What frequencies make up the majority of classical piano music?

[testwork]

I've created some new speakers and I'm mostly pretty happy with them. The only thing I'm a little concerned with, is the performance with piano music.

While some of the upper piano notes seem nice and "sudden", it seems as though my speakers are playing [muffled] "behind a curtain" for the rest of the piano music.

The speaker is a two way with the woofer crossed over at 1200hz I believe. With the highs starting slightly above that point.
The drivers are not placed properly at the moment, with the high end driver resting on top of the woofer cabinet, mounted well above ear height and a good ten inches from the woofer.

I hope to resolve this over the weekend.... unless my problem is with the woofer as I suspect it is. Is most of the piano music I'm hearing coming from my woofer (1200hz and below)? I don't want to spend a lot of time on this enclosure if I'm just using a crappy woofer. It's a 1st generation Cerwin Vega 123W 12" woofer from a 211-R.

 

[Fred Longworth]

Tweeters are highly directional compared to woofers. After you have phase-aligned the tweeter, make sure it is pointing toward your preferred listening spot.

Classical music uses the full gamut of frequencies. A lion's share of the POWER is used is the bass and upper-bass domains. A majority of the melodic line occurs in the midrange domain. The overtones concentrate in the treble domain.

Classical music makes greater demands on speaker systems than popular music (which tends to concentrate in the bass and midrange). An exception to this is Baroque music, which tends to have very little bass because of limitations of the instruments used at the time.

Fred

 

[phaedrus]

A piano ranges from a low of 27.5 Hz to a high of 4186 Hz. Middle C is at 261.62, and the A above Middle C is A440. So if you figure most playing is two octaves above and below Middle C, you're looking at the majority of the music being in the range from 65 HZ (two octaves down) to 1046 (two octaves above Middle C).

Obviously the strings throw off lots of harmonics above that, but those are the primary frequencies.

David

 

[dshoaf]

To answer your title question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies

This would be just the fundamental note frequency and not all of the overtones that makes up a wider spectrum. The sum of these frequencies (actually an FFT) is what gives each instrument its unique sound.

IMHO, speaker design is about 50% science and 50% Black Magic. Here's a good thread to learn about the former: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=150939

Be aware, however, it is one of the longest threads on the Internet so plan on taking some time to follow. When done, this will provide some insight into the interactions of horns, throats, drivers, and crossover networks.

There are plenty of design discussions on crossover design using all of the T/S specs and lots of modeling packages for cabinet design, too. It is pretty much a discipline in and of itself.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

David

 

[vinyldavid]

Q: which frequencies make up the majority of classical music?

A: Most of them. Moreso than anything else, other than electronic music....but that usually does not require such accoracy and nuance from the associated speaker

 

[testwork]

Guys, thanks for the detailed responses. I am aware I have work to do on my speaker setup before I can consider it done.


Dshoaf, that is what I'm using for the top half of my speaker.

A piano ranges from a low of 27.5 Hz to a high of 4186 Hz. Middle C is at 261.62, and the A above Middle C is A440. So if you figure most playing is two octaves above and below Middle C, you're looking at the majority of the music being in the range from 65 HZ (two octaves down) to 1046 (two octaves above Middle C).

Obviously the strings throw off lots of harmonics above that, but those are the primary frequencies.

David

Awesome, that was exactly the answer I was looking for! :thmbsp:

 

[mashaffer]

If you can get piano sounding right most everything else will also. It is very demanding of good imaging and phase coherence in my opinion. midrange and upper midrange really need to be right.

With regards to baroque music being bass shy this may be so to a degree with the major exception of the Organ. Of course they did have the bass viol so there was bass but in the orchestral and chamber music (with period instruments esp.) the bass would have a subtlety that might be less common in later music. Again JMO.

mike

 

[Isotonic]

Very interesting.

 

[Kerb]

The piano is one of the most difficult instruments to reproduce accurately.

The piano is a percussion instrument with alot of harmonics.

If you can get your speakers to reproduce piano music accurately, you have some fine speakers.

 

[hifi_nut]

If your system can reproduce a good piano recording with fidelity, it will be a very revealling system indeed, meaning it will sound good on good recordings, and it will sound bad on bad recordings.

Try keith Jarreth´s " The Koln Concert", either in LP or CD. If your system reproduces the tone, scale, harmonics and grandeur of this recording, you´re an happy camper.

 

[gogofast]

If your system can reproduce a good piano recording with fidelity, it will be a very revealling system indeed, meaning it will sound good on good recordings, and it will sound bad on bad recordings.

i totally agree. this is exactly what i have found out, too. i really haven't come across an "exceptionally good" piano recordings yet, neither on vinyl nor cd, but i have a few that sounds great, and only great through large horn systems. i used to stay away from listening to piano music in general, specially classical, due to this particular reason. same goes for cello music. there are only handful of really good recordings out there i think. i can tell right away with first track whether it's a good recording or not since the large horn systems are very revealing.

 

[JBL GUY]

hifi_nut Try keith Jarreth´s " The Koln Concert", either in LP or CD. If your system reproduces the tone, scale, harmonics and grandeur of this recording, you´re an happy camper.

+1 on the "Koln Concert" LPs

 

[Arkay]

I completely agree with what others have been saying: reproducing a realistic piano sound is one of the biggest challenges any speaker system faces. A lot of experts and audiophiles make sure to include piano music when evaluating/auditioning speakers, for this reason. The piano is both a percussion instrument and a string instrument, in a sense. You have fast, percussive attack, wide dynamics, rapid decay with lingering complex harmonics, the interplay of steel and wood, resonance and echo, and the differences that a performer's touch, pedal work, etc... introduce, and you have them over a wide frequency range. VERY HARD to do accurately in a single speaker.

On the good side, if you can get your speakers to where they reproduce piano very well, most other things will sound good, too, since you'll have many of the most demanding aspects of sound reproduction covered already.

It is only a suspicion, but I think you may be right about the woofer: Cerwin Vegas are known as rock speakers. Their woofers will pump out a lot of smashing bass guitar and kick-drum sound perfect for a poolside party, but for the kind of fast, tight attack and subtle harmonic interplay that a piano produces, they may not be the best tools for the job. You may need to upgrade to different woofers, to get a very good piano sound.

Don't give up, though, without making sure first that other things like your crossover design aren't responsible for the disappointing aspects of what you are hearing so far. The tinkering and experimenting is all part of the "art" of speaker design (as opposed to the science), and is a worthwhile learning experience, at the least.

 

[mashaffer]

Something to try that might lead to some enlightenment is to run with just the woofer running full range (no crossover). Then run just the woofer but with crossover connected. You might notice something that just jumps out at you (of course compensate in your mind and just listen to the quality of the lows and midrange (a lot of information below 1200Hz).

mike

 

[tubed]

Piano
Fundamentals 28 - 4196Hz
Overtones 5 - 8kHz
EQ Reference: Warmth 120Hz
Clarity 2.5 - 4kHZ
Attack 8kHz