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Blind-tested soloists unable to tell Stradivarius from modern violins

310 points by ZeljkoS 10y ago

justusw 10y ago
There is a great episode on Planet Money about Strads and other objects that have a high perceived value due to the history and branding that come with them. They cite the same 2012 Indianapolis study mentioned in this article. The researchers have an amazing eye for detail. A perfume was applied to all violin's chin rests so that musicians would not be able to tell them apart based on smell. Tells you a lot about brand perception using all our senses. This is the Planet Money episode: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/22/482936331/episode-538-is-a-stradivarius-just-a-violin http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/22/482936331/episo...
- flopto 10y ago
  Planet money's coverage is great; I think a bunch of the posts below would be answered by listening to the podcast. One of the main things I remember taking away from the podcast was that the soloists in the study were not the most famous "best" violinists in the world (they may not even have been professionals?). One of the violin makers they interviewed thought this was the biggest weakness of the study, and he was confident he could tell the difference (not that that means too much).
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  similar to say katanas - best hand-made today are probably better than best of the past (after few hundred centuries steel is not the same, even if blade was very well taken care of). yet old preserved blades are priced as luxury collectibles, not only due to interest of various anime watchers. and all they do is to collect dust on somebody's wall
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Yep, just like all the most-capable and beautiful cars in the world which sit in private collections not being driven. At least violins get played for the most part :) I always thought it'd be depressing to be a Ferrari engineer or in a similar position of making things great when you know the most of them will never be used anywhere near their potential, or worst-case never used and hoarded for profit by rich investors collecting trinkets they know little about. You're also undoubtedly aware of the types of buyers who e.g. Get a LaFerrari crash it on the turn exiting the dealership ( http://m.sfgate.com/world/article/1-5-million-Ferrari-wrecked-moments-after-6615584.php http://m.sfgate.com/world/article/1-5-million-Ferrari-wrecke... ) . IMO that would make it hard to care about my work, knowing that wholly-underserving drivers are smashing these functional works of art. Just because you can afford one of the fastest vehicles out there doesn't mean you're at all qualified to drive it.
    - derefr 10y ago
      There's a certain moment in the game Cave Story where you can come back to the gunsmith who you stole your initial weapon from. He begins by being irritated at you, but then notices that the weapon has collected obvious signs of being extremely thoroughly-used. This cheers him up, and he repairs/upgrades the gun and returns it to you. Cave Story has a Japanese author, and Japan more generally seems to think quite a bit about how tools are treated over their "lives." I'm not sure if there's a specific term in Japanese for the particular sensation of "knowing that your craftsmanship is being put to use." But there is the concept of a tsukumogami—a tool that has had so much use put into it for so long that it has become imbued with its own soul. Such objects are sometimes given funerals when they break, etc.
continuations 10y ago
So a Stradivarius is the 17th century equivalent of $2000 per feet gold plated "audiophile" speaker cables?
- Shivetya 10y ago
  No, I would instead state is as modern expensive violins are of the same quality if not better. However you first have to remove the cues players have in identifying the violin they are using to remove inherent bias
- huxley 10y ago
  No, the test doesn't show that Stradivarius violins are junk but rather that the best violins by modern violin makers are able to challenge and surpass Stradivarius violins.
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    Well, audiophile speaker cables are not junk either. They are just no better than normal cables.
    - munchbunny 10y ago
      It's not a good comparison because there's much more range in instrument quality than cable quality. "Audiophile speaker cables" carry the stigma that they do because the luxury versions aren't better than the "minimum viable product" versions in appreciable ways. Instruments, violins included, see a massive range in quality between the things you would consider functional violins and very well-made violins. The complaint about audiophile speaker cables is that they don't produce a difference in result that even trained sound engineers would be able to reliably identify. Whereas any reasonably experienced violinist or even any reasonably experienced musician would be able to tell you about the difference between a bad and a good violin by listening to them. The differences between the best violins might be hard to identify, but there's still a substantial range of quality levels.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
mcphage 10y ago
Something I don't see mentioned here, that I remember from when this first came out, was that the modern violins were $100,000+ instruments, not just run-of-the-mill violins.
- hueving 10y ago
  True, but that doesn't matter. The point was shattering this silly image that strads were unmatched by any new violins.
  - geebee 10y ago
    I agree that it doesn't undermine the main point of the article (which I think you summarize accurately). But it is worth a mention. I'd be interested in knowing how the lower priced new violins do, maybe into the $15,000 range, $5,000, sub $1,000.
- neap24 10y ago
  I do wonder how much this effect extends down to more moderately priced violins. I remember reading about a similar experiment where wine experts couldn't distinguish between wines at different price points very accurately (and some couldn't even distinguish between reds and whites!).
  - delazeur 10y ago
    I am a little suspicious of those wine studies given that master sommeliers can identify vineyard and vintage in blind tastings with reasonable accuracy. Different wines taste fundamentally different. Saying people can't distinguish between red and white is like saying people can't distinguish between Bud Lite and Guinness. Who were these "experts" really? Restaurant critics? Even some wine critics I could believe, but not wine experts.
    - cromulent 10y ago
      This study used oenology undergraduates at the University of Bordeaux. I guess I would consider them wine experts (relative to me) but the industry would not. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.227.7161&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.227... "A white wine artificially colored red with an odorless dye was olfactory described as a red wine by a panel of 54 tasters."
StavrosK 10y ago
I've never understood the mismatch in this test. Inability to distinguish isn't the same as "being better" (strictly speaking, it's pretty much the opposite). What if people could tell Stradivarius from modern violins, because modern violins sounded better? I understand that this test proves that modern violins sound just as good as Stradivarius, but how do you tell which sounds better? I guess you make a blind test where you ask people which of the two things they like best... The test says that they couldn't distinguish if the violins were old or new, but they got 31/33 guesses wrong, which is a 93% failure rate, a.k.a. 93% success rate, far higher than the 50% you'd expect by chance. They seem to be conflating two tests, one being "Can you tell which violin is new?" and one being "Which one do you prefer?" Maybe the title should be "blind-tested soloists overwhelmingly prefer modern violins to Stradivarius". /rambling
- daveguy 10y ago
