Hacker News Reader

Comment by dzdt | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

I understand your point of the "best of the past" still holding up to the best now, but considering that the violin is a "classical instrument", are contemporary violin manufacturers trying to replicate the past because that's the template to follow?

If it was possible for a violin to objectively sound better than a Strad, would listeners interpret necessarily it as better?

I don't know what it means to "objectively" sound better, but most of the strads in performance use today have been modified over the years, and are fitted with modern strings. Nobody is copying the classical designs except for specialized "period" instruments.

Every other instrument in the orchestra has been modernized as well.

Objectively? That would be a good trick.

Violin manufacture strives to "replicate the past" because that is where most of the music played with them comes from (on HN I have to point this out!). However, there are plenty of compositions for modern alternatives like electric violins.

Another factor is that violinists haven't run out of ways to express new musical ideas on old instruments. The need to design a new instrument, in order to come up with new music, isn't immediately evident. The modern alternative to the violin, could be a violin in the hands of someone with a modern approach. I'm seeing this happening in contemporary fiddle music, for instance. As a jazz bassist, my instrument is of ancient design, but my playing is driven by ideas that are mostly less than a century old.

Of course inventing new instruments is a welcome avenue of musical exploration. But it's not without tradeoffs. At the very least, the musician will be set back by having to develop new technique and familiarity with the capabilities of a new instrument -- getting your ears, brain, and hands, to work together perfectly in real time. Composers also have to wrap their heads around the capabilities of a new instrument, in order to take an interest in writing for it.

Not to mention alternate fret positioning, partial frets, and things like New Standard Tuning. You still have the same scale, but new shapes change composition.

> Take that as a proof that Stradivari really was VERY good

The other thing that I think is very interesting is that Stradivari really developed his own pattern for violins, while modern makers have a lot of knowledge to build upon.

He may not have been the first to copy Strads (or he may have been, I'm just not sure) but Vuillaume became very famous for making masterful copies of some Strads. In 1855 he purchased 144 instruments by Stradivari and some other of the "great Italian masters", I think mostly as a dealer but he also set out making great copies of Le Messie (a Strad), Il Cannone (a Guarneri, which belonged to Paganini), and some others.

I think Vuillaume's violins then became patterns for other instrument makers to use, and we have this legacy now where most modern violins are patterned after a Strad or a Guarneri.

> Contrast with, say, athletes. The very best runners from a century ago wouldn't qualify for the olympics today.

I agree with your point, but this isn't true at all [1]. The rules have changed so dramatically that you get a completely false idea. E.g. Jesse Owens ran on cinders, started without blocks, and did not have a training regimen anything like today's pros.

Perhaps a better argument is that the Stradivarius instruments which survive are not the best few, selected over centuries, but ~60% of all the instruments Stradivari ever made. I.e. he was consistently great.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_...

> did not have a training regimen anything like today's pros

I don't think anyone is saying modern runners are genetically different than historical ones. Of course the difference is in how they're trained.

On the contrary, modern runners are genetically different. Not that the population as a whole is genetically different. Rather because society today casts a much broader net in finding and training individuals who have a strong genetic fitness for running to become competitive runners.

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.

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.

Most of which was available in 1950, and a surprising amount could be found in the 1800's. EX: For cooling, Spring house, cave, imported ice, or just location. The first thermometer dates back to ~1612.

High tech IMO imply's more. For example: http://www.industrial-lasers.com/articles/2008/03/ornamental...

I agree making things reproducible is a big deal, but that's mostly a question of cost not capability. 3d printing or computer control in general allows for beyond human levels of accuracy. Or even just computer modeling to find new and adventitious shapes.

While the technologies to do some of those things may have been available I wonder how many of those things the instrument makers of the time actually knew mattered, and to what extent did they understand it?

Temperature and humidity are very obvious and important if your doing woodworking so I would assume that quickly become common knowledge. But, it would be interesting to research it.

Though I think it's important to remember it was a high tech process for the time. At the time few things required that level of precision or complexity. And considering the size and physical effort involved few things have that kind of volume.

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.

Physics-based synthesis is an active research area, and will be for decades, I think. We are still pretty far from the mark.

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.

We don't use high tech manufacturing to make high-quality instruments because high tech manufacturing produces instruments that sound and play like they were made by machines.

So why is it that Carleen Hutchins managed to improve on violins and she actually filled in the gaps of the range they have.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/building-better-violin...

This view that high tech produces instruments that sound an play like machines is highly reductionistic. If we understand how things work, we can improve it through that understanding.

That's not exactly what I've read from press on 660 Guitars:

https://www.facebook.com/660guitars/

Granted, I've not put one in my hands but I doubt it would have any catastrophic effect on my ability to play or get those thick toanz.

You're missing my point completely. I'm not talking about an aluminum guitar that's good enough to run through a triple rectifier and effects chain on stage and look cool for the crowd. You may consider these high-quality, but I don't. This isn't a bad thing, there's obviously a lot of benefit to having cheaper alternatives on the market. I myself have owned a mid-market Ibanez for almost 10 years now that I absolutely love, but I don't pretend it can stand next to Steve Vai's Flo. I've had the fortune to play a few high-quality instruments in my lifetime, the most notable being a silver-plated Selmer Mk 6 alto sax produced in 1953, if I remember correctly. Most probably wouldn't understand the differences between that and even the next horn off the line, but there is a difference. High-tech manufacturing techniques are designed for consistency, which entirely ignores the fact that no 2 instruments will sound the same. When you're talking about instruments of this caliber it becomes much more complicated than just 'better' or 'worse', because they each have their own unique characteristics. A good instrument maker is able to craft an instrument whose unique subtleties complement each other. A machine is not capable of doing this yet; when you buy an instrument made by a machine, you get an instrument that sounds like whatever the machine happened to spit out. It might sound good, but it's more likely going to be a mess. When we can build a machine with good taste, things might change.

And you're missing my point completely too. The nature of the production, to me, is nearly irrelevant to the finished product. You're putting arbitrary parameters on the discussion, which is fine for your own points to be made, but I simply don't share the purist angle that you're going for, which, I must say, kind of rambles and doesn't make a lot of sense, other than "I know the difference and most people don't" which is a fallacy I don't care to engage.

Relevant article by a violin maker who is interested in innovation: http://josephcurtinstudios.com/article/innovation-in-violinm...

"It must be remembered that the violin is a cultural icon as well as a working tool, and iconoclasts – those who smash of icons – cannot expect a warm welcome at the temple gates."

He won a MacArthur grant. More articles: http://josephcurtinstudios.com/article-category/innovation/

This isn't a better/worse comparison. It's a differentiation-on-feel-and-sound comparison. The only thing this proves is that it's now possible to replicate the feel and sound of a Stradivarius to an impressive degree.

Double blind recorded audio tests often produce the same result: Listeners can't tell the difference between two DACs, two codecs, two amplifier mains cables(!) but as soon as the difference[s] are audible above a threshold, preference comes into play.

However a modern violin is produced, and however it is objectively 'better' than a Strad (if that's even possible to quantify) it will never be subjectively better for all players or listeners, if there is an audible difference - and therefore Strads will always be seen as the 'best'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com