| Dictionary: sounding board |
| Architecture: sounding board |
A solid flat surface above a pulpit of an early church, intended to act as a sound reflector, directing a small fraction of sound of the speaker’s voice toward the listeners.
| WordNet: sounding board |
The noun has 2 meanings:
Meaning #1:
a person whose reactions to something serve as an indication of its acceptability
Meaning #2:
(music) resonator consisting of a thin board whose vibrations reinforce the sound of the instrument
Synonym: soundboard
| Wikipedia: Sounding board |
The sounding board or soundboard is the part of a string instrument that transmits the vibrations of the strings to the air, greatly increasing the loudness of sound over that of the string alone.
The sounding board operates by the principle of forced vibration; the board is gently vibrated by the string, and despite their differences in size and composition, the board will be "forced" to vibrate at the exact same frequency, producing the same sound as the string alone, differing only in timbre. Although the same amount of energy is transmitted with or without the board present, the sounding board, due to its greater surface area, is more readily able to transform this energy into sound. In other words, the sounding board can move a much greater volume of air, therefore producing a louder sound.
Sounding boards are traditionally made of wood (see tonewood), though other materials can be used, such as skin or plastic on instruments in the banjo family. Wood sounding boards typically have sound holes in them with different shapes depending on the instrument: round in guitars, f-holes in violin family instruments, rosettes in lutes, and so on.
The sounding boards of some instruments have unique names, such as plate, or belly (the latter in a violin).
In a grand piano, the sounding board is a large horizontal plate at the bottom of the case. In an upright piano, the sounding board is a large vertical plate at the back of the instrument. The harp has a sounding board below the strings.
More generally, any hard surface can act as a sounding board. An example is when a tuning fork is struck and placed against a table top to amplify its sound.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
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Copyrights:
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Architecture. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sounding board". Read more |
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