  > I understand that this test proves that modern violins sound just as good as Stradivarius, but how do you tell which sounds better? > this test proves that modern violins sound just as good as Stradivarius > how do you tell which sounds better? The test just proved that neither sounds better, that modern ones sound just as good. The same level of sounding good means neither one is better than the other, right? Edit: also, FTA -- "In total, 33 of the soloists’ guesses were wrong and 31 right, with 5 indeterminate." That's about 50/50 not 93%. They are the same. There is no difference except lore.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Oh oops, you're right, I read "out of the 33 guesses, 31 were right".
- wrsh07 10y ago
  I'd prefer your title. It seems more honest, and there's no reason to say that's not the case. But I think pointing out that musicians can't distinguish between these instruments is essential to debunking this notion that Strads are somehow uniquely better than anything else. Turns out, Strads are high end violins that sound great after two hundred years. If you're a professional violinist, don't waste your money to "further your career."
dzdt 10y ago
Take that as a proof that Stradivari really was VERY good. Compared to the very best that can be produced centuries later, with much better technology available, his instruments hold their own. Contrast with, say, athletes. The very best runners from a century ago wouldn't qualify for the olympics today. It does say that the extra value in a Stradivarius is in the history or mystique (or more cynically, the branding) as opposed to the sound. But the sound is there as well, just it can be matched by a modern top quality instrument.
- Retric 10y ago
  We don't use high tech manufacturing because people assume violins should be made to look and sound like Stradivarius. That and it's also a tiny market.
  - dzdt 10y ago
    The technology suite available today makes a big difference even for a largely by-hand process. Things like temperature and humidity control, digital micrometers, strain gauges, magnifying imagery. And having reliable supply chains for reproducably formulated lacquers, varnishes, glues, etc. There is a ton of technology helping in the background even if it isn't front and center.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Most of which was available in 1950, and a surprising amount could be found in the 1800's. EX: For cooling, Spring house, cave, imported ice, or just location. The first thermometer dates back to ~1612. High tech IMO imply's more. For example: http://www.industrial-lasers.com/articles/2008/03/ornamental-color-laser-marking-of-metals.html http://www.industrial-lasers.com/articles/2008/03/ornamental... I agree making things reproducible is a big deal, but that's mostly a question of cost not capability. 3d printing or computer control in general allows for beyond human levels of accuracy. Or even just computer modeling to find new and adventitious shapes.
      - 10y ago
leecarraher 10y ago
a recording of that soloist can be made indistinguishable from the actual performance, i think we need to accept that there is some value to the soloist and the audience in being in a room with such a piece of history and craftsmanship.
- topspin 10y ago
  "we need to accept that there is some value..." Perhaps. What we don't need to accept are the claims of Stradivarius fanbois that insist there is some unquantifiable aural superiority to their favorite instrument that only they have been blessed with the ability to perceive. It's bunk, and this study has been a small victory for rational thinking. So feel free to cling to whatever intangible you wish, but I feel no loss here; I celebrate whenever we can finally dispense with yet another fetid accumulation of nonsense and its purveyors.
tinco 10y ago
In truth it would be rather embarrassing if a top of the line modern violin could not at least equal a Stradivarius. Besides the world economy being much stronger, the technological advancements and the sheer degree of knowledge transfer makes it almost inevitable. Anyone can fire up youtube and immediately peer into the workshops of master luthiers. I bet you could take a couple million and build a top class violin workshop from scratch in just a few years. Imagine how cool it would be if the big SV aristocracy instead of spending millions on building sailboats, they'd invest in developing musical instruments? As much faster the USA-17 is than any hundred year old yacht, as much more beautiful a violin could be than a stradivarius.. perhaps.
- michaelbuckbee 10y ago
  Growing up, I still remember articles about the "lost art of making violins" and how there was all this speculation about what made them so special. Was it a chemical or fungus in the river the logs were floated in? Some lost technique? A particular sequence of aging, resting, bending the wood? Turns out it's none of that and just branding (albeit branding around having a great product at that point in history).
HenryTheHorse 10y ago
I've owned cheap guitars and I have a "nice" Fender. I'd much rather play the Fender. But as any guitar player will tell you, you can put a cheap Strat knock-off in Jimi Hendrix's hands and it will still sound like Jimi playing his Strat. Conversely, a Yehudi Menhuin or a Joshua Bell need a good instrument. At their level of playing, little things affect their performance.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  That's the crux I believe. A beginner player would not appreciate the difference between a $200 guitar and a $2000 guitar. Someone struggling to find the finger positions for a simple chord isn't going to notice the action, fret shape, fingerboard radius, tonewoods etc. Only a player who is trying to get that last 2% of tone out of the instrument will appreciate the subtleties. I am guessing they didn't compare cheap student violins against the Stradivarius, otherwise I am sure any reasonably competent violinist could tell immediately. Modern construction method, including CNC machines can certainly make instruments a lot better than they did 'back in the day'. Check out Youtube for videos of the first guitars made at the Fender factory - those workers were freehand cutting the body shapes on a jig saw. No consistency at all. As much as a '56 Strat or a '59 Les Paul is in demand today, I bet there were a lot of dogs among the ones made back then. I am sure there are thousands of violin makers today who can make a violin as good as a Strad. However, I've heard rumours that Stradivarius made his from wood that was thousands of years old that was extracted from a glacier - perhaps that is the special 'magic' that no one else can replicate?!?
  - HenryTheHorse 10y ago
    > As much as a '56 Strat or a '59 Les Paul is in demand today, I bet there were a lot of dogs among the ones made back then. Most of them are awful - construction-wise. (But to some, that's the lure.) I would much rather own an electric guitar or a tube amp made in the last 15 years than one from 1974.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
vasilipupkin 10y ago
one way to think about these results is, despite knowing a lot more about theory of sound and music and having access to much more sophisticated manufacturing, modern violin makers are unable to create violins that are better than a 300 old violin. That's a pretty good reason to stick to what you know
- mrob 10y ago
  The goal isn't to make the objectively best violin, it's to clone a Stradivarius. Stradivarius violins are widely considered to be the best, so any deviation from them must make the violin worse. Branding is more important than sound quality.
  - vasilipupkin 10y ago
    suppose I already play a Stradivarius now. Does this experiment provide evidence that I should switch ? I am saying no.
- hx87 10y ago
  Another way to think about them is that the best craftsmen of a few hundred years ago can make violins that are every bit as good as the ones we do today, but the difference is that we can crank them out (as far as $100,000 objects can be "cranked out") to an extent unimaginable by Stradivarius or his contemporaries. After all, $100,000 is cheaper than most dwellings in the developed world, whereas even during his lifetime a Stradivarius violin would have cost much more than an average house.
  - vasilipupkin 10y ago
