
To Save the Sound of a Stradivarius, a Whole City Must Keep Quiet - dreamcompiler
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/arts/music/stradivarius-sound-bank-recording-cremona.html
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macinjosh
I am sorry, but I don't believe that they were able to hear a glass break
outside of the building they were in, much less down the street or a few block
away. This feels like lazy reporting or something. Am I crazy?

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Max_aaa
But now you know of "Cremona", and that "Antonio Stradivari" made some violins
there (and some other things), and that they have the "Museo del Violino", and
other things.....

Yes, if the background noise from down the street is a problem, then how come
the players heart beat, other body noise and the chair noise are not an issue.

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squidbot
I don't understand why they would use a hall in the first place and not a
studio where they can both control outside noise and any color the hall
environment adds via uncontrolled echos. It's very odd, the sound engineers
seem to know what they are doing but it baffles me why they made this choice.

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frankchn
Yeah, I feel like an acoustic anechoic chamber is a better place for this.

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cyberferret
An anaechoic chamber is not a good place for human mental health. I believe no
one has ever been able to stay for more that 40 minutes in the worlds quietest
anechoic chamber in the US. Recording sound samples can take hours upon hours.

And even in an anechoic chamber, the best of IEMs would still 'leak' a little.

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ben_w
That’s an urban legend, they’re fine:
[https://youtu.be/mXVGIb3bzHI](https://youtu.be/mXVGIb3bzHI)

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darkerside
Just a side note, but the auditorium they're using to record is gorgeous. Its
lines themselves remind me of a violin.

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Godel_unicode
That's exactly why they chose it. The mythos of the Stradivarius is 100% about
look and feel as opposed to anything real about the sound. It's the same
reason expensive wines are tasted in fancy tasting rooms.

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andrewbinstock
>The mythos of the Stradivarius is 100% about look and feel as opposed to
anything real about the sound.

Nope. The Strads do have a _great_ sound. The fact that select modern
instruments can make equally great sound does not in any way diminish that for
most of the last two centuries, Strads were among the very best-sounding
violins.

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Godel_unicode
Nope. There have consistently been instruments which are indistinguishable or
better for roughly 100 years. Stradivarius:violin::Rolex:timepiece

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cf498
According to the article, they used a 1615 museum piece for this.

I remember reading somewhere that you have to play those instruments regularly
for it not to change its sound.

Could anyone clear that up for me? Could you tune an instrument, that wasnt
properly tuned for decades or centuries?

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bartelby
Yes that’s correct. If there isn’t serious damage to an instrument you can
always tune it.

As far as playing an instrument regularly for it not to change its sound,
that’s also true, although I don’t think anyone knows why exactly. It probably
has something to do with the way the sound energy of the instrument, when
played, is absorbed by the wood in a patterned way over time. Kind of like a
used baseball mitt.

If the instrument isn’t played, something happens where the vibrations of the
sound don’t flow correctly through the instrument and it can sound, and feel
“stuck” to play.

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foobarbecue
[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-
strad...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-strads-fall-
modern-violins-blind-sound-check) disputes "A Stradivarius violin, viola or
cello represents the pinnacle of sound engineering, and nobody has been able
to replicate their unique tones."

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gmu3
It isn't possible to create a database storing all the possible tones a non
digital instrument can make.

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cyberferret
They are possibly not going for the individual tones, but rather taking a
range of impulse responses (IRs) plus the original timbre. From that, they may
be able to digitally reproduce the sound - or else use an ordinary violin, and
colour the sound with the Strad's IR to recreate similar waveforms.

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hownottowrite
Some fun dendrochronology references:

"Stradivari, violins, tree rings, and the Maunder Minimum: a hypothesis"
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30407555/bur...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30407555/burckle_grissino_2003.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1547911680&Signature=Q1ctQoLyg5Xv4%2F0iqqb%2B9tUc8EA%3D&response-
content-
disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DStradivari_violins_tree_rings_and_the_Ma.pdf)

"Chemical distinctions between Stradivari’s maple and modern tonewood"
[https://www.pnas.org/content/114/1/27](https://www.pnas.org/content/114/1/27)

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emilfihlman
The Stradivarius' fame is not based on any technical superiority. Like all old
things, it starts to be appreciated purely because it's old (and we like to
collect old stuff, nothing bad about that itself).

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justtopost
In its time, its quality was remarkable. The change is anyone with aged wood,
superglue and a cnc can do better now. Then, it was a master craftmans opus.

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thisacctforreal
Amusingly, rescuing a Soil Stradivarius happens to be a side quest in Fallout
3.

[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Agatha%27s_Song](http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Agatha%27s_Song)

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dougbrochill
Are there any recordings of the same piece played with a Stradivarius compared
to a "regular" instrument? I have always wondered what makes their sound
unique.

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kwhitefoot
There have been some studies comparing Strads with modern vilins:
[https://www.livescience.com/44651-new-violins-beat-
stradivar...](https://www.livescience.com/44651-new-violins-beat-
stradivarius.html), not sure if there are any publicly available recordings.

