The Brilliance of a Stradivari Violin Might Rest Within Its Wood
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The NYTimes article summarizes it this way: "For hundreds of years, the best violin players have almost unanimously said they prefer a Stradivari or a Guarneri instrument... Why nobody has been able to replicate that sound remains one of the most enduring mysteries of instrument building.
Here's the thing, is there actually a notably different sound? I have read the study that shows professional musicians don't necessarily prefer the sound of a stradivarius over a high quality new instrument, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't sound different. How good are they at telling the difference between these instruments, is it something a non-musician could notice or be trained to notice relatively easily.
Ideally, a researcher would be able to quantify the tone that is elusive. Alternatively, a team of listeners who can clearly distinguish between the two, reliable, would be useful. Because it sounds like the goal here isn't so much to get a really nice sound, it's to figure out why these instruments sound different (if indeed they do!)
I read the abstract, and it sounds like they've analyzed the composition of the violins and have found some notable chemical differences in the wood. It's not an uninteresting result, but I still have to wonder if we're a few steps ahead of ourselves here. First things first, do Stradivarius instruments, as a group, have an identifiably different tone or acoustic quality that makes it possible, either through acoustic measurements or trained human evaluation, to reliably classify them apart from other instruments.
She says you can ALWAYS tell the difference. But she also says, "better" depends on the music. If you are playing a song on X-Factor or Australian Idol or even Christmas carols, then you'll never notice. If you are playing a solo for a classical piece (wedding or other ceremony), then it certainly sounds "different".
Better is debatable, but different, yes
I'd imagine if 5 of the best sawyers with 5 of the best luthiers and sound engineers in the world all sat down together with the goal of replicating the Strad's sound with 100% accuracy I'm confident the 'unique' sound of the Strad could be replicated. It might take a lot of time and maybe a few hundred k in equipment (a dozen condenser mics placed strategically at a variety of places within the room and near the instrument itself, some vibration analysis equipment on the equipment, etc), but eventually the sawyer will choose the right wood, the engineer would perform acoustic analysis and tell the luthier "ok, that 43 micron chisel shave you just took just did __, 22 more and we match the F# perfectly on the G string".
I think it's very similar to the whole audiophile thing, where at least some of it is placebo. Those $30 monster cables aren't transmitting with any more signal fidelity than your $5 ones (assuming equal gauge copper, proper ohmic termination, blah blah), and I can sit down and prove it to anyone with $400 worth of spec-ans from the 1980s.
Now the "different" vs "better" -- I love my record player but when audiophiles say 'it sounds better' than the raw mix-down digital masters, in terms of the amount of audible audio content objectively this isn't the case. (Edit: See [4]) It sounds different from what you're used to. You like the 'warmth' that a belt drive record through a 1950s speaker produces. You like the hisses and crackles and pops. It's an emotional connection you have. When I was playing guitar with my crappy band, I'd run my digital content through a Tascam quarter inch tape deck just to get that hiss in the tracks before we sent it down for mastering (we didn't have those fancy plug-ins to do it for us then).
The same thing happened with film.[2] TV is generally shot at 30fps, film at 24fps[3]. When the FPS rate increased with the advent of more modern technology and higher sampling rates, people would claim that cinema didn't look 'cinematic'. The motion blur of the analog film experience we grew up with (well, those of us over 25) is something we mentally associated with the experience of going to the cinema. You saw a bunch of people comment on this with the Hobbit being distributed and shown at theatres at 48 FPS. "It just doesn't look right".
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[1]http://www.thestrad.com/blind-tested-soloists-unable-to-tell...
[2] I'm sorry I don't have a source on this study, but the phenomenon was pretty widespread. Cinema isn't something I've delved too far into but the cinematographer forums have thousands (literally) of threads on FPS discussion.
[3] That's just historically how things broke down -- 24 was a convenient number to match up with actual seconds due to it's easy factorability, so you could get half a second at 12 frames, a quarter at 6, etc. This made it easy back in the day when post-processing involved actually involving cutting nitrate-based film and sound syncing to the video involved physically matching the snap of the clapper on your audio track to the visual of the actual frame of when the hinge closed.