    this is not the issue. Stradivarius violins are in private collectors' hands and collectors let famous violinists play those violins. The issue is, should those violinists switch to a brand new violin? this experiment provides no evidence that it's necessary
    - hx87 10y ago
jarmitage 10y ago
I used to work at a musical instruments startup and we tried blind tests of prototypes to assess which combination of materials recipes/sensor design/firmware algorithms etc were 'the best'. Ultimately these tests only reveal the biases of the players. They will prefer – and actually perform better with – that which they believe to be configured in a certain way, regardless of whether it is in reality or not. We had one prototype that us engineers hated to death because the only difference between it and the rest was that it was a different colour, but ALL the players hailed it as the golden standard. The same goes for the famous 'Does Fuck All' button on recording mixing desks, which you can use to tell players that you've made the change that they wanted to satisfy them. And also when you're buying speakers it's very common to be shown the same set of speakers three times and have three opinions. I just recently tour managed a friend and would set up her mic sound every night, and each time I would need to play some sort of subtle trick with her so that she felt things were just right. No amount of 'rational tweaking' could achieve the same.
- jerf 10y ago
  "And also when you're buying speakers it's very common to be shown the same set of speakers three times and have three opinions." I've noticed with sensory inputs in general that the things that impress you immediately, and the things that impress you once your brain has adjusted to the input and has settled in, are different. For the visual example, observe the difference between the settings on the TVs in the store vs. what the community will generally agree is the optimal long-term setting for your TV. Also, while the first ten minutes of a 3D movie may be pretty whiz-bang, I've generally stopped noticing it's in 3D by the end. I think in both cases, our initial preferences are for something sharper and exaggerating the differences, but over the long term that becomes quite tiring. A case could probably be made even for smell; in the store the strong, unusual perfume may be very impressive but if you are going to use it all day long, I prefer to be around people who use something a lot more subtle.
  - splawn 10y ago
    This reminds me of the Pepsi challenge. They blindfold you and have you take a sip of Pepsi then a sip of Coke. The results usually have Pepsi wiping the floor with Coke, despite Coke outselling them everywhere. It turns out the reason for the disparity it that they only test the initial sip. Pepsi is sweeter than Coke which seems better to most people when just sipping rather than drinking a whole can.
dzdt 10y ago
The full text PNAS article is here : http://m.pnas.org/content/111/20/7224.full.pdf?with-ds=yes http://m.pnas.org/content/111/20/7224.full.pdf?with-ds=yes Some notes. The study started with a pool of 13 new and 9 old instruments, and pre-selected down to the test set of the best 6 new and 6 old among these. Among the test set, new instruments had a slightly higher average score than old ones, and the top two instruments were new. But all soloists picked a mix of new and old instruments in their top 4, and in the overall rankings new and old are well mixed. From high to low based on combined session scores, the list goes NNOONNOONONO. Of the soloists, 7 prefer an old instrument for their performances, 2 a new one, and 1 switches between an old and new.
sandGorgon 10y ago
this is the actual PDF to the study - http://members.home.nl/p.brandt/2014%20PNAS%20Fritz%20six%20old%20Italian%20and%206%20new%20violins.pdf http://members.home.nl/p.brandt/2014%20PNAS%20Fritz%20six%20... Interestingly, not even the maker of the top instrument (which garnered 26 points against the Stradivarius) knows about the result. It was deliberately kept hidden. I really hope they let the world know - something this good needs to be celebrated and rewarded. It is unfair otherwise.
perlgeek 10y ago
Note that in 2010 study, the test asked the question "which of these violins would you like to take home?", not "which of these do you think is a Stradivarios?" (see http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/stradivari-loses-out-in-blind-testing-study-of-player-preferences-for-old-and-new-violins/ http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/stradivari-loses-out-in-...) The follow-up study seemed to ask a similar question. So these studies tried to find out which violins are most popular among high class violin players, not (primarily) whether they were able to tell the difference. I've read elsewhere about the first study that the the participants were quite surprised that people thought they couldn't identify the Stradivarius, because they were never asked to.
- vilhelm_s 10y ago
  In this study they did both, they had a long session where the players where asked to rank the instruments based on how they liked them (and rate various characteristics like loudness and timbre), then at the end they had a "new or old" question: "Next they were presented with a series of violins (one at a time, in random order) and given 30 s to play each one before guessing what kind of instrument it was. If a soloist was unclear about the meaning of the question, he/she was prompted to guess whether the violin was new or old. The series consisted of (i) that player’s favorite old violin; (ii) the player’s favorite new violin; (iii) an old and a new violin the player found unsuitable; (iv) the old violin and the new violin that, in session 1, were most often included in top-four lists and that were on average most highly ranked within those lists; and (v) the old and the new violin that were most often rejected as unsuitable in session 1."
- white-flame 10y ago
  Another issue with the 2010 study is that the performers were not allowed to tune or adjust the Strads in any way, but could do so with the new ones, so the old violins sounded objectively worse. And yes, they could absolutely tell which was which, and that the modern ones sounded better often due to the fine tuning in the setup.
fhood 10y ago
Great, now I want to see this with tube amps, and pre-67 strats. Because I am now even more convinced that musicians are full of crap.
deleted 10y ago
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gmarx 10y ago
There has long been a received wisdom among a subset of audiophiles that the best records ever made were the RCA shaded dog Living Stereo from the late 1950s and early 60s. This guy opened my eyes to the bunk: http://www.high-endaudio.com/softw.html http://www.high-endaudio.com/softw.html
minipci1321 10y ago
(probably off-topic) you might want to check out this guy and his work: Laurent Bernadac https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurent-bernadac-b5223ba4 https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurent-bernadac-b5223ba4. YT has some recordings.
blhack 10y ago
Isn't the appeal of a strad much more "I am playing an instrument which was built in the 17th century, one that has been played by hundreds of years worth of masters, played for kings and queens, played almost exclusively by people who have dedicated their lives to the same thing I have dedicated my life to", and not "sure sounds better than the other ones!"? If I could sit down at Da Vinci's desk, in his library...don't you think the importance of that would be the history behind it, and absolutely not that somehow the lighting in the library made reading better, or the sound of the birds outside made retaining information easier or some silliness like that? Strads, like really anything else related to art, are about context.
- lprubin 10y ago
  In Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick calls this historicity. A shopkeeper shows two necklaces, indistinguishable from each ither but one was worn by Sitting Bull and the other is a fake. One has historicity and the other is basically worthless. But the knowledge of the historicity is inspiring and makes it valuable. The power of human perspective. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity
