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Echoing some of what noambenhamou said, here's my experience...

My music room is about 12 feet by 13 feet...very small for a concert grand. It has wood flooring and hard walls, so it is naturally very loud. Before I brought the piano in, I brought a 5 x 8 foot area rug to put under the piano.

When I first got the piano in, the piano sounded very loud and jarring in the room. I put in 25 acoustic panels, and it made a huge difference to the sound in the room and of the piano. The piano was still a bit brighter than I liked, but it was much better.

My piano tech has done some voicing, and that helped a lot. To be realistic, these larger pianos are designed to make a lot of sound for big spaces. When you voice a set of hammers that are hard, or try to voice down too much, it's probably not going to last, so I second noambenhamou's comment about using voicing as a last resort.

Over time (my tech did the initial voicing in May) the piano has become a bit brighter, but I'm still pleased with the sound. One advantage of having a slightly bright piano is it encourages you to pay attention to dynamics and to improve your control when playing softly. In the future, I will be installing a bass trap in the corner, putting a thicker rug under the piano, and possibly putting more acoustic panels in.

If your floor is a hard surface, your first investment should be a thick, sound-absorbing rug. This will absorb a lot of the sound that will otherwise be reflecting very quickly to the ceiling and close walls. A tremendous amount of sound comes from the bottom of the piano, and that should give you quick gains. If you ever lay under your piano when someone else is playing, you'll notice how much sound comes from the bottom. As an aside, your piano sounds wonderful listening from underneath!

Good luck,

Steve

That's quite reassuring to hear, guys. I was ready to plaster checkerboard acoustic foam tiles to my new wall and pay a fortune for the privilege. I can't wait until Monday so I can slap those panels on the wall and give them a listen.

My new Jansen artist bench came in. I took the Steinway knobs off the old one and put on the new one, which looks beautiful in front of the B.

I do have a rug under the piano, but it's a relatively plain one from IKEA. However, it's exactly the size of the piano and it's my favorite color as well as Paisley. It would break my heart to have to change it out. The experiment with the moving blankets was really promising. I don't think we had enough to do significant coverage, but having one against the wall opposite the lid did take the edge off some of the harsher higher notes.

On another subject, I noticed my prop stick for the lid was a bit wobbly and found out that one of the brass screws that holds it in was about to come out! Should I A) Text my sales rep and explain the problem since I supposedly have a 5 year warranty, B) Wait until the tech comes for the satin rub out and have him look at it or C) just grab a flathead and try and screw it back in? I'm honestly terrified I'm going to do something wrong and try to baby my stuff as much as possible. Thanks again!

IF you know how to handle a screwdriver and know not to overtorque the screw, just do it. If it were a screw from the action or another critical area, maybe not, but this is just holding two pieces of wood together. . If it feels stripped out or something, give them a call to make a warranty repair.

Steve

Hahaha. Don't ask me. I'll tell you to take the action out and start voicing your hammers by trial an error.

Call the store, and ask them if its ok for you to tighten the screws or if they would like to send a tech to do it. That way you are covered.

I found the best sound is no area Rug under the piano. Your acoustic panels will do all the work required no problem. Like a huge semi truck with an empty load. That area rug will be for looks only

Also, you will probably be able to move the piano any way you want now, so its the most visually pleasing.

I'm just as eager as you are for Monday, can't wait to hear your impression. You are giving yourself a heart attack for nothing because you never seen what acoustic panels can do. It sounds too good to be true, like black magic voodoo. Its not - its science, and it works like alcohol on a snail. Just a little bit does a whole lot hahaha.

Gorgeous, Markarian!

Hadn't read your buying experience but to get such a nice piano is a special treat.

You love your rug. Is it wool? I think that would matter. Does it have a thick padding?

Me? I'd get the real deal. Old oriental with good piling and with thick padding underneath. I do like the colors your chose. Try some double face tape to hold the end down.

Good luck with the paneling. You could try a rug or tapestry on a wall as well.

Hi - I also have the same problem (home with high ceiling and all hardwood) and now also want to give acoustic panel a try. Just wondering, do you think it will work if I place the acoustic panel just on the floor under the piano? Thanks!

Go ahead and move into the house first!! Everything will change.

We did a round of renovations before our Estonia 168 moved in, and it was interesting and amazing to hear the sound change as we brought the furnishings back into the living room. Even changes in adjacent rooms seemed to change the perception of sound.

A chair, a book case, a table, a small pile of mail, a bowl of cat toys: just live there.

