Sound generation and interaction are highly complex, nonlinear, and self-organized. Nearly 150 years ago Rayleigh raised the following problem: two nearby organ pipes of different fundamental frequencies sound together almost inaudibly with identical pitch. This effect is now understood qualitatively by modern synchronization theory M. Abel et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 2467 (2006)]. For a detailed investigation, we substituted one pipe by an electric speaker. We observe that even minute driving signals force the pipe to synchronization, thus yielding three decades of synchronization—the largest range ever measured to our knowledge. Furthermore, a mutual silencing of the pipe is found, which can be explained by self-organized oscillations, of use for novel methods of noise abatement. Finally, we develop a reconstruction method which yields a perfect quantitative match of experiment and theory.

• Received 17 April 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.114301