Improved Soundboard Design
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How to create a soundboard with an even more open sound, capable of retaining quality and responsiveness while performing even in large halls
Active Soundboard Technology: Achieving Openness Without Sacrificing Playability
In piano design, the size of the soundboard compared to its environment plays a critical role in determining the tonal quality of the instrument. Larger soundboards generally produce a more open and resonant sound, while smaller soundboards result in a more compressed tone, much like how smaller drivers in a loudspeaker compress sound. However, this relationship is further influenced by the acoustics of the performance space. For example, in a typical living room, a small grand piano’s soundboard is large enough to provide an open sound. But in a concert hall, the same instrument may sound compressed, unable to project as openly in the larger environment.
The Challenge of Scale and Acoustics
While increasing the size of a soundboard improves openness, it often compromises both playability and tonal development. Concert grands, while capable of projecting well in large venues, tend to have slower, heavier actions compared to smaller grand pianos. Additionally, the tone on these larger soundboards often develops more slowly, diminishing the responsiveness and clarity that a musician needs during performance. Even in large spaces, the soundboard’s ability to resonate openly can be limited by the relative size of the instrument to the performance hall.
In contrast, some approaches have tried to artificially increase soundboard amplitude by adding shakers to traditional wooden soundboards. This method often combines the disadvantages of both technologies, resulting in heavy, fragile soundboards that sound like low-quality loudspeakers. These setups rely on shaking the soundboard from one side and letting the motion develop, which misses the key principles of soundboard resonance, leading to less nuanced and responsive performance.
Our Solution: Active Soundboard Technology
Our active soundboard technology redefines this challenge by directly inducing the necessary vibrations and wave motions in the soundboard without the need for intermediate elements like strings or shakers. Rather than relying on components to start vibrating the board from one side, our system immediately creates the proper wave motion across the entire soundboard, ensuring optimal resonance and tonal richness from the very beginning.
The Tendens piano exemplifies this approach, available in both a 2-panel version and a 4-panel version. The 2-panel version, at 2.75 meters long, is comparable to a traditional concert grand. The 4-panel version, with an overall length exceeding 4 meters, demonstrates how even larger setups can produce open, resonant sound in large concert halls while maintaining a direct, light, and responsive action. Despite its size, the tone develops quickly, offering both projection and clarity, which are typically lost in larger concert grands.
Moreover, our technology allows for a more "singing" tone and a sound that is capable of "speaking"—qualities that have been lost in much of modern acoustic grand piano design but remain highly sought after. By bringing these parameters back into the design, the Tendens piano offers a level of tonal richness and expressiveness that surpasses traditional instruments.
Unlike loudspeakers, which are engineered to avoid resonance, our soundboard actively works with its natural resonant panel frequencies. These resonances, key to generating a rich, complex tone, are embraced in our design, resulting in a fuller, more harmonically nuanced sound that maintains the immediacy of response needed by performers.
Practicality and Portability
In addition to enhancing tonal openness and playability, our soundboard technology is practical. Traditional large soundboards are heavy and prone to cracking, making them difficult to transport. Our design, on the other hand, is lightweight, durable, and resistant to environmental stress, ensuring that the Tendens piano can be transported and set up in various performance settings without compromising its sound quality or structural integrity.
Conclusion
The active soundboard technology in the Tendens piano represents a significant leap forward in piano design. By directly inducing wave motions in the soundboard without relying on intermediate components, we have created an instrument capable of delivering both openness and precision. This approach, combined with the ability to produce a singing tone and speaking quality, offers a truly innovative solution that bridges the gap between projection, clarity, and playability in large performance spaces.