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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

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

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> 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.

Oh oops, you're right, I read "out of the 33 guesses, 31 were right".

I think you may have misunderstood the article.

There were two tests, one to distinguish strad from modern, one to score which instrument musicians liked best. In the first, they didn't get 31 of 33 wrong, they got 33 wrong and 31 right, virtually a 50/50 split. In the preference test, modern violins placed first and second, with the top place substantially above the others, though the article doesn't give the full score breakdown.

Yeah, I misread the 31/33 thing as a ratio, thanks for clarifying. Good breakdown of the rest of the article as well, it makes more sense the way you present it, the article was going back and forth between the tests a bit.

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."

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

Since people are irrational, playing, or listening to music on a Stradivarius might create a more pleasurable experience, despite sounding qualitatively equivalent.

Likewise owning one.

It wont make you sound better but it will almost certainly make peope enjoy listening to you more... You know unless they percieve you as a pretentious snot at least.

You are not suppposed to divide 31 by 33, but by 64. It is actually very close to the 50% expectation.

don't forget the 5 indeterminate.

There's also a distinction to be made between the questions "does a Stradivarius sound different than a modern violin" and "can a performer successfully identify a Stradivarius?"

Supposing that a performer does not in fact know what a Stradivarius sounds like and is unable to determine which violin is the Stradivarius does not mean that the Stradivarius does not in fact sound different from a modern instrument never mind which one of those sounds "better".

(I believe there was also a problem with the original test that I don't know if they addressed this time around, which is that it's pretty hard to get permission even to do things like change the strings on a very old violin. So, if they're testing a Stradivarius with old strings against a modern violin with new strings, that's not exactly a fair test.)

According to the article they really did prefer modern instruments.

>The results revealed the two most-preferred instruments to be modern, while in third place was a violin from Stradivari’s ‘golden period’. At the opposite end of the scale a Stradivari drew the poorest result and a modern instrument was placed second-last.

But they couldn't distinguish which instruments were which reliably. Suggesting that even if there is a preference, it's very weak and probably doesn't matter very much.

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