I love that someone actually made such a video. Youtube is such a great tool for us all. Anyone can share anything. Fantastic. But we all have to remember that bad speakers and compression rates and all that distort reality.
Here’s what the author says:
“a experiment with three different NSP chanter
chanter 1 :
African black wood with a very good reed (one of the best reeds I ever made)
the black wood chanter have a lot of overtones and makes great harmonics with the drones
chanter 2 :
plum wood with a good (average) reed
this chanter sounds a little bit dull, but with more sweetness than the black wood chanter
chanter 3 :
hard maple with a not so good reed
the maple chanter sounds dull with no sweetness.
Playing this chanter I miss something in the sound, the chanter sounds ‘like a old man without teeth and a mouth full of potatoes who is talking to me’. This chanter is for me more or less unacceptable to play.
When I play the three chanter I hear great differences in the sound .
But bad recording, video edit, compression to a MPEG layer, YouTube compression, bad sounding loudspeakers and that all, it cuts off all the important overtones/harmonics of the natural sound.
The three chanters sounds equal (for me on my PC) when I hear them on YouTube…
Is this a new or important thing? No, but I was astonished that a chanter I will never play (the third chanter) because his natural sound is so bad, sounds ‘so good’ on YouTube.”
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This video is about how all chanters sounding “equal” on youtube, but it inevitably brings up the question of what makes different chanters sound different from one another. The author addresses this in the comments:
“I would say that 70% depends on the reed, 20% how the chanter is made and not more than 10% on the kind of wood.
The third chanter, made from maple, sounds really good with a better reed.
But a black wood chanter will always sounds different than a maple or plum chanter in my experience.
Not better or bad, simply different and it is up to you what sound you like.”
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I completely agree. Choose your reedmaker first, your pipe maker on the reedmaker’s recommendation (preferably the same fella), and then choose your wood. Sure, wood choice does matter, but it’s far down on the list. Most pipers can hear the difference between an ABW chanter and an apple chanter using the same reed (these two woods being two extremes), but even that difference is somewhat small. Honestly, most comparisons between woods are difficult to make. The difference between Sonokeling and Osage, or Palisander and Plum is so small. Yes, it’s there, but you’ll hear much more of a difference with the same chanter and reed combo between a humid day and a dry day.
