As a violinist I disagree with your conclusion. There are a lot of valid criticisms about those studies, including some from musicians who participated. There's

As a violinist I disagree with your conclusion. There are a lot of valid criticisms about those studies, including some from musicians who participated. There's also a notable conflict of interest in that the PI is a violin maker and has a vested interest in proving the quality of modern instruments. I summarized the research and criticisms in a Reddit comment[1] a while back. There are so many subjective components to sound preferences and value it's simply impossible to make claims like "nothing unique about it sounds compared to other high-quality violins", "value comes primarily from its artistic and historical nature rather its sound quality", or "There are modern instruments which sound better" [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ug0an2/why_cant_we_reproduce_the_sound_of_very_old/i6yaszd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ug0an2/why_cant...