Real-time physical model of a grand piano soundboard on field programmable gate array hardware

Abstract

A modern grand piano consists of over 10,000 singular parts and has a production cycle of approximately one year. This leads to the predicament that researching and changing acoustical features resulting from variable material properties of the instrument cannot be realized in a straightforward manner. The inevitable time delay as well as the variability of parameters makes a controlled research very hard, if not impossible. In this work, a system is presented that enables piano makers to change, simulate as well as auralise acoustical vibrations of a grand piano soundboard in real time using physical modelling methods on field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware. This specific implementation focusses on synthesizing and simulating the vibrations of a geometrically complete model of a concert grand piano soundboard, including the ribs, the bass, and main bridge, realistic material parameters as well as coupled strings. It can be parametrized and controlled from a software GUI running on a personal computer. This implementation is part of a larger project aiming at modeling a complete grand piano in real-time for research, instrument making as well as purely musical applications.