  - jxcl 10y ago
    I like the idea that if you took both necklaces and shuffled them around in a way that neither you nor the shopkeeper knew which was which and then gave them both back to him, you would have essentially robbed him without taking anything from him.
    - Crespyl 10y ago
      You would have destroyed information.
stevefeinstein 10y ago
Is it not possible to just mechanically test the sound of each instrument in a sound proof chamber to identify the unique characteristics of each? There is no better, there is only what's so. Measure that and if YOU like one better, make another one that produces the same sound. Probably not as easy as it sounds (pun intended).
tsm 10y ago
As a professional violinist who's played both a Strad and a del Gesu (and who spent several months with a 1770 Nicolo Gagliano), and who studies with someone whose daily driver is a del Gesu (and who's been playing antique Cremonese instruments for the past 25 years), I always have problems with this sort of study. As my teacher put it, "Modern instruments may have a voice that's as good as an antique's, but they only have the one voice. Due to how age works with violins, antique violins have many beautiful voices. In a couple hundred years a 21st century instrument with the same craftsmanship and material quality as Strads and del Gesus—and these instruments do exist—will be as good as a the Strads and del Gesus do now. But right now that's not the case." And I've found this to be true myself. When I pick up a modern violin it might take some time to figure out how to make it sound best, but then I'm done. With an antique instrument, it turns into this indefinitely-long relationship where I continuously learn new things and find new voices and tone colors in the instrument. When I returned the aforementioned Gagliano after three months of heavy use, I felt like I'd only just begun to discover the range it had available. And it really is about age for age's sake, not quality. I own a good-but-not-great Edinburgh-made violin from 1807 appraised at $15K, and I've seriously played a modern-made violin appraised for $60K. The "default voice" of the $60K violin is better, but the antique instrument is definitely the more versatile one. I know we like to be objective and scientific here on HN, but don't discard the fuzzy talk of "forming a relationship with the violin" too soon. Even if we don't understand the science behind it yet, it seems that there's something to it. A better experiment that'll never happen because of logistics: Present a professional violinist with ten antique violins, ten modern violins, and a range of high-quality bows (the bow plays a HUGE role in how the violin sounds and responds). Give him/her a few hours to choose the favorite of each type of violin and a complementing bow. Let him/her play both violins for a year and then report back on which was preferred. Repeat for a statistically-significant number of violinists.
- Etheryte 10y ago
  So essentially the only difference between the test that you proposed and what was conducted is that yours is longer and the conducted test was double blind?
  - 10y ago
Zigurd 10y ago
I'm very sceptical of experiment design that relies on self-reporting. It is super-easy to get people to accept amazingly compromised compressed versions of original visual and audible information. But what is that measuring? That we can't sense the difference? That information from our senses is lost when encoding it in our nervous system? That our conscious minds cannot introspect or report the difference? We know our conscious minds are unreliable reporters of what our subconscious is doing or deciding. On the other hand it is easy to show that the scene we think we are seeing is created in the mind. It is easy to trick a person into thinking identical shading is different, and different shading identical. What does that actually tell us about how to compress video? I would prefer to go with physiology. If our sense organs can resolve it, and the nervous system can delivery the sensory information, the information is important, no matter what words our unreliable consciousness says.
tibbon 10y ago
I've been playing guitar (and other stringed && fretted instruments) for around 23 years (including a music major in college). I don't think old guitars are inherently better, and I have gotten my hands on some rather amazing pieces (1914 Gibson Loar F5, 1959 Les Paul, 1955 Telecaster, etc) and they were really fun. I've also played some guitars that people like collecting that were absolute garbage instruments, including a 1966 Gibson 330 that was just horrid. But here's the weird thing that I do not understand, the hallmark of a great guitar to me isn't the sound, it's the "songs stored in it". Yea, that's some hippie-woo-bullshit, but almost every guitar I pick up that I like has me instantly playing something that I've never played before in my life. Some guitars, despite being technically excellent, just don't have them in there. Other guitars, if I pick them up in the studio I've suddenly written some really interesting pieces. This probably actually just comes down to comfort, feedback loop response of sound, weight, small details, etc. I don't think there's any memory to an instrument that stores these; but at the same time, I can go through a wall of guitars and pick out my favorite ones this way. There is only a slight correlation to price/age on these.
- TylerE 10y ago
  One of my pet theories is that the 'vintage era' guitars were mostly made with old growth timber. These days, unless you're dealing with extremely specialist woods (like ash that's sat under a swamp for centuries), that's just not the case.
  - tibbon 10y ago
    There's definitely some wood things that are somewhat different on older instruments. Old growth wood, endangered wood, etc...
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Funnily enough, that has come up in the history of replicating the Stradivarius. One theory I remember was that there was a mold or fungus in the wood he used that trees don't have anymore.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
lisper 10y ago
The same phenomenon happens with wine. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-wine-taste-the-same http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-wine-t...
InclinedPlane 10y ago
I'm tempted to believe these results, as I suspect a lot of the reputation of stradivarius violins is overblown. However, there is almost always a huge problem with these sorts of tests: the pepsi challenge problem. With subjective measurements it can often be difficult to robustly test the differences between two things in a short sample period. People may say one or another sounds better but that might only apply for a small sample. Or, people may just be unable to explicitly say which one they actually prefer when confronted with the choice in the moment. Whereas with regular use over extended periods of time they may be able to develop a stronger preference and be able to pick out differences explaining that preference. As a sort of proof of concept, aurally, I've noticed that there are several popular songs which have very distinctive audio glitches in them (typically high pitched beeps). The thing is, these glitches are not noticeable by most people when casually listening (testified by the fact that the songs are out in public release with such glitches) but once you notice them you begin to notice them every time, and it detracts from the enjoyment of the song. Similar effects on a subtler level surely exist for almost all music, so I wouldn't take the idea that listening to two separate samples of music and being forced to express a preference in the moment is at all a reasonable measurement except in more pronounced cases.
davidgerard 10y ago
(2014)
znpy 10y ago
Wow, incredible!! /s
kazinator 10y ago
That's awesome; it shows you how good those old violins are. Those guys had no microphones, amplifiers, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, ... just their ears and woodworking tools.
ap22213 10y ago
It would be more interesting to know if the soloists play better with one.