RE: 30 fps, I'm not sure, but I'd guess it had to do with the fact that we're at 60 hertz in the US so you could interlace half a frame a cycle (ie. trigger on the peak of every AC cycle to update the set of horizontal lines modulo two, so the electron gun presumably only had to hit half the lines within that time constraint) Other parts of the world operate at 50hz, which is why I'd imagine you have the PAL standard and 25 fps in those locales. (Pure speculation though, someone who's knows for sure, jump in.)
[4] Operating under the assumption that that they were pressed from the same master source.. I'm limited only to the records I bought which were from bands with too small of a budget to afford two separate masters. (I.e., That mid-90s emo 200 run EP by Knapsack didn't have two masters, hell on tour they were lucky to have a floor to crash on.) Still, poster beneath me makes a very valid point that should be taken into consideration (Though I'm sure you're already aware of whether or not the band had a separate master DAT/master plate made if you like the band enough to care about the nuanced differences between two masters.)
I've read quite a bit about the blind violin studies, and don't see a way to dismiss it -- people were claiming instantly recognizable, impossible-to-miss massive differences in quality for the older violins. Yet nobody has been able to back up those claims with results; all results so far indicate that when the age and maker are obscured, identification by sound alone is no better than chance.
> Also known as ...
Please. What I've just written makes the rest of that sentence silly. There is no need to jump to conclusions.
Funny enough two comments I made - on this thread, now dead - went from +2 to -4 very quickly. Another comment went from +5 to +2.
I've got a pretty strong feeling that people love telling this anecdote about "science over art!" and ironically don't like it when it turns out the science is actually bad science. As a result, they're banding together and simply mass-downvoting things.
There's an interesting debate to be had here, on the merits of the sounds of different instruments, and the linked NYT article is fascinating. Unfortunately, people seem to be caught up in a frenzy of linking bad science to each other instead of actually discussing violins, which are a personal passion of mine.
I went into more detail on the bad science in my other comment here, which is going negative now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233977
But the simple fact is that the die-hards are going to, well, die hard. The result with violins is not at all suspect; it's very much in line with results from other fields where particular products are touted as easily distinguishable due to their inherently much-higher quality. See fine wines for another example.
That is not generally true. It depends on what kind of statistical assumptions you make, or statistical analysis you conduct. The term statistical power describes our chance of correctly detecting an effect when there is one to observe. If the effect is small, then a larger number of samples are required to achieve a given level of statistical power, whereas if the effect is large, then fewer are required.
I recommend that you consider the question: if 10 samples are not enough, then what specific number of samples is enough? How do you decide? Fortunately, these questions have been studied in the field of statistics.
Let me give you an example. Let's say I told you that you will flip a coin in the air, and when the coin reaches its peak height, I will shout "heads" or "tails". What would you make of it if we ran this experiment 10 times, and I correctly guessed the outcome 10 out of 10 times? Perhaps you would conclude I really can predict coin flips. By comparison, if I called the outcome accurately only 5 out of 10 times, then you'd probably consider my claim false.
But, consider these two possibilities: (1) what are the odds that my guesses are really no better than random chance, and I've just guessed 10 out of 10 correctly by good luck? (2) What if I really am accurate 99% of the time, but I guessed only 5 out of 10 correctly by bad luck? Statistics allows us to evaluate how likely these things are.
If I'm doing the math correctly, then you'd expect someone to guess 10 out of 10 coins correctly just by chance once in every ~1000 experiments. So to see this happen is not witnessing an extraordinarily improbable event; run enough experiments of 10 coin flips and you will see it.
If someone truly has 99% accuracy, then in almost every experiment they will guess 10 out of 10 correctly. They should guess all 10 correctly 90% of the time. A person who is truly 99% accurate will only guess 5 out of 10 flips correctly once every in every 10,000,000,000 experiments. So it is extraordinarily unlikely that you will see someone with 99% accuracy guessing 5 out of 10 coin flips correctly. It can still happen just by chance, but it's really improbable.
Bringing this all back to the main topic, it is possible for a result of 10 data points to count as convincing evidence against the theory that there is a strong effect, such as that musicians are 99% accurate in discerning the type of violin, while it may be inadequate to evaluate whether there is a weak but still-present effect, such as 51% accuracy. Whether the number of samples is good enough depends on how small of an effect you want to measure, and how confident you want to be in your assessment.
