Violin f-hole contribution to far-field radiation via patch near-field acoustical holography.

The violin radiates either from dual ports (f-holes) or via surface motion of the corpus (top+ribs+back), with no clear delineation between these sources. Combining "patch" near-field acoustical holography over just the f-hole region of a violin with far-field radiativity measurements over a sphere, it was possible to separate f-hole from surface motion contributions to the total radiation of the corpus below 2.6 kHz. A0, the Helmholtz-like lowest cavity resonance, radiated essentially entirely through the f-holes as expected while A1, the first longitudinal cavity mode with a node at the f-holes, had no significant f-hole radiation. The observed A1 radiation comes from an indirect radiation mechanism, induced corpus motion approximately mirroring the cavity pressure profile seen for violinlike bowed string instruments across a wide range of sizes. The first estimates of the fraction of radiation from the f-holes F(f) indicate that some low frequency corpus modes thought to radiate only via surface motion (notably the first corpus bending modes) had significant radiation through the f-holes, in agreement with net volume changes estimated from experimental modal analysis. F(f) generally trended lower with increasing frequency, following corpus mobility decreases. The f-hole directivity (top/back radiativity ratio) was generally higher than whole-violin directivity.