310 points by ZeljkoS 10y ago

There is a great episode on Planet Money about Strads and other objects that have a high perceived value due to the history and branding that come with them. They cite the same 2012 Indianapolis study mentioned in this article. The researchers have an amazing eye for detail. A perfume was applied to all violin's chin rests so that musicians would not be able to tell them apart based on smell. Tells you a lot about brand perception using all our senses. This is the Planet Money episode: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/22/482936331/episode-538-is-a-stradivarius-just-a-violin http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/22/482936331/episo...

flopto 10y ago
Planet money's coverage is great; I think a bunch of the posts below would be answered by listening to the podcast. One of the main things I remember taking away from the podcast was that the soloists in the study were not the most famous "best" violinists in the world (they may not even have been professionals?). One of the violin makers they interviewed thought this was the biggest weakness of the study, and he was confident he could tell the difference (not that that means too much).
saiya-jin 10y ago
similar to say katanas - best hand-made today are probably better than best of the past (after few hundred centuries steel is not the same, even if blade was very well taken care of). yet old preserved blades are priced as luxury collectibles, not only due to interest of various anime watchers. and all they do is to collect dust on somebody's wall
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Yep, just like all the most-capable and beautiful cars in the world which sit in private collections not being driven. At least violins get played for the most part :) I always thought it'd be depressing to be a Ferrari engineer or in a similar position of making things great when you know the most of them will never be used anywhere near their potential, or worst-case never used and hoarded for profit by rich investors collecting trinkets they know little about. You're also undoubtedly aware of the types of buyers who e.g. Get a LaFerrari crash it on the turn exiting the dealership ( http://m.sfgate.com/world/article/1-5-million-Ferrari-wrecked-moments-after-6615584.php http://m.sfgate.com/world/article/1-5-million-Ferrari-wrecke... ) . IMO that would make it hard to care about my work, knowing that wholly-underserving drivers are smashing these functional works of art. Just because you can afford one of the fastest vehicles out there doesn't mean you're at all qualified to drive it.
  - derefr 10y ago
    There's a certain moment in the game Cave Story where you can come back to the gunsmith who you stole your initial weapon from. He begins by being irritated at you, but then notices that the weapon has collected obvious signs of being extremely thoroughly-used. This cheers him up, and he repairs/upgrades the gun and returns it to you. Cave Story has a Japanese author, and Japan more generally seems to think quite a bit about how tools are treated over their "lives." I'm not sure if there's a specific term in Japanese for the particular sensation of "knowing that your craftsmanship is being put to use." But there is the concept of a tsukumogami—a tool that has had so much use put into it for so long that it has become imbued with its own soul. Such objects are sometimes given funerals when they break, etc.

continuations 10y ago

So a Stradivarius is the 17th century equivalent of $2000 per feet gold plated "audiophile" speaker cables?

Shivetya 10y ago
No, I would instead state is as modern expensive violins are of the same quality if not better. However you first have to remove the cues players have in identifying the violin they are using to remove inherent bias
huxley 10y ago
No, the test doesn't show that Stradivarius violins are junk but rather that the best violins by modern violin makers are able to challenge and surpass Stradivarius violins.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  Well, audiophile speaker cables are not junk either. They are just no better than normal cables.
  - munchbunny 10y ago
    It's not a good comparison because there's much more range in instrument quality than cable quality. "Audiophile speaker cables" carry the stigma that they do because the luxury versions aren't better than the "minimum viable product" versions in appreciable ways. Instruments, violins included, see a massive range in quality between the things you would consider functional violins and very well-made violins. The complaint about audiophile speaker cables is that they don't produce a difference in result that even trained sound engineers would be able to reliably identify. Whereas any reasonably experienced violinist or even any reasonably experienced musician would be able to tell you about the difference between a bad and a good violin by listening to them. The differences between the best violins might be hard to identify, but there's still a substantial range of quality levels.
ceejayoz 10y ago

mcphage 10y ago

Something I don't see mentioned here, that I remember from when this first came out, was that the modern violins were $100,000+ instruments, not just run-of-the-mill violins.

hueving 10y ago
True, but that doesn't matter. The point was shattering this silly image that strads were unmatched by any new violins.
- geebee 10y ago
  I agree that it doesn't undermine the main point of the article (which I think you summarize accurately). But it is worth a mention. I'd be interested in knowing how the lower priced new violins do, maybe into the $15,000 range, $5,000, sub $1,000.
neap24 10y ago
I do wonder how much this effect extends down to more moderately priced violins. I remember reading about a similar experiment where wine experts couldn't distinguish between wines at different price points very accurately (and some couldn't even distinguish between reds and whites!).
- delazeur 10y ago
  I am a little suspicious of those wine studies given that master sommeliers can identify vineyard and vintage in blind tastings with reasonable accuracy. Different wines taste fundamentally different. Saying people can't distinguish between red and white is like saying people can't distinguish between Bud Lite and Guinness. Who were these "experts" really? Restaurant critics? Even some wine critics I could believe, but not wine experts.
  - cromulent 10y ago
    This study used oenology undergraduates at the University of Bordeaux. I guess I would consider them wine experts (relative to me) but the industry would not. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.227.7161&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.227... "A white wine artificially colored red with an odorless dye was olfactory described as a red wine by a panel of 54 tasters."

StavrosK 10y ago

I've never understood the mismatch in this test. Inability to distinguish isn't the same as "being better" (strictly speaking, it's pretty much the opposite). What if people could tell Stradivarius from modern violins, because modern violins sounded better? I understand that this test proves that modern violins sound just as good as Stradivarius, but how do you tell which sounds better? I guess you make a blind test where you ask people which of the two things they like best... The test says that they couldn't distinguish if the violins were old or new, but they got 31/33 guesses wrong, which is a 93% failure rate, a.k.a. 93% success rate, far higher than the 50% you'd expect by chance. They seem to be conflating two tests, one being "Can you tell which violin is new?" and one being "Which one do you prefer?" Maybe the title should be "blind-tested soloists overwhelmingly prefer modern violins to Stradivarius". /rambling

daveguy 10y ago
> I understand that this test proves that modern violins sound just as good as Stradivarius, but how do you tell which sounds better? > this test proves that modern violins sound just as good as Stradivarius > how do you tell which sounds better? The test just proved that neither sounds better, that modern ones sound just as good. The same level of sounding good means neither one is better than the other, right? Edit: also, FTA -- "In total, 33 of the soloists’ guesses were wrong and 31 right, with 5 indeterminate." That's about 50/50 not 93%. They are the same. There is no difference except lore.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Oh oops, you're right, I read "out of the 33 guesses, 31 were right".
wrsh07 10y ago
I'd prefer your title. It seems more honest, and there's no reason to say that's not the case. But I think pointing out that musicians can't distinguish between these instruments is essential to debunking this notion that Strads are somehow uniquely better than anything else. Turns out, Strads are high end violins that sound great after two hundred years. If you're a professional violinist, don't waste your money to "further your career."