A free book is available online called "Statistical Inference for Everyone" which introduces these topics. https://github.com/bblais/Statistical-Inference-for-Everyone
It's also quite common for humans to think the can tell the difference but can't under test lab conditions. We see the same results in everything from wine tasting to telepathy.
There is a case to be made that CERTAIN albums will produce an objectively better sound in several respects when compared to the CD/digital version of the master. This is an effect of the "Loudness Wars" that began in the late 80's and still continues, albeit at a lower intensity, today.
The analog nature of the vinyl format places a hard limit on how "hot" one could make the sound by tweaking/compressing the dynamic range. Eventually the mastering would exceed the physical ability of the needle to track the groove which is obviously untenable for everyone involved. CD's on the other hand, can push the range as far as acoustically possible and people who want their new rock album to really ROCK are going to be more impressed by a master that somehow sounds louder than any other album at a given volume setting. Thus, the Loudness Wars began and have progressed to the point where the dynamic range has been pushed into the realm of guaranteed acoustic clipping because it still sounds louder and the loss of fidelity won't matter when the song is blasted from an iPhone speaker.
Obviously, this is an effect limited to specific albums. Even if you buy one a pressing of one of these albums, you aren't guaranteed better sound as the vinyl boom has led to some really half-ass remasters that can be as half-assed as passing the borked digital master through conversion software to ensure it works without making any further effort.
Aside from this one outlier scenario, a song/album/whatever mastered attentively to the CD format will always deliver objectively better sound quality.
Source: http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-...
Fortunately, the shift from CDs to digital as primary target has brought an end to the Loudness War. The various services have standards for perceived loudness, so there's no incentive for the mastering engineer to squeeze a few extra decibels out of the mix - past a certain point you're accomplishing nothing but killing your headroom margin.
Indeed, the behavior of violins has been the subject of intensive study for decades. Every new technique for measuring sound or vibration is applied to violins. There's an article every few years about some new secret discovered in the great fiddles. Good acoustic measurement gear is now more sensitive than human hearing. It was only a matter of time before somebody cracked the code.
An amusing rumor is that the tone of a violin changes over time, due to age and playing, and that the Strads are in decline.
The same thing is true for the fingerboard, the bridge, the strings and other components you interface with (or are interfaced with from things with which you interface) on your violin. As the oils on your finger on the strings/fingerboard gradually acts as basically a mini-abrasive tool, the fingerboard itself will change shape (you can see this easily in the wear patterns). The pressure variance from the string's depression, the shifts in temperature/humidity in the ambient environment (which will stress the wood in all sorts of ways, both in an elastic (temporary) as well as a plastic (permanent) manner), all of these micro-variables add up over time, just like with your car.
lol! That is a brave statement. As @dcsommer said, sample size is tiny.
When you audition for an Opera (well, her auditions anyway...) were always done blind - ie behind a curtain or similar.
When you practice and play at that level, you notice the little things. Same way I can look at C++ source code, or Java, C#, Objective-C or Node.js. I have to stop and think to explain how I know it is C#. I just know.
Again, I didn't say one is better than an other. Just different...
There is, of course, some correlation between more expensive and better, I'm more talking about what happens once you've gotten away from the cheap mass produced instruments and even the decent but unremarkable student violins. Once you get up into a higher level, instruments may get expensive because you need a highly skilled craftsperson to bring out particular qualities in an instrument that may match up to what a musician needs. That sort of thing can't really be mass produced, and because it requires a lot of attention and construction time from a skilled person, it's expensive too.
This holds true for a lot of things. For instance, what's actually "better", dinner at the french laundry, or a damn good burrito. The burrito actually isn't cheaper because it tastes worse, it's cheaper because it isn't as expensive to produce. This actually holds for a lot of things out there.
More expensive isn't always "better", but interestingly, just because it isn't quantifiably better doesn't mean you aren't getting something for your money when you spend more, either. Sometimes more expensive means high quality and specifically tailored for a particular set of criteria.
There are an awful lot of variables, especially regarding listening conditions. And then the strings are going to be different too.
