Tunable sonic crystals as an extension of acoustical musical instruments

VALERIA SOL GOMEZ; ALEJO ALBERTI; IGNACIO SPIOUSAS; LEONARDO SALZANO; OSCAR EDELSTEIN; MANUEL C. EGUÍA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; International Symposium on Musical and Room Acoustics; 2016

International Commission for Acoustics

Sonic crystals are made by the periodic arrangement of hard scatterers in a host medium, such as air, and are efficient devices for controlling the propagation of sound. There is a vast literature that shows many of their extraordinary capacities like forbidden frequency bands, hyperfocusing, self­collimation or negative refraction, and potential applications such as sound barriers, acoustic switches or acoustic diodes. In this work we describe the first application of a sonic crystal to the domain of musical acoustics. We constructed a tunable sonic crystal that when placed between the sound source and the audience, it is able to greatly modify the timbre and directivity pattern of the source during the performance, acting as an acoustical extension of the musical instrument. The sonic crystal can be dynamically tuned by changing its internal geometrical configuration. Different configurations of the sonic crystal and their possible effect on the localization of two instruments from the woodwind family were evaluated by analyzing a transverse section of the sound field and binauralrecordings.