> Right from the article: "In the second test all the violins were tested again in the concert hall. At the end of the test the players were given a series of v

> Right from the article: "In the second test all the violins were tested again in the concert hall. At the end of the test the players were given a series of violins and 30 seconds to guess whether it was old or new." You're right, I skimmed the article too fast and missed that. I do think it would have been more interesting to test whether the Strads sound recognizably different than whether some violinists are able to recognize a Strad when they hear it. As it is, we're left unsure whether Strads sound more-or-less the same as modern instruments or whether the listeners just don't know what a Strad sounds like. I mean, I play the guitar but if you asked me to tell you whether some guitar I'm listening to is a vintage Gibson or something made somewhere in Asia last year, I would probably fail that test about half the time. That doesn't mean the guitars are equivalent, or give us much insight into the relative merit of one guitar versus another or whether a singular guitar is representative of its class. > That's a wild assumption. If I was also speculating, I'd guess that people buying Strads do proper maintenance in order to protect their investment. It was a criticism of the earlier study I had read some time ago. Since somebody else posted a link, I won't go into it any further. > One of them did, another Strad placed last. It's not just unimpressive, but damning to the narrative... That really doesn't tell us anything; that violin might not have been Stradivarius' best work, or perhaps extreme old age had taken its toll, or perhaps there was some physical defect in that particular violin that can't be fixed without destroying its historical value, or perhaps it just needs a new bridge or a new set of strings. I think the idea that any Stradivarius violin will outperform any modern instrument regardless of circumstances or condition of the instrument is a straw man position.