dzdt 10y ago

Take that as a proof that Stradivari really was VERY good. Compared to the very best that can be produced centuries later, with much better technology available, his instruments hold their own. Contrast with, say, athletes. The very best runners from a century ago wouldn't qualify for the olympics today. It does say that the extra value in a Stradivarius is in the history or mystique (or more cynically, the branding) as opposed to the sound. But the sound is there as well, just it can be matched by a modern top quality instrument.

Retric 10y ago
We don't use high tech manufacturing because people assume violins should be made to look and sound like Stradivarius. That and it's also a tiny market.
- dzdt 10y ago
  The technology suite available today makes a big difference even for a largely by-hand process. Things like temperature and humidity control, digital micrometers, strain gauges, magnifying imagery. And having reliable supply chains for reproducably formulated lacquers, varnishes, glues, etc. There is a ton of technology helping in the background even if it isn't front and center.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Most of which was available in 1950, and a surprising amount could be found in the 1800's. EX: For cooling, Spring house, cave, imported ice, or just location. The first thermometer dates back to ~1612. High tech IMO imply's more. For example: http://www.industrial-lasers.com/articles/2008/03/ornamental-color-laser-marking-of-metals.html http://www.industrial-lasers.com/articles/2008/03/ornamental... I agree making things reproducible is a big deal, but that's mostly a question of cost not capability. 3d printing or computer control in general allows for beyond human levels of accuracy. Or even just computer modeling to find new and adventitious shapes.
    - 10y ago

leecarraher 10y ago

a recording of that soloist can be made indistinguishable from the actual performance, i think we need to accept that there is some value to the soloist and the audience in being in a room with such a piece of history and craftsmanship.

topspin 10y ago
"we need to accept that there is some value..." Perhaps. What we don't need to accept are the claims of Stradivarius fanbois that insist there is some unquantifiable aural superiority to their favorite instrument that only they have been blessed with the ability to perceive. It's bunk, and this study has been a small victory for rational thinking. So feel free to cling to whatever intangible you wish, but I feel no loss here; I celebrate whenever we can finally dispense with yet another fetid accumulation of nonsense and its purveyors.

tinco 10y ago

In truth it would be rather embarrassing if a top of the line modern violin could not at least equal a Stradivarius. Besides the world economy being much stronger, the technological advancements and the sheer degree of knowledge transfer makes it almost inevitable. Anyone can fire up youtube and immediately peer into the workshops of master luthiers. I bet you could take a couple million and build a top class violin workshop from scratch in just a few years. Imagine how cool it would be if the big SV aristocracy instead of spending millions on building sailboats, they'd invest in developing musical instruments? As much faster the USA-17 is than any hundred year old yacht, as much more beautiful a violin could be than a stradivarius.. perhaps.

michaelbuckbee 10y ago
Growing up, I still remember articles about the "lost art of making violins" and how there was all this speculation about what made them so special. Was it a chemical or fungus in the river the logs were floated in? Some lost technique? A particular sequence of aging, resting, bending the wood? Turns out it's none of that and just branding (albeit branding around having a great product at that point in history).

HenryTheHorse 10y ago

I've owned cheap guitars and I have a "nice" Fender. I'd much rather play the Fender. But as any guitar player will tell you, you can put a cheap Strat knock-off in Jimi Hendrix's hands and it will still sound like Jimi playing his Strat. Conversely, a Yehudi Menhuin or a Joshua Bell need a good instrument. At their level of playing, little things affect their performance.

cyberferret 10y ago
That's the crux I believe. A beginner player would not appreciate the difference between a $200 guitar and a $2000 guitar. Someone struggling to find the finger positions for a simple chord isn't going to notice the action, fret shape, fingerboard radius, tonewoods etc. Only a player who is trying to get that last 2% of tone out of the instrument will appreciate the subtleties. I am guessing they didn't compare cheap student violins against the Stradivarius, otherwise I am sure any reasonably competent violinist could tell immediately. Modern construction method, including CNC machines can certainly make instruments a lot better than they did 'back in the day'. Check out Youtube for videos of the first guitars made at the Fender factory - those workers were freehand cutting the body shapes on a jig saw. No consistency at all. As much as a '56 Strat or a '59 Les Paul is in demand today, I bet there were a lot of dogs among the ones made back then. I am sure there are thousands of violin makers today who can make a violin as good as a Strad. However, I've heard rumours that Stradivarius made his from wood that was thousands of years old that was extracted from a glacier - perhaps that is the special 'magic' that no one else can replicate?!?
- HenryTheHorse 10y ago
  > As much as a '56 Strat or a '59 Les Paul is in demand today, I bet there were a lot of dogs among the ones made back then. Most of them are awful - construction-wise. (But to some, that's the lure.) I would much rather own an electric guitar or a tube amp made in the last 15 years than one from 1974.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

vasilipupkin 10y ago

one way to think about these results is, despite knowing a lot more about theory of sound and music and having access to much more sophisticated manufacturing, modern violin makers are unable to create violins that are better than a 300 old violin. That's a pretty good reason to stick to what you know

mrob 10y ago
The goal isn't to make the objectively best violin, it's to clone a Stradivarius. Stradivarius violins are widely considered to be the best, so any deviation from them must make the violin worse. Branding is more important than sound quality.
- vasilipupkin 10y ago
  suppose I already play a Stradivarius now. Does this experiment provide evidence that I should switch ? I am saying no.
hx87 10y ago
Another way to think about them is that the best craftsmen of a few hundred years ago can make violins that are every bit as good as the ones we do today, but the difference is that we can crank them out (as far as $100,000 objects can be "cranked out") to an extent unimaginable by Stradivarius or his contemporaries. After all, $100,000 is cheaper than most dwellings in the developed world, whereas even during his lifetime a Stradivarius violin would have cost much more than an average house.
- vasilipupkin 10y ago
  this is not the issue. Stradivarius violins are in private collectors' hands and collectors let famous violinists play those violins. The issue is, should those violinists switch to a brand new violin? this experiment provides no evidence that it's necessary
  - hx87 10y ago

