The 'fake acoustic' synth

This is an idea of a specific synth sound setup for e. g. orchestra ensembles in classical music halls. I had this idea while working at Musikverein (as a stagehand, to avoid any confusion) at night once. I was wondering what it would be like to play a piece for synth and orchestra there someday. Some fresh air, so to say. 

This idea has maybe been around and even put into practice in some keyboard models for a while, I guess, but maybe not in good enough quality... and I haven't really seen it in use in top performing orchestras / chamber music ensembles yet. Could be worthwhile to give it a new shot - with better gear.

Standard settings:
Synth to DI to mixing board to PA, end of story.

'Fake acoustic' synth:

Imagine that a synth player wants to perform a modern classical symphony with an orchestra ensemble in a concert hall with marvellous acoustics.

Rather than wiring the synth to a PA, I think it would make more sense to equip the synth with loudspeakers directly on the instrument in such a way that it mimics e. g. a piano, with sound levels being similar to a classical piano. The sound would come from two loudspeakers, L and R, that are installed at either end of what would be the area where the wing of a classical piano is opened and the strings of the piano can be seen (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. The 'fake acoustic' synth (doodle). Keys, patch section and pitch bend wheel (or whatever you like, drumpad keys, etc. Here, it is just plain chaos, because I couldn't be bothered to draw it realistically. It is just a generic representation. It could also look totally different, too). In the area where a classical piano would have a wing and strings, L and R panning. Signal flow: from keys/controls to a (very fast) FFT analyser (because you can pitch bend...) to ensure correct panning at the loudspeakers, to speakers. For noise samples, maybe positioning at the predominant frequency makes sense, or the panning parameters for complex samples could already be saved in the database, and then played accordingly.

Each key of the synth would be panned at the correct position (but fretless, of course) so that each frequency that it can produce could be heard at the same position as it would on a classical piano covering the same octave range.

Advantages of this setup:

1. The instrument would fit in well with orchestral pieces of work from previous centuries, where PA systems were not known yet. It would feel more 'natural'.

2. Easy localisation of the instrument by other players and the audience.

3. By emitting sound this way, the instrument could use the naturally good acoustics of good concert halls, like the rest of the orchestra does. For example, the Musikverein in Vienna.

4. It could also work better in a 'chamber music' setting with e. g. theremin (why not, while we're at it) or string instruments.

The quality would, of course, strongly depend on the quality of the installed speakers, which could be limited by speaker size. Probably some sort of studio monitors with soft membranes and neutral sound would be best.

Please note that this would only make sense in rooms and concert halls with decent acoustics.

As a follow-up thought, I was wondering how to write this sort of thing in a sheet music version. As far as I know, no one has really bothered to come up with a standardised notation yet. It would also require a total absence of "colouring" by various synth models, to reproduce everything the same way every time, over the centuries. That might only be possible to do with a software emulating synths, like puredata. Could be one hell of a nightmare to even get started. BUT. If we want synth music to last, it would be worth the effort. Synth models may go out of production, reproductions may be inaccurate. But if people find a workaround (like just writing down mathematical operations, like in programming code), the sound will stay the same over centuries. Might be worth investing more time into thinking about methods of accurately reproducing synth sounds, by introducing a unified sheet music notation system and maybe software standard, just like MIDI facilitates communication and control.