tests on new designed instruments. In this paper, the trumpet is treated as a linear system, characterized by its impulse response. From the IRs measured in different positions in the trumpet, an inverse numeric filter of three trumpets has been obtained, through a new developed technique. From the recording of some original pieces of music, sampled directly inside one of the trumpets, an ‘‘anechoic’’ signal has been obtained by convolution with the inverse filter calculated in the same position. The ‘‘anechoic’’ signal, convolved with the IRs just measured in the other trumpets, produced a signal containing all the acoustic characteristics of the instruments, avoiding all nonacoustic phenomena, and allowed the realization of ‘‘virtual’’ reconstruction of the trumpet. The first results of the listening tests confirm the similarity between the direct acoustic recording and the convolution technique also for the trumpet, as well as already found for the violins.