PIANO IN LISTENING ROOM

I have a friend that says the piano resonates when he really gets his JBL speakers going. One is placed under his paino in the living room. he likes it but I don't think I would.

Piano is not preferable. The size of the piano matters (smaller, better). I have a spinet in my listening room. It does not make a huge difference. For critical listening, I close the keyboard cover and put a weight on the pedal that stops the strings from vibrating (sorry, I don't play and don't know its proper name). One can hear a definite difference.

The piano is also a a piece of furniture like any other in the room that will affect accoustics -- a big bookcase near the speakers is not good, a chest of any sort will also resonate. But sometimes all this is not bad, just something to be aware of.

Jay Coleman

I'm quite sure that when recording music in a studio they don't throw out the piano standing in the studio while recording other instruments. That means the resonant noices are already there, on the recording!

And taking this even further, when several musicians are playing together the different instruments interacts with each other. According to the Flat Earth rules, this will make the music worse!

Another bag of worms...

JohanR

Bad logic I'm afraid JohanR.In a home stereo the goal usually is to repreduce the recording accurately.Any flaws or resonances from the recording studio are just part of the recording.If you add resonance etc your self afterward you are altering the recording.If thats what some people want thats fine, but if their goal is to reproduce as exactly as possible whats on the record you should avoid adding anything extra.

In my experience (I too have a 5ft 3inch piano), a piano will only really sing along if you ask it to, i.e. placing a heavy object on the sustain pedal which lifts the dampers off the strings causing what Zappa called 'Pan-Chromatic Resonance Of A Highly Ambient Domain'. He even went to the trouble of recording people talking under the piano and recorded the 'sympathetic resonance', but thats another story! My large TV causes more probs than the piano, At least the piano was designed to sound better than a hunk of rattling glass and plastic!

Mickey

P.S. Acoustic guitars... now that's a problem. I have to remove those from the listening room.

As Micking said, the major issue would be if you depressed the damping pedal whilst the hifi was playing. The higher frequencies (top 2 octaves I think) aren't dampened so that will be small issue but if it tap a piano you don't get a great deal of resonance, no in comparsion to empty furniture or, for instance a cello/double bass.

The size of the piano is more of an issue I would guess.

Matthew

Shouldn't you be asking
'What effect will a Hi-Fi in the same room have when I listen to my Piano'

duncan

Email: djcritchley at hotmail.com