Piano Sound Characteristics: a Study on Some Factors Affecting Loudness in Digital and Acoustic Pianos

The study of the piano sound characteristics is an essential part on the way of creation of high quality synthesizers and computer music applications. This paper focuses on the loudness property of the piano and on what and how different piano characteristics affect its loudness. This research combines results of other studies about this issue, as well as the authors´ experimental study in this field. The aim of such research is to create a relatively simple model which allows calculating the expected loudness of the piano music when it is digitally represented in MIDI. The loudness information can benefit computer music applications like visualizers, automatic music classifiers, and performance study applications.