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Acoustic analysis of musical instruments

One of the most useful techniques to determine the acuostic response of a musical instrument is the acoustic and modal analysis. This analysis allows to determine the musical instument response in terms of sound pressure at each frequency and is carried out by “tap-testing” the instrument, recording the signal with a microphone or an accelerometer and make a FFT (fast Fourier Transform) signal analysis, a mathematic algorithm that allows to pass from the time domain to the frequency domain and obtain the so called spectrum.

The acoustic emission and accelerometric spectra highlight the characteristics of each instrument that are identified in terms of amplitude, position and bandwidth of the peaks. 

During my work, I have characterized several historic and contemporary instruments and i had the opportunity to gain a deep knowledge that allows me to identify, reproduce and eventually improve their features.

Example of historic mandolins acoustic emission spectra