Air resonance power efficiency evolved in the violin and its ancestors
Hadi Tavakoli Nia, Ankita Jain, Yuming Liu, Mohammad‐Reza Alam, Roman Barnas, Nicholas C. Makris · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2015
Acoustic radiation from a violin can be explained by clear physics at its lowest frequency resonance (air resonance), which also helps to explain key aspects of violin design evolution. It is found that inefficient, inactive void area was decimated and air-resonance power doubled as sound-hole geometry of the violin's ancestors slowly evolved over eight centuries from simple circles of Medieval 10th century fitheles to complex f-holes of the late Renaissance and Baroque period. F-hole length then increased across centuries in the renowned Amati, Stradivari, and Guarneri workshops, favoring correspondingly higher air-resonance power, by processes consistent with random craftsmanship mutations and subsequent selection.