Forget the rug. Who cares.
It's like you have a turbocharger for your car in the mail due to arrive any day, and you want to mess with better quality spark plugs in the meanwhile to get more power.

The turbocharger does the business! And same goes with those panels

Rx2bunny, anywhere in the room will be fine. You can fine tune it by placing them in different areas but it will be a very subtle difference. Not saying you won't be able to hear subtle difference.


Sound travels pretty fast. It doesn't take long before it bounces off some walls a few hundred times and finally reaches those panels and the sound get swallowed.

Okay, so the panels were unpacked and placed at various locations around the room. As you said, Noam, these things really do swallow sound. Only problem is I don't know where to put them. I'm doing trial and error, but the piano still sounds boomy and undefined. I was able to iron out some of the harsher high notes but the damn thing still rattles my floor, especially on D#4! I can feel it right through the lyre and on my heel. Putting a thick moving blanket down on my rug helped a bit, but this piano doesn't sing like it did in the showroom, it yells, whines, and growls

I still have not furnished the room. Could this help with the uncontrolled thickness on the bass end? I bought ten panels (they come ten to a pack), was that not enough for this room? Does there need to be more coverage?

I'm feeling a little discouraged here, but I'm just impatient to enjoy my new Steinway.

Here's a photo of what it looks like now. The bare fiberglass is just hanging on nails in the wall so I could try different placement before finishing the panels with burlap:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2433619/IMG_20131230_235853.jpg

The room does look a bit spartan at present. If you are going to be putting any furnishings in there that would be the first thing to do, I should think. Then position your panels.

I quite like the idea of the panels hanging like pictures. The angle would probably be beneficial.

Aha, the floor has come into play.

If your floor was built using standard joist construction, it might be acting as a huge 'soundboard.' The vibrations of the piano are transmitted through the legs and directly into the entire span of the floor. A carpet has almost no effect in stopping this transmission. The legs of the piano need to be sonically de-coupled from the floor.

There is a specific type of caster cup which is designed for this purpose. You can find information here:

Piattino Caster Cups

These are the only product I've found which actually works. It might be worth a try.

I would get the tail out of the corner and have the piano open up to the room rather than towards the wall. The tail in the corner is probably worsening the boomy bass problem. You may eventually want a larger rug but I'd start with changing the position.

Sophia

I feel your pain! First of all, don't stress to much, it's not worth it. Easier said than done because I was heaving mini heart attacks when I was in the same situation.

First thing you need to implant in your mind - the piano still sounds beautiful. It's the same piano that "sang" at the store. (check the serial number hahaha, you sure it's the same piano?). I'm just kidding...

Second of all, you have a very fine piano. 2002 B has just about had enough time to mature and sound REALLY good! So don't worry about the piano.

The boomy sound and hurting in the ear is the room acoustics. You may not think that the piano store where you bought this piano had anything "special" done to their showroom, but lets be reasonable. They are selling pianos that are played at the store to "test" the sound. Sound sells, so I would argue that they paid very well attention to the acoustics and perhaps paid an acoustic consultant to make it very good there.

I wouldn't call it an "unfair advantage" because they sell sound. So they have to make sure things sound best there. But never expect that sound in your home.

When a note is struck, the sound travels and may hit the farthest wall and come back to your ear. If the wall is far away like at the store, the sound may come back in 0.4 seconds lets say. In your home, it's coming back in 0.001 seconds. 0.4 sounds good, it has a very natural singing reflection. 0.8 is better! But it gets to a point where more is not better anymore, it starts becoming worst. I'm not an expert, just did alot of reading when I had the same issue.

So when you put acoustic panels, sound simply doesn't bounce back. So the sound that you hear is coming directly from the instrument. So your piano will NEVER sound like it did at the store.

But without the room interfering with the sound, I would bet your piano sound that comes directly from the strings and sounboard is superb, so as long as you can shut the room up, you will be happy.

It will not have that beautiful reverb that you had at the music store, it will be a warmer more "intimate" sound.

Back to topic:
If your room is so "live" you may need MORE panels than 10. I had 15 if I remember.
Also, I hate to be the guy saying this, but when you go "green" you sacrifice. What kind of panels did you get?
The OC 703 are very effective but nasty for the environment and to accidentally breath. That's why you wear a mask when working on them and wrapping them. After that - you are fine.

Your local insulation hardware store should have OC703. It would be like a warehouse. Call around.
You should buy 10 of those sound like you need more anyway.