You're definitely the odd man out if you don't prefer a Strad to a modern instrument, that strikes me as an odd thing. If it's so overwhelming then there should certainly be something measurable in the audio or there would be differences due to taste and preference, right?
Equip: Famous Violin [+5% playing ability from placebo effect]
http://www.thestrad.com/blind-tested-soloists-unable-to-tell...
"Soloists readily distinguished instruments they liked from those they did not but were unable to tell old from new at better than chance levels,’ the report concluded. ‘Given the stature and experience of our soloists, continuing claims for the existence of playing qualities unique to old Italian violins are strongly in need of empirical support."
Linking to the start of that segment: https://youtu.be/eNzRHuqvMxQ?t=50m14s
Pretty cool stuff.
For a while, wanting to learn well the math for theoretical physics, I was a math grad student at Indiana University. They put me in courses beneath me and courses irrelevant to the math I wanted. For "beneath", they put me in a course in point-set topology. Maybe okay: First lecture I learned that the text was Kelley, General Topology. Heck, as an undergraduate I'd already gotten a copy and a reading course, read the thing, and gave lectures once a week to a prof. One week I explained a chapter and the next week worked exercises from that chapter. Another course was abstract algebra from Herstein's book. Gads: Group, rings, fields, vector spaces, and I'd had that as a ugrad. I asked the prof if he was going to cover group representations, and he said that was "deep". I told him it was also my ugrad honors paper. Really bad was early in a course in real analysis where the prof wanted to see me after class about my work on his first test. He treated me with contempt. The test had been on set theory, and I'd used lower case omega for the first uncountable ordinal, believed that the notation was standard (had had a summer NSF course in axiomatic set theory), was in a hurry and didn't explain the notation. So I explained. Then the prof caught on: My work was correct and, indeed, one step shorter than his solution. I asked what he wanted to see me about, and he said "nothing". Gads. I didn't want to see him again. They said Galois theory to me one too many times. So, I kept doing my teaching, mostly calculus. Gads, that was first year college calculus, and I'd never taken it but taught it to myself and started on sophomore calculus.
Then I started studying Fleming, Functions of Several Variables with the exterior algebra at the back, etc.
I liked music a LOT, still do, but didn't know much, but Indiana University had a terrific music school, and my dorm was next door. In the dorm was a violin student of Josef Gingold and a protege of Issac Stern with a letter of recommendation from from Zeno Francescatti.
Once, for fun, in a practice room, with a pianist and me listening, he sight read the Vieuxtemps Fifth violin concerto.
One afternoon in the dorm, he put his old Italian violin under my left chin and gave me a first lesson. Magic! So, I signed up for a first course, one on one, in violin! The teacher was another violin student: Poor guy, had to start out by showing me how to hold the violin, and after the semester he was soloist for the Brahms concerto in Toronto! He was good!
Eventually I made some progress: Problems: Started too late, too little talent and practice! But, violin is doable and about the most fun can have standing up -- get a voice to permit screaming out to the heavens about the passion of the human spirit!
On violins, one difference is how easy it is for the violinist to get the sound they want. That's a biggie. A listener may never know about any of that, but there's little doubt for the violinist!
Years later that violin student was a well known professional violinist. I called him for a recommendation of a violin shop for routine maintenance on my violin, and he gave me David Segal Violins in NYC who had made his then favorite violin. IIRC he said he liked the Segal violin better than any of the old Italian instruments.
So, maybe, one way and another, there are people now who know how to make some of the best violins ever.
Generally I long since gave up on taking seriously anything in the NYT. But, gee, maybe for anything they publish, someone likes it!
My favorite piece of music is the Bach Chaconne for unaccompanied violin. I made some progress with it. To me the best part is the end of the central D major section; it has a violin scream out passion beyond belief. The piece deserves more than a solo violin and has been arranged for solo piano by Busoni and also for full orchestra. A piano performance I like is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOFflFiLlT8
When my startup is farther along, maybe I'll get some maintenance on my violin and get through the rest of the Chaconne. Just need a lot of practice!
