Myth of the Missing Fundamental

PianoSens.com
* There is a widely held ‘myth’ called ‘the missing fundamental’ in the bass register of a piano.
* This myth is very unfortunate and very untrue.
* I am here today to dispel that myth once and for all with irrefutable evidence.
* Is the fundamental present all the way down to A0. Of course!
* This evidence was collected from a PianoSens sensor on a large concert grand, a Fazioli F308. However, I did a similar experiment over 15 years ago using an instrumentation quality microphone on a Steinway D and got a similar result.
* As you watch the video and hear the explanation, you will clearly and unequivocally see that there are clean, pristine periods of repetition at the fundamental frequency all the way down to A0.
* You will see the spectral view of the time domain showing that the fundamental A0 is down only 9 dB from the 2nd harmonic A1. A factor of 9 dB is still very easily heard by human perception even at that frequency.
* I also show just how 'messy' the transient response is from the hammer strike moment, compared with the PianoSens sensor.

[@ivankonyukhov549]

The first partial in the vibrations of the string is present and lasts for a very long time. But it is poorly radiated by the soundboard due to the high impedance of the soundboard and due to the acoustic short circuit (in far acoustic field). Human ear is significantly less sensitive to low frequencies. Therefore, the fundamental tone goes below the hearing threshold and is masked by overtones. Also, the fundamental tones in the strings of the lower octave do not participate in interval beating(octaves,5ths, etc) and therefore fundamental tones of A0...G#1 are not important for tuning

[@PianoSens-ey8jb]

I did not say the fundamental is 'important' for tuning. I simply say that the fundamental IS present in the string.