jarmitage 10y ago

I used to work at a musical instruments startup and we tried blind tests of prototypes to assess which combination of materials recipes/sensor design/firmware algorithms etc were 'the best'. Ultimately these tests only reveal the biases of the players. They will prefer – and actually perform better with – that which they believe to be configured in a certain way, regardless of whether it is in reality or not. We had one prototype that us engineers hated to death because the only difference between it and the rest was that it was a different colour, but ALL the players hailed it as the golden standard. The same goes for the famous 'Does Fuck All' button on recording mixing desks, which you can use to tell players that you've made the change that they wanted to satisfy them. And also when you're buying speakers it's very common to be shown the same set of speakers three times and have three opinions. I just recently tour managed a friend and would set up her mic sound every night, and each time I would need to play some sort of subtle trick with her so that she felt things were just right. No amount of 'rational tweaking' could achieve the same.

jerf 10y ago
"And also when you're buying speakers it's very common to be shown the same set of speakers three times and have three opinions." I've noticed with sensory inputs in general that the things that impress you immediately, and the things that impress you once your brain has adjusted to the input and has settled in, are different. For the visual example, observe the difference between the settings on the TVs in the store vs. what the community will generally agree is the optimal long-term setting for your TV. Also, while the first ten minutes of a 3D movie may be pretty whiz-bang, I've generally stopped noticing it's in 3D by the end. I think in both cases, our initial preferences are for something sharper and exaggerating the differences, but over the long term that becomes quite tiring. A case could probably be made even for smell; in the store the strong, unusual perfume may be very impressive but if you are going to use it all day long, I prefer to be around people who use something a lot more subtle.
- splawn 10y ago
  This reminds me of the Pepsi challenge. They blindfold you and have you take a sip of Pepsi then a sip of Coke. The results usually have Pepsi wiping the floor with Coke, despite Coke outselling them everywhere. It turns out the reason for the disparity it that they only test the initial sip. Pepsi is sweeter than Coke which seems better to most people when just sipping rather than drinking a whole can.

dzdt 10y ago

The full text PNAS article is here : http://m.pnas.org/content/111/20/7224.full.pdf?with-ds=yes http://m.pnas.org/content/111/20/7224.full.pdf?with-ds=yes Some notes. The study started with a pool of 13 new and 9 old instruments, and pre-selected down to the test set of the best 6 new and 6 old among these. Among the test set, new instruments had a slightly higher average score than old ones, and the top two instruments were new. But all soloists picked a mix of new and old instruments in their top 4, and in the overall rankings new and old are well mixed. From high to low based on combined session scores, the list goes NNOONNOONONO. Of the soloists, 7 prefer an old instrument for their performances, 2 a new one, and 1 switches between an old and new.

sandGorgon 10y ago

this is the actual PDF to the study - http://members.home.nl/p.brandt/2014%20PNAS%20Fritz%20six%20old%20Italian%20and%206%20new%20violins.pdf http://members.home.nl/p.brandt/2014%20PNAS%20Fritz%20six%20... Interestingly, not even the maker of the top instrument (which garnered 26 points against the Stradivarius) knows about the result. It was deliberately kept hidden. I really hope they let the world know - something this good needs to be celebrated and rewarded. It is unfair otherwise.

perlgeek 10y ago

Note that in 2010 study, the test asked the question "which of these violins would you like to take home?", not "which of these do you think is a Stradivarios?" (see http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/stradivari-loses-out-in-blind-testing-study-of-player-preferences-for-old-and-new-violins/ http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/stradivari-loses-out-in-...) The follow-up study seemed to ask a similar question. So these studies tried to find out which violins are most popular among high class violin players, not (primarily) whether they were able to tell the difference. I've read elsewhere about the first study that the the participants were quite surprised that people thought they couldn't identify the Stradivarius, because they were never asked to.

vilhelm_s 10y ago
In this study they did both, they had a long session where the players where asked to rank the instruments based on how they liked them (and rate various characteristics like loudness and timbre), then at the end they had a "new or old" question: "Next they were presented with a series of violins (one at a time, in random order) and given 30 s to play each one before guessing what kind of instrument it was. If a soloist was unclear about the meaning of the question, he/she was prompted to guess whether the violin was new or old. The series consisted of (i) that player’s favorite old violin; (ii) the player’s favorite new violin; (iii) an old and a new violin the player found unsuitable; (iv) the old violin and the new violin that, in session 1, were most often included in top-four lists and that were on average most highly ranked within those lists; and (v) the old and the new violin that were most often rejected as unsuitable in session 1."
white-flame 10y ago
Another issue with the 2010 study is that the performers were not allowed to tune or adjust the Strads in any way, but could do so with the new ones, so the old violins sounded objectively worse. And yes, they could absolutely tell which was which, and that the modern ones sounded better often due to the fine tuning in the setup.

fhood 10y ago

Great, now I want to see this with tube amps, and pre-67 strats. Because I am now even more convinced that musicians are full of crap.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gmarx 10y ago

There has long been a received wisdom among a subset of audiophiles that the best records ever made were the RCA shaded dog Living Stereo from the late 1950s and early 60s. This guy opened my eyes to the bunk: http://www.high-endaudio.com/softw.html http://www.high-endaudio.com/softw.html

minipci1321 10y ago

(probably off-topic) you might want to check out this guy and his work: Laurent Bernadac https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurent-bernadac-b5223ba4 https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurent-bernadac-b5223ba4. YT has some recordings.

blhack 10y ago

Isn't the appeal of a strad much more "I am playing an instrument which was built in the 17th century, one that has been played by hundreds of years worth of masters, played for kings and queens, played almost exclusively by people who have dedicated their lives to the same thing I have dedicated my life to", and not "sure sounds better than the other ones!"? If I could sit down at Da Vinci's desk, in his library...don't you think the importance of that would be the history behind it, and absolutely not that somehow the lighting in the library made reading better, or the sound of the birds outside made retaining information easier or some silliness like that? Strads, like really anything else related to art, are about context.