The role of the math is part of the story: No way did I go to Indiana University to learn violin! I went there, as I said, to get the math for physics. My interest was in physics and mostly still is. So, part of the story is the bumps and turns in the road that can lead one to something very different than the original goal. Part of the story is how I was well prepared for the math program but, still, didn't like it and, e.g., ended up in violin!
Such things can happen. E.g., there are some Freeman Dyson remarks about why he hates Ph.D. programs and how dangerous they can be to a student's health. Dyson is correct. For one more, there is currently a story at the James Simons Quanta Magazine about a woman who got into looking for dark matter from flashes of light in liquid Zenon gas and early in her career, from the pressures, had to learn to make herself out of titanium, learn to dry the tears, etc.
Well, I wasn't made of titanium: No way was I going to buckle down, nose to the grindstone, ear to the ground, shoulder to the wheel, make the best of the situation, etc. Heck no. I'll go start violin, get a job, and learn the math in evenings and weekends on my own -- for which I did make a lot of progress. And I met my future wife.
So, part of the story is, to heck with the titanium, and don't let the dangers Dyson was concerned about take effect; in a bad grad program, give them the middle finger and do something else.
Violin and the Bach Chaconne are a very long way from mathematical physics, but they did have a role.
It was a story, as in communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion. It was an example that maybe others can understand, compare with, and maybe draw lessons from.
A lesson: Can go for mathematical physics and end up starting violin! Can happen!
The mention that I was well prepared for all three courses they put me in, two of them knew essentially all the material and in the third was way ahead in the first lectures on set theory, don't show that I'm smart but just the outrageous incompetence of some grad programs, and that's part of the story, that is, the outrageous, unexpected bumps in the road.
For a little more, later I went to another grad program and did get a Ph.D., but this time I investigated grad programs before applying. There some data indicated that while I was at the Indiana University grad math department, only one entering grad student in 16 left with a Ph.D. Net, the place was a death march. Gee, IIRC in the Battle of Britain, of the fighter pilots, only one in six died. That, too, along with the Dyson remark and the titanium, could be valuable warnings for others. Or, on drop out rates, many Ph.D. programs make the Army Rangers and the Navy Seals look like "fuzzy, bunny play time". Dangers are part of story telling! Or, when see such dangers, don't go there; change course. If got caught in the danger zone, then back out.
"When the researchers totaled up the results, there was no evidence the players could reliably pick old from new. And when players were asked to pick their favorite instrument, the winner was a modern, freshly made violin."
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/16/313099219/is-a-...
Since then, his results have been duplicated and/or improved. The name Stradivarius still carries an amazing amount of weight. Researchers have shown musicians can't actually differentiate between newly built violins and Stradivarius:
"The duo asked professional violinists to play new violins, and old ones by Stradivari and Guarneri. They couldn’t tell the difference between the two groups. One of the new violins even emerged as the most commonly preferred instrument." [ 2 ]
Therefore when TFA from NYT makes this vague, unsubstantiated claim "For hundreds of years, the best violin players have almost unanimously said they prefer a Stradivari or a Guarneri instrument," take it with a grain of salt or preferably evidence that mainstream media benefits by perpetuating mysterious illusions for the emotional allure.
[ 1 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_bar
[ 2 ] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/0...
Please audiophiles don't kill me but it seems loosely similar to the debate over lossless FLAC files and a record. Though I will note that unlike the audio debate you're saying there's no perceptible difference between the two.
Just holding one of those instruments would make me nervous, but in terms of both maintenance and use, they were made to be played. This is just something that people accept.
I obviously don't play a Strad (he didn't make double basses, that's my excuse), but when I got a nice new bass, people asked me if I'd ever take it out of the house, or if I'd use my old bass for performances. I tell people the same thing, it was made to be played.
Make no mistake, I love it though, and the finished product is absolutely gorgeous.
Popping the top off of the violin was a little nerve-wracking, but that cracking-hide-glue sound is also satisfying. It went back together nicely (I even used the opportunity to glue a piezo-film transducer to the inside of the soundboard).
Now I don't feel quite so much like the violin I'm holding is going to shatter into a million pieces if I twist too hard on a tuning peg.
This story is the epitome of fake news. This is the kind of content it is so hard to filter when anybody on the web can make a serious looking website and publish pure fiction as if it were news.
