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Resonance and ringing in sound



 
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Trumptrevol
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Joined: 04 Nov 2020
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2021 5:40 pm    Post subject: Resonance and ringing in sound Reply with quote

I need help identifying what’s going on.

I’m playing in an area that is about the size of a normal bedroom and it has great harmonics. Whenever I play my source bounces off the walls and rings for about a second or 2 after I stop. But whenever I’m playing dead set center of the pitch, the room gets really boomy and rings for a solid 4-5 seconds after I’m done. I tend to stay on top of the pitch and when listening to me go a bit sharp, I lipped down the note and it started to ring.

Now this could obviously be do to a number amount of reasons but am I getting a genera grasp of what resonance is, and developing a sound that fills up an orchestral hall?

I know that every hall has some type of ring and reverb to it, but does anyone notice the same thing in noticing, when you play dead in the center of pitch, or whatever is happening in my scenario?
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GeorgeB
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 2:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What you are saying is interesting, but that kind of self analysis would drive me batty.
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zaferis
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 5:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah.. this is sounding like a very deep rabbit hole.

And at first blush I think you're confusing resonance and reverberation - or at least mixing them together.
Resonance is a quality in your sound the is generated by your action, the mouthpiece's control, and the instrument's amplication. IMO come with refinement of your sound making over time with solid fundamental efforts.

Reverberation is an affect of the room you're in, not necessarily that of a good tone. Though rooms have a tendancy to "like" certain tones/pitches - like in very reflective rooms (public bathrooms, staircases, etc) a voice will reverberate certain tones. If you sing a different pitch it won't reverberate as much.

MY suggestion is to have fun with the idea, but focus on a good consistent tone, playing in tune but through the center of that pitch (tune the sweet spot of your sound) and techinque..

\\: Listen, listen, listen, internatlize, imitate {take a lesson}... shed, shed, shed. :||
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RandyTX
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 9:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

One thing to be aware of, if you're not already, is that just about any room (other than a carefully tuned studio) will have a frequency (or possibly more than one) that will ring out more than others as an instrument, or voice, hits the right one.

If it happens on any note in the room you're describing, then it's probably not the room. If it only happens on one, or harmonics of the same fundamental pitch, then you're likely hearing the room itself. You can try to narrow it down with placing big foam sheets on walls that are perpendicular to each other, to see if the effect your'e hearing changes, or goes away completely.
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huntman10
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 11:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

RandyTX wrote:
One thing to be aware of, if you're not already, is that just about any room (other than a carefully tuned studio) will have a frequency (or possibly more than one) that will ring out more than others as an instrument, or voice, hits the right one.

If it happens on any note in the room you're describing, then it's probably not the room. If it only happens on one, or harmonics of the same fundamental pitch, then you're likely hearing the room itself. You can try to narrow it down with placing big foam sheets on walls that are perpendicular to each other, to see if the effect your'e hearing changes, or goes away completely.


Correct about the resonant frequency of rooms. The definitions of resonance and reverberation are both sound reflections, or echo. I believe we usually think of reverb as being a repeated echo of an acoustic event or identifiable sound, whereas we think of resonance is a strengthening of an existing tone.

The OP is describing a resonant frequency, which is dependent on the spacing and orientation of reflective surfaces of the space. What happens is that the reflected sound matches the waves of the sound coming from the trumpet, creating a standing wave.

You can determine the wavelength of any sound frequency by dividing the speed of sound in your medium (which is dependent on a LOT of variables, but for a room at about sea level and about 70 degrees is 1125 feet per second) by the frequency of the fundamental tone you generate (let's just assume an A=440 cycles per second, or Hertz {Hz}).

So at A=440 Hz, the wavelength is 2.55 feet, approximately. If your room is about 10.20 (4x2.55) feet across between two sound reflective walls, that tone will become resonant as long as the tone is generated, and then fade after a few hundred or so reflections (at 440 Hz divided by 4 wavelenghts = 110 reflections a second).

If the reflective space is some fractionally different distance, say about 11 feet (2.25x4.31), then the reflective waves are out of phase with the sound being generated, which tends to cancel out the reflected waves, preventing a standing wave from forming.

So the upshot is, there is no "magic" pitch that will create this resonance in any venue, and the pitch that does create some resonance means you are "in tune" with the space, but not with current standard musical pitch, which is actually a rather arbitrary but reasonable standard.

During my years of engineering, I did one extended study of the use of powerful acoustic energy (about 140 dB) in confined spaces to clean dust filters. Using acoustic probes, I idendified areas of nodal acoustic waves and anti-nodal waves in these rooms (with a LOT of ear protection) that helped me understand the phenomenon.
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