How to reproduce sound of piano

Hello, Shadorne said a while back in this thread,"Let
me say you need a very clean waterfall plot."

What exactly do you mean by that? Also why do you want this? What does it mean ? And how do you get this? How do you identify this?

The best is to give a classic example - the Quad 57. Because the cumulative spectral decay plot (waterfall) is so clean in the mid band this became a famous speaker - despite many other shortcomings. Most people will say this is one of the best sounding midrange around.

The reason is that the subtle timbre of the piano is not MASKED by driver resonance.

IMHO, it was a sad day when the industry began widely adopting lightweight metallic drivers with small motors - most of these designs ring badly and require "notch" filters to try and limit the ringing. Most people do not realize that it takes only a ringing at one frequency within several octaves to completely mask all the other subtle sounds within that band. It is called "masking" and has been studied extensively - it happens when one sound at a certain frequencies "masks" other sounds across an entire band or range of normally audible frequencies and SPL levels - this scientifically proven effect is used to compress audio files in the MP3 standards (basicaly they remove sounds that they "know" you can't hear anyway and make the compressed audio file much smaller).

Shadorne, you are right to point out overworked tweeters will smear over subtle resonances.

The Scintilla has yards of tweeter that never sound overworked. Highs flow off the ribbons naturally.

The mid ribbon is married to the tweeters so one cannot listen to one without the other. The big bass is musical into the 20s frequencies. All of that adds to a very great piano imitator.

In fact, the reason I own Apogee Scintillas is because of a fateful day listening to one in the 80's. I wandered about the listening room trying to convince myself I wasn't listening to some unseen piano player. I gave up, until I saw a Glodmund turntable spinning a record.

People say panels like the Quad 57 sound fast...this is the effect of a clean waterfall...there is no lingering ringing coloration to the sound - everything has a "light" realistic quality about it and you just hear more of the details on the recording. In a conventional box speaker this requires drivers that have internally critically damped drivers within their operating bandwidth (this generally requires doped paper/pulp or woven fabrics - anything to "deaden" the sound of the diaphragm itself and prevent ringing)

Shadorne,
How true, but I hate to have my head mimic a soundstage.

Exactly - me too. I don't like the sound being in my head. Headphones eliminate the pinna and that means they can never sound realistic even if they have superb performance.

this generally requires doped paper/pulp or woven fabrics - anything to "deaden" the sound of the diaphragm itself and prevent ringing

I would add that the latest approach is to this problem is to use "Constrained Layer Damping" - instead of doping a speaker cone with a viscous damping fluid they are now sandwiching a viscous fluid between two rigid cones - kind of like a springing car suspension with "shock absorbers" to dampen it. This idea works well because the internal energy within the cone is lost as the constrained layer shears.

Basically if you can't dissipate the stored energy in a rigid cone you unavoidably end up with some resonance - after all this is exactly how cymbals are made and they ring a long long time...