AI is nowhere near being able to classify these stories. Lots of election stories were similarly challenging. Even humans have to be pretty smart to pick them out sometimes.
Is "fake news" going to be the new meme here? If you think this epitomizes "fake news", your detector needs recalibration.
For what it's worth, replacing the bass bar or braces periodically could be considered part of the expected maintenance of some arch-top instruments. When or how often it's needed is debatable, but instrument tops will sag over time due to pressure.
Is this really true?
I was under the impression that the primary issue with the wood was that it came from a stand of trees that had been through an unusual number of drought years and made the wood unusually dense.
So, while the craftsmanship was excellent, it was a happy accident in the material that made it world-renowned. This is similar to how Damascus Steel was an accident of having vanadium in the raw inputs. And was not to be replicated once that raw material went away.
And, you can say what you will about Strads, but wood has a peak in stringed instruments that seems to be about 30-50 years in. After that, it's slow degradation. Strads are long past their peak.
(The other brilliance was being 200 years or more ahead of everyone else at the time!)
It's like wine people who are easily duped by a fancy looking bottle. A true sommelier can identify different wines by taste alone, but for every one of those there's a dozen frauds who pretend they know what they're doing, just parroting stuff they've memorized.
The other troubling thing is the gender of performers is very hard to discern from a blind performance, but when the performer is visible the judges skew very heavily towards men. It's absurd. https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/...
Funnily enough, these are my exact thoughts on the state of the software industry and trying to hire good people.
As a guitarist, I do a lot of experimentation with picks. I can easily tell the difference between different kinds of picks by sound when I'm playing. But I can listen to old recordings of myself where I couldn't even tell you which guitar I played! Interestingly, a drummer I play with regularly can usually tell when I've switched picks, and has opinions about what picks I should be using. Such is the closeness of musicians working together.
Any of these A/B blind test experiments strongly need to be live. A recording isn't a measure of a violin... it's a measure of the violin, the microphone, the mixing board, the mastering process, the amplifier, and the speaker.
The instruments in this test are not factory-made Yamahas. They're hand-crafted instruments made by top masters. In other words, the best instruments now are finally catching up to the best instruments of a few hundred years ago.
As for casual listeners, I'd believe that some of them can't tell the difference between a Yamaha and a Strad. But professional violinists absolutely can--both when playing and listening.
Are you sure? Since you always k ow which pick you are using it's easy for your brain to fool yourself.
There are limits to the human ability to discern and judge - see the discussion of blind violin comparison. But they didn't sound the same... they just didn't always have the expected results for "best".
You might have difficulty discerning between, say, Hawaiian and Columbian coffee, but you can easily discern the difference between coffee and lemonade. Except under the influence of certain medications...
The point I'm making, though, is that discernment is situational. It depends on experience with the subject matter, and whether it's direct or indirect. I can easily hear the difference between two guitar picks and make value judgments - IF I'm the one playing. My drummer can tell if I switch picks, because he knows my sound so well, but he couldn't tell you which one is which. Most people could never hear the difference.
When I'm playing a guitar, I can discern tiny things like moving the volume knob 10%. But two years later, listening to a recording, I couldn't even tell you which of my guitars I was playing. It's very situational.
It's not a recording.
I think you're off by at least one, possibly two, orders of magnitude on the relative number of fraudsters.
> A true sommelier can identify different wines by taste alone
Well, for Chardonnay, if (1) it is dry (low sugar) and crisp (high acid) with delicate flavors, then it's from near Macon, France and maybe Pouilly Fuisse or even Montrachet. If (2) it is sweet (high sugar), flat (low acid), with the many flavors of, say, canned fruit cocktail, then it's from California!
Really, this was my summary opinion from wine investigations some years ago, but I haven't had any Chardonnay in years; maybe California does better now!
http://www.thestrad.com/blind-tested-soloists-unable-to-tell...
It's also worth noting that it's hard to do a fair comparison because the owners of the Strads might not permit the kind of setup/maintenance that wouldn't be an issue with a modern instrument. Even getting permission to change the strings might be hard.
I think it's pretty impressive that a Strad placed in 3rd place against what I presume were some very well made modern instruments. One would expect something that old to either be significantly surpassed by modern construction techniques or to succumb to structural problems.
