Vsound 1.0

Vsound (due for launch first quarter, 2011) is a unique electronic musical device intended specifically for electric violinists. As players of such instruments know, the sound of an electric violin is very different from the wooden acoustic equivalent. This is because the body of a wooden instrument, which electric violins lack, has a profound effect on the timbre of the sound. Vsound takes the output from an electric violin and modifies it, producing its own output which can be plugged into a conventional amplifier. The resulting sound is very similar to that of an acoustic instrument.

Vsound is very straightforward to use - simply plug the output from the violin or pre-amp into its audio input. Plug the output into an amplifier, and select the violin type, volume and equalizer (if desired) using the navigator button. Vsound is also supplied with software to enable you to download your own violin frequency response curves.

How Vsound works. When a violin is played and the bow is drawn across a string, it sticks to the hairs on the bow and is displaced. A single kink in the string travels towards the neck, is reflected, and as it passes under the bow on its return to the bridge it causes the string to slip back. As a result, the force acting on the bridge is a simple saw tooth, which is typically the sound of an electric instrument. However, with wooden violins this saw tooth is coloured by the bridge and body, which bestows to the violin its characteristic voice.

Vsound acts like the body of an acoustic violin. It takes the saw tooth waveform produced by the electric instrument, and modifies it using an in-built algorithm, to produce an output that is strikingly similar to that of a wooden instrument. The modification of the input is performed by a very powerful processor which is fast enough to respond the incoming signal in real time.

The process is illustrated by the three graphs. The first shows the typical saw tooth trace (force signal), which acts on the bridge of a violin, whether electric or acoustic. The second trace show a frequency response characteristic taken from a typical acoustic violin body. The final trace is what an acoustic instrument generates, and what your ear actually hears - i.e. it is the first trace modified by the violin body’s frequency response.