Newbie question: What does "voicing down" mean and what is the point of it?

[enjru]

Sorry about this very long post, but please let me explain why this problem has been troubling me. I've been out piano-hunting and I found a big piano that I really want to get for our new house. It's not quite as huge as a concert grand but it is simply the best piano I've ever played on (and with). When I first struck a note on it, with the right pedal down, the sound resonated for so long that I eventually let go of the pedal, not because the sound had actually faded, but because I was so unused to such a l----o----n----g sustaining sound that my leg let go of the pedal out of habit and by mistake. I have fond memories of a Bosendorfer concert grand which I played as a child that had a wonderfully dark growl in the bass and I have been trying to re-experience that growling bass ever since. This piano, which I found, exceeded all my hopes and expectations of ever being able to re-capture these childhood dreams.

Then I read on the various piano websites about how some big-sounding pianos, meant for projecting the sound right to the back of the large concert halls that we build nowadays, need to be "voiced down" for the domestic market. Well, that just totally blew away my dream of getting this piano for our new house. I mean, if a wonderful piano with an almost orchestral sound has to be "voiced down" for my house, maybe I should just make the rest of the family happy and settle for a $200 second-hand piano with a thin, tinny sound and put the money into something mundane like use it as a deposit for a house so that the kids can inherit something boring when I die.

However, my hope is that I've completely misunderstood what "voicing down" actually means, and that there is actually a point to it, and that "voicing down" isn't as criminal an act as what I'm imagining it to be, which, until someone here takes the trouble to explain to me clearly, is sounding to me as if it is something close to to chopping up a Steinway and adding some circuitry to it to turn it into a Casio.

Thanks,
Enjru

[silverwoodpianos]

Every room has different acoustical qualities; the acoustics of a concert hall will be quite different than the room at your home.

In the concert hall, any sound has to beat a lot of air in order to reach the back of the room; especially when the room is full of things that absorb sound, for example, humans and the clothing they wear…..

So, generally speaking, the hammer set in a concert hall is left with a harder tone quality than one would leave in a domestic room.

Most likely if you did not “voice the hammer set down” the instrument would not have the same tone in your house. The usual procedure is to place the instrument in your home and then voice down until you get the sound you like.