
Blind-tested soloists unable to tell Stradivarius from modern violins - ZeljkoS
http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/blind-tested-soloists-unable-to-tell-stradivarius-violins-from-modern-instruments/
======
jarmitage
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
"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
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.

~~~
ashark
I've never understood this. I'm not a huge soda drinker, but I can tell the
difference between _at least_ Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper, _by smell alone_ ,
no tasting required. One sip and I can tell you Diet or Regular, on top of the
brand. I have not observed that I've got an above-average sense of smell or
taste. What good does the blindfold do?

~~~
DavidWanjiru
Out of curiosity, have you actually tested your ability to tell the
difference? You know, someone other than you puts, say, 10 samples in
identical cups, randomly makes 2 coke, 3 pepsi, 1 Dr Pepper, and 4 from
another brand unfamiliar to you, and you're able to identify each by smell
each time?

~~~
ashark
That could get tough if the unfamiliar ones were carefully-chosen to smell
similar to the three main ones, for instance. I picked out those three because
they're so easy to tell from one another (which is why the Pepsi Challenge
things strikes me as silly) and because "blind" Pepsi/Coke taste-tests were
the topic. I'd _guess_ something like RC thrown in the mix could make me
confuse it for Pepsi, and some of the closer Dr. Pepper clones might get me,
especially on a smell-only trial. Coke'd be tricky since its got the mildest
odor of those three and I'd have mainly picked it out by process of
elimination. With the other brands thrown in I could well miss a few.

[EDIT] if it helps, it seems to me that having a "Pepsi Challenge" is like
having an "Orange Challenge" where the other contender is a lime. It's not
exactly gonna be hard to tell which one you're dealing with, even if the
sample's the same size and you're blindfolded. Throw in a half-dozen other
citrus fruits and yeah, I could see getting a couple of them wrong but just
those two? No. Judging from the reaction here, though, I'm starting to wonder
if I need to re-evaluate my sense of smell/taste. Maybe it's not only farther
from normal than I thought, but _in the opposite direction_.

~~~
eropple
_> if it helps, it seems to me that having a "Pepsi Challenge" is like having
an "Orange Challenge" where the other contender is a lime._

One thing you might not be realizing is that many people have absolutely
_shot_ their palates with modern flavorings, sugar bombing, etc. (though these
days, smoking at least is less of a thing). I too don't have trouble telling
the difference between Coke and Pepsi (and have done it blind), but if you
took away visual cues, I think you'd be surprised how many people would bilge
even the orange/lime test.

------
dzdt
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
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
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.

~~~
Thimothy
Yeah, but in the end, we are just replicating a 400 hundred years old process.
The main difference this technological advances have produced is that the
replication is reproducible and we can churn out Stradivarius like there is no
tomorrow.

I wonder when the computer emulation will be so good as to be
indistinguishable from the original. And I don't mean just a synthesiser,
that's probably not going to be perfect ever, I mean a simulation of the
friction of the strings, taking into account the propagation of the sound in
the resonance chamber and its material proprieties, the characteristics of the
array of speakers and the relative position of the listener.

~~~
stcredzero
Given that manufacturing and design also advance when computer technology
advances, I suspect that the agglomerations of atoms will also get better, and
better agglomerations of atoms will often be more economical than simulations
of said atoms.

------
justusw
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/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/22/482936331/episode-538-is-
a-stradivarius-just-a-violin)

~~~
saiya-jin
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
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-
wrecke...](http://m.sfgate.com/world/article/1-5-million-Ferrari-wrecked-
moments-after-6615584.php) ) . 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
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.

------
tibbon
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
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.

~~~
rhizome
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.

------
StavrosK
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

~~~
wrsh07
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."

~~~
amelius
But perhaps the musicians preferred the modern violins because they were more
used to them.

------
tsm
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.

~~~
i000
> the antique instrument is definitely the more versatile

Not definitely. Only subjectively with an n=1 and botched experimental design.
Please repeat blinded, a statistically-significant number of times with
different violonists.

~~~
softawre
"in my opinion" is implied here, especially given the context of the
surrounding discussion.

------
tinco
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
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).

------
blhack
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
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
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
You would have destroyed information.

------
mcphage
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.

~~~
neap24
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
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
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...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.227.7161&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

"A white wine artificially colored red with an odorless dye was olfactory
described as a red wine by a panel of 54 tasters."

~~~
tinco
"CHEMICAL OBJECT REPRESENTATION IN THE FIELD OF CONSCIOUSNESS"

I'd say, without reading the paper, that seems more like an experiment in
psychology than in man's ability to perceive tastes. Can you trick your brain
into believing something is something else by making it look like that? Seems
like you can.

"A white wine .. colored red.. was described as a red wine.."

Were they wrong?

There's a reason the Stradivarius testers are blindfolded.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Also reminds me of the McGurk effect
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect)).
If you present a stimuli outside the usual sample space, it's not clear that
the responses are "wrong".

------
perlgeek
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-...](http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/stradivari-loses-out-in-blind-
testing-study-of-player-preferences-for-old-and-new-violins/))

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
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."

------
HenryTheHorse
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
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
> 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.

~~~
criddell
There's also the survivor bias. The garbage instruments where thrown away
years ago and the ones that survived were the best.

------
lisper
The same phenomenon happens with wine.

[http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-
wine-t...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-wine-taste-
the-same)

------
fhood
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.

------
dzdt
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.

------
InclinedPlane
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.

------
Zigurd
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.

------
stevefeinstein
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).

------
sandGorgon
this is the actual PDF to the study -
[http://members.home.nl/p.brandt/2014%20PNAS%20Fritz%20six%20...](http://members.home.nl/p.brandt/2014%20PNAS%20Fritz%20six%20old%20Italian%20and%206%20new%20violins.pdf)

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.

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

~~~
huxley
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
Well, audiophile speaker cables are not junk either. They are just no better
than normal cables.

~~~
munchbunny
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.

------
minipci1321
(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.

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

------
znpy
Wow, incredible!! /s

------
leecarraher
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
"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.

------
davidgerard
(2014)

------
vasilipupkin
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
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
suppose I already play a Stradivarius now. Does this experiment provide
evidence that I should switch ? I am saying no.

------
gmarx
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)

