Wooden music instrument vibro-acoustic fingerprint: the case of a contemporary violin

Violins are complex wooden musical instruments, whose quality is mainly evaluated on the basis of their aesthetics, as well as depending on the historical relevance of their makers. However their acoustic quality remains a key evaluation parameter for performers and listeners. The instrument perceived quality, in turn, depends, on one side, on the player, the environmental conditions and on the listeners’ psychoacoustic factors. On the other side, the quality of a violin depends on its materials, constructive and setup parameters, that impact on the vibro-acoustical characteristics of the instrument. This work investigates a procedure for the vibro-acoustic characterization of a violin, here called vibro-acoustic fingerprint, as an example of vibro-acoustical characterization of a wooden music instrument. The procedure was applied, as a case study, to an Italian contemporary violin, built in the year 2011 by the violin-maker Enzo Cena on a Guarneri del Gesù model.