Right from the article: "In the second test all the violins were tested again in the concert hall. At the end of the test the players were given a series of violins and 30 seconds to guess whether it was old or new."
> It's also worth noting that it's hard to do a fair comparison because the owners of the Strads might not permit the kind of setup/maintenance that wouldn't be an issue with a modern instrument. Even getting permission to change the strings might be hard.
That's a wild assumption. If I was also speculating, I'd guess that people buying Strads do proper maintenance in order to protect their investment. Since I happen to know that buyers hire both professional players and professional luthiers to keep the instruments in shape, I don't have to speculate. Strads deteriorate when they aren't played often enough, and most people who spend millions on them know that.
> I think it's pretty impressive that a Strad placed in 3rd place. ... One would expect something that old to either be significantly surpassed by modern construction techniques or to succumb to structural problems.
One of them did, another Strad placed last. It's not just unimpressive, but damning to the narrative, considering the myth and folklore that Strads and Guraneris are unsurpassed and that modern techniques have never achieved the same greatness and perfection that the old masters did.
Your guess may be right, but it is opposite of what the violin world mythology claims, and the entire reason it's a "surprise" that the best players can't identify Strads. Even the OP's article starts on the unquestioned premise that Strads are superior to today's instruments.
FWIW A participant (of the 2010 study, not the follow-up you linked) did explain in a blog post that "[the Strads] were loaned with the stipulation that they remain in the condition in which we received them -- precluding any tonal adjustments or even changing the strings"
The Strads, though, are in whatever condition they happen to be in at the time, which could be good or not so good, depending on whether the years and previous owners have been kind to the instrument. And if there's anything that ought to be fixed for maximum playability, it might not be possible to get permission to have it fixed. Not because the owners don't care about maintenance, but because the owners are more concerned about keeping it in as close to original condition than how good it plays right now.
For instance, let's say there's a divot worn in the fingerboard from years of string friction. With a modern instrument, you'd just take it to a luthier and have him/her plane it down. With a Strad, you might consider how many times you can plane the fingerboard down before you have to replace it entirely, and whether or not the violin would lose value with a new fingerboard. And you might also say to yourself that that divot was worn into the fingerboard by <some famous 18th or 19th century musician> and who am I to erase that little bit of history? People can be sentimental about old instruments, and doing too many repairs may also be more harmful in the long run than only fixing what needs to be fixed and nothing more.
You're right, I skimmed the article too fast and missed that. I do think it would have been more interesting to test whether the Strads sound recognizably different than whether some violinists are able to recognize a Strad when they hear it. As it is, we're left unsure whether Strads sound more-or-less the same as modern instruments or whether the listeners just don't know what a Strad sounds like. I mean, I play the guitar but if you asked me to tell you whether some guitar I'm listening to is a vintage Gibson or something made somewhere in Asia last year, I would probably fail that test about half the time. That doesn't mean the guitars are equivalent, or give us much insight into the relative merit of one guitar versus another or whether a singular guitar is representative of its class.
> That's a wild assumption. If I was also speculating, I'd guess that people buying Strads do proper maintenance in order to protect their investment.
It was a criticism of the earlier study I had read some time ago. Since somebody else posted a link, I won't go into it any further.
> One of them did, another Strad placed last. It's not just unimpressive, but damning to the narrative...
That really doesn't tell us anything; that violin might not have been Stradivarius' best work, or perhaps extreme old age had taken its toll, or perhaps there was some physical defect in that particular violin that can't be fixed without destroying its historical value, or perhaps it just needs a new bridge or a new set of strings.
I think the idea that any Stradivarius violin will outperform any modern instrument regardless of circumstances or condition of the instrument is a straw man position.
In fact, their efforts have met with great success and by all accounts within the field, we're presently living in the second "Golden Age" of violin making.
I'm a violinist, played for 15 years - not professional, but I do know one thing about violins. And that's that they are an art form. End of story. There is no "best violin" in the same way that there is no "best artwork".
Saying that "tests prove that Strads do not sound as good as modern violins" is like saying "tests prove that Mona Lisa is not as good as newer artwork". It's patently ridiculous.
