Piano sound synthesis: Relating physical phenomena to sound quality

Abstract

The piano is a complex instrument with a large number of mechanical elements, the majority of which contribute to the sound production. The physical characteristics of these elements together with their interaction influence the timbre of the piano sound. Thus, in order to give a precise description of the behavior of this instrument and effectuate a satisfactory sound synthesis, the totality of the physical phenomena that are part of the sound production ideally should be taken into account. However, due to the complexity of the sound production system, this is not possible. Still, works on piano sound synthesis have made it possible to model (usually non-real-time) high quality piano sounds. These models represent a great tool when studying the perception of piano timbre. We therefore propose, thanks to sound modeling and subjective studies, to determine the perceptual effect of phenomena involved in a sound production system. This approach hopefully will give a better understanding of the relation between the physical behavior of the instrument and the perception of its sound quality, and hereby give clues to how the piano model can be simplified without loss of quality. This is crucial for the conception of real-time high-quality synthesis models.