As in your photo, you mounted the panels to the walls.
If want an instant gratification of hearing what it would be like with 1.5 times the acoustic panes - 15, lay them at a 20 degree angle against the well. That will allow the sounds to get behind the panel, thus increasing the surface area by 2!!!

I don't like how tall your ceiling is just over the piano. If it was tall everywhere in the room, but I sense somehow the sound gets trapped in there in a vicious circle of acoustic nightmare!

Can you inch your piano a bit towards the main room, and point it towards the main room. Open the lid so the sound will go to the main room. After you do that, place some of the panels in the main room as well.

Keep us up to date with the experiments! If there is a will, there is a way. We don't give up till it's right! And it doesn't have to be expensive!
Noam

If there are any windows, would opening them help? I'm just curious. And if nothing works, can you use the soft pedal whenever you practice? (I guess no to the second one, but no harm in asking)

Aren't you planning to furnish the house? And live in it?

There is never harm in asking.
Opening a window is not a good idea because the fluctuations in humidity and temperature inside the house would be as drastic as outside - so it's not good for the piano.

I have a solution for a piano that is too loud, and I'll make a video "how to". Hopefully PW will open up a sub-topic-thread in piano tuners and tech forum that I can post it in. If not, I will post it on the general forum.

When placing a piano be sure to keep in mind that for servicing the action it will need to be removed. There needs to be at least 3 feet from keyboard to the first obstruction. This means you need more room in front of the keyboard than just where you place the bench to play.

Wow, thanks for all the replies! So the first thing I wanted to tackle today was the transmission of bass energy to the floor, since it was acting as mentioned above like a huge soundboard. The website for those special caster cups was down, so decided to get creative and cut up a couple IKEA silicone rubber potholders and put them between the ebony caster cups and the rug. The result was significant and the bass is no longer ringing hard as it was.

One thing NOT shown in the pictures is that there is this weird dead space above the front door, almost like a big shelf. I put a panel up there today and things started sounding a lot better. I bought a second ten-pack of these panels (Knauf Ecose), but haven't deployed them yet. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get heavy drapes up for the windows. I also bought a heavy rug and put it down in the lower portion of the room, again, getting somewhere.

Now the piano sounds less harsh, but still a bit undefined and a bit muddy, so it's no longer deafening at least. I enjoyed playing it for the first time today. As soon as I get it furnished I will have a better idea of how it sounds, I suppose.

I AM planning to live in my new house, but I can't very well move until the new carpets are in (a week and a half from now). So all I can do now is work on my remodeling and play the B on breaks.

Noam, the Ecose panels are identical in spec to the OC703. I can definitely tell they do the job. Talking next to one that's near a wall sounds very weird and does suck in a lot of sound.

The cathedral ceiling can't be helped. This is the house I bought, the place for the piano, and how it's built. If lowering the ceiling is the only way to get decent sound (the piano store did have low-tiled ceilings) I may rent a huge ladder and install eyebolts in the joists so I can suspend some panels on cables, but I'd rather try and take better advantage of the space.

Other ideas my friends and I tossed around:

1) Wall to wall heavy drapes/tapestry, up to six feet from the floor

2) A huge, movable screen, made up of 8 panels stood vertically (so 8 feet tall by 16 feet long, hinged like a privacy screen)

Thanks again everyone for your help!

The Royal Albert Hall has some inverted acoustic mushrooms hanging from the roof to deal with its echo. If need be, you should be able to devise something for your cathedral ceiling.

"Back in the day" we collected egg cartons and stapled them to walls, good enough for a basement garage band.
Not haute decor, but it seemed to work.

If I wanted to do it in a NICE house I would probably frame them and cover with a lightweight decorative fabric, something acoustically transparent like speaker cloth, but with a pattern - then hang them as "moderne art".

At the time we thought the softness of the cardboard combined with the egg bump shapes were the magic.
Our idea was based on pictures of anechoic chambers that we had seen, but our budget wouldn't have permitted any actual PURCHASES.

Still frugal after all these years (-:

EDIT:
Now that I have seen the pictures my GUESS is that the PARALLEL WALLS behind and in front of you are the biggest culprit, maybe the ONLY culprit.
They are 12 ft or so apart and (as sheet rock on 2 by studs) they probably bounce bounce bounce bounce sound around until tomorrow (-:
I would try cladding ONE of them first with the panels that you have already bought, then try the other wall.
I would resist doing both, for a week or two.
I suspect that ONE damped wall would do it, but BOTH might make things a bit too dead (subjective, I know).
:END EDIT

PS Naturally I am envious.
ENJOY your B !!!