lprubin 10y ago
In Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick calls this historicity. A shopkeeper shows two necklaces, indistinguishable from each ither but one was worn by Sitting Bull and the other is a fake. One has historicity and the other is basically worthless. But the knowledge of the historicity is inspiring and makes it valuable. The power of human perspective. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity
- jxcl 10y ago
  I like the idea that if you took both necklaces and shuffled them around in a way that neither you nor the shopkeeper knew which was which and then gave them both back to him, you would have essentially robbed him without taking anything from him.
  - Crespyl 10y ago
    You would have destroyed information.

stevefeinstein 10y ago

Is it not possible to just mechanically test the sound of each instrument in a sound proof chamber to identify the unique characteristics of each? There is no better, there is only what's so. Measure that and if YOU like one better, make another one that produces the same sound. Probably not as easy as it sounds (pun intended).

tsm 10y ago

As a professional violinist who's played both a Strad and a del Gesu (and who spent several months with a 1770 Nicolo Gagliano), and who studies with someone whose daily driver is a del Gesu (and who's been playing antique Cremonese instruments for the past 25 years), I always have problems with this sort of study. As my teacher put it, "Modern instruments may have a voice that's as good as an antique's, but they only have the one voice. Due to how age works with violins, antique violins have many beautiful voices. In a couple hundred years a 21st century instrument with the same craftsmanship and material quality as Strads and del Gesus—and these instruments do exist—will be as good as a the Strads and del Gesus do now. But right now that's not the case." And I've found this to be true myself. When I pick up a modern violin it might take some time to figure out how to make it sound best, but then I'm done. With an antique instrument, it turns into this indefinitely-long relationship where I continuously learn new things and find new voices and tone colors in the instrument. When I returned the aforementioned Gagliano after three months of heavy use, I felt like I'd only just begun to discover the range it had available. And it really is about age for age's sake, not quality. I own a good-but-not-great Edinburgh-made violin from 1807 appraised at $15K, and I've seriously played a modern-made violin appraised for $60K. The "default voice" of the $60K violin is better, but the antique instrument is definitely the more versatile one. I know we like to be objective and scientific here on HN, but don't discard the fuzzy talk of "forming a relationship with the violin" too soon. Even if we don't understand the science behind it yet, it seems that there's something to it. A better experiment that'll never happen because of logistics: Present a professional violinist with ten antique violins, ten modern violins, and a range of high-quality bows (the bow plays a HUGE role in how the violin sounds and responds). Give him/her a few hours to choose the favorite of each type of violin and a complementing bow. Let him/her play both violins for a year and then report back on which was preferred. Repeat for a statistically-significant number of violinists.

Etheryte 10y ago
So essentially the only difference between the test that you proposed and what was conducted is that yours is longer and the conducted test was double blind?
- 10y ago

Zigurd 10y ago

I'm very sceptical of experiment design that relies on self-reporting. It is super-easy to get people to accept amazingly compromised compressed versions of original visual and audible information. But what is that measuring? That we can't sense the difference? That information from our senses is lost when encoding it in our nervous system? That our conscious minds cannot introspect or report the difference? We know our conscious minds are unreliable reporters of what our subconscious is doing or deciding. On the other hand it is easy to show that the scene we think we are seeing is created in the mind. It is easy to trick a person into thinking identical shading is different, and different shading identical. What does that actually tell us about how to compress video? I would prefer to go with physiology. If our sense organs can resolve it, and the nervous system can delivery the sensory information, the information is important, no matter what words our unreliable consciousness says.

tibbon 10y ago

I've been playing guitar (and other stringed && fretted instruments) for around 23 years (including a music major in college). I don't think old guitars are inherently better, and I have gotten my hands on some rather amazing pieces (1914 Gibson Loar F5, 1959 Les Paul, 1955 Telecaster, etc) and they were really fun. I've also played some guitars that people like collecting that were absolute garbage instruments, including a 1966 Gibson 330 that was just horrid. But here's the weird thing that I do not understand, the hallmark of a great guitar to me isn't the sound, it's the "songs stored in it". Yea, that's some hippie-woo-bullshit, but almost every guitar I pick up that I like has me instantly playing something that I've never played before in my life. Some guitars, despite being technically excellent, just don't have them in there. Other guitars, if I pick them up in the studio I've suddenly written some really interesting pieces. This probably actually just comes down to comfort, feedback loop response of sound, weight, small details, etc. I don't think there's any memory to an instrument that stores these; but at the same time, I can go through a wall of guitars and pick out my favorite ones this way. There is only a slight correlation to price/age on these.

TylerE 10y ago
One of my pet theories is that the 'vintage era' guitars were mostly made with old growth timber. These days, unless you're dealing with extremely specialist woods (like ash that's sat under a swamp for centuries), that's just not the case.
- tibbon 10y ago
  There's definitely some wood things that are somewhat different on older instruments. Old growth wood, endangered wood, etc...
- rhizome 10y ago
  Funnily enough, that has come up in the history of replicating the Stradivarius. One theory I remember was that there was a mold or fungus in the wood he used that trees don't have anymore.
6stringmerc 10y ago

lisper 10y ago

The same phenomenon happens with wine. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-wine-taste-the-same http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-wine-t...

InclinedPlane 10y ago

I'm tempted to believe these results, as I suspect a lot of the reputation of stradivarius violins is overblown. However, there is almost always a huge problem with these sorts of tests: the pepsi challenge problem. With subjective measurements it can often be difficult to robustly test the differences between two things in a short sample period. People may say one or another sounds better but that might only apply for a small sample. Or, people may just be unable to explicitly say which one they actually prefer when confronted with the choice in the moment. Whereas with regular use over extended periods of time they may be able to develop a stronger preference and be able to pick out differences explaining that preference. As a sort of proof of concept, aurally, I've noticed that there are several popular songs which have very distinctive audio glitches in them (typically high pitched beeps). The thing is, these glitches are not noticeable by most people when casually listening (testified by the fact that the songs are out in public release with such glitches) but once you notice them you begin to notice them every time, and it detracts from the enjoyment of the song. Similar effects on a subtler level surely exist for almost all music, so I wouldn't take the idea that listening to two separate samples of music and being forced to express a preference in the moment is at all a reasonable measurement except in more pronounced cases.

davidgerard 10y ago

(2014)

znpy 10y ago

Wow, incredible!! /s

kazinator 10y ago

That's awesome; it shows you how good those old violins are. Those guys had no microphones, amplifiers, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, ... just their ears and woodworking tools.

ap22213 10y ago

It would be more interesting to know if the soloists play better with one.