Acoustic Analysis of Violins in the Concert Hall—The Stainer Violins Case Study

The purpose of this article is to study comparatively the acoustic signals of an original Jacobus Stainer violin, from 1716, versus a Stainer Copy, not dated, within a concert hall. The experimental study conducted within the con-cert hall of the Brasov Philharmonic, comprised in the recording of musical signals with five microphones placed in various positions and processing signals. The musical signals were performed by the same violinist and consisted on four parts (open strings excitation, pizzicato, an excerpt from Max Bruch—Concerto no. 1 in G minor op. 26, PI (first cadence of the solo violin and an excerpt from Jules Massenet—Meditation for violin and orchestra from the Opera Thaïs). The obtained acoustic signals have been processed using a program developed in MatLab. The results in the form of acoustic spectrograms, frequency spectrum, magnitude and power spectrum density for each receiver were analyzed comparatively, highlighting the fact that de-pending on the position of the receivers in the concert hall, the sounds emit-ted by the violins are amplified or dampened. The spectra of amplified frequencies in different positions within the concert hall was established based on the statistical analysis and compared in order to observe the power of the resonance body for the original violin and for the copy ones.