Mostly, I hate the trope because it's like clickbait for "smart" people. You'll see someone scrolling through Facebook. They see "15 gifs that prove Kourtney is the best person ever" and laugh. "How could anyone decide the best person ever based on gifs? That's so ridiculous!" But then they see "Study finds that Strads are no better than modern violins" and they share it.
"Tests" that "show" that Strads aren't as "good" are one thing, and one thing only: polls. They say that "of the people we polled, x people preferred y violin to a Strad." Whether or not the poll is blind only determines one thing, and that's how smug you can be when you share the article on Facebook. Note that the majority of these "tests" are simply asking random prominent violinists their opinion between two unlabeled choices. Sure, it's interesting that the most valuable instrument in the world might only be favored by, say, 40% of the population. But at the end of the day, you can't pick a "best violin" no matter how many polls you run.
My favorite violin is this creaky old 100-year-old violin with holes in it. When I've blindly tested people if they prefer it, or my modern (2008) violin, the modern violin always wins - usually by big margins, up to 80% or so. But the 80% that prefer the modern violin give it plain praise like "nice sound" or "solid tone". The 20% that prefer my older violin say things like "damn, that [violin] sounds so nice", or "wow, it really sings". I don't know about you personally prefer, but I'd rather have 20% that love it than 80% that simply prefer it.
(sidenote, on the topic of art: I, personally, am a big fan of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. I've seen his works a few times and I'm always blown away.)
Since I find the topic so interesting (and because my previous comments seem to be getting votes), I'll ramble for a bit more here on a few other questions I've asked myself, if you don't mind :)
Are Strads a good investment: In my opinion, yes in some cases. If I was ultra-rich (defined as worth over $100MM) I'd buy one. It's a great hedge against a lot of catastrophic events. Asteroid mining makes your stockpile of gold worthless? Violin still has historic and quality value. We can engineer a copy of a strad that sounds near-identical? Ok, well this specific Strad still has historic value. AI is able to create new instruments, or makes human achievements seem lame: Strad still has historic value.
Are Strads my favorite violins: I haven't heard enough of them in person to tell.
Do Strads have something special in their chemistry: Nothing downright magical, and I don't think there's any one specific magic ingredient. It's probably a combination of things, combined with Stradivari's skill.
It's not that modern instruments are "better" or "worse," but if they're indistinguishable, the question is irrelevant.
You may be referring to the question "which is the older instrument". (Which was asked in exactly one reputable study.) To which I say: why does it matter? Again, that's like asking "what is the older piece of art" when showing people the Mona Lisa. Is it interesting that, according to that one study, professional musicians are bad at guessing the age of their instruments? Kinda, I guess.
If you do want to trumpet that poll though, go ahead - be my guest. But you should know that a big reason why Strads are so valuable is (drum roll)... that they don't show their age.
[0] The instrument in question is a 1993 copy of the Booth Strad.
The available evidence does not support your assertion, in fact it refutes it. I mean, you can assert however much you like, but anyone who suscribes to the scientific method would disagree based on the studies.
(EDIT: That's not say that I don't "get" why people would want a Stradivarius -- its historicity, its rarity, etc. etc. Sound, however, cannot be the distinguishing feature.)
TL;DR The published research is absolute worthless garbage, with trash statistics, re-used participants, and downright inflammatory and confusing quotes such as the following: "Some musicians espouse decidedly nonscientific views, such as the existence of spirit guides". Say what you will about Stradivarius violins - I myself prefer Il Cannone to any Strad - but please do not try to prop up an argument with these worthless studies.
Your note of "Anyone who suscribes [sic] to the scientific method would disagree based on the studies" irritates me. "subscribing to the scientific method" is related to accepting published results in the same way that iPhone sales are related to the number of people who died falling down stairs [1]. Even more irritating, if you actually took two minutes to look for real, published studies you'd notice that the literature is surprisingly lacking for such a blogged-about topic. The entirety of published, close-to-legitimate research consists of two studies. Upon a closer look, one may notice that both studies were published in PNAS through the "Contributed" process, allowing them to bypass most parts of peer review - and critically, select their reviewers. After scanning the headline, you may notice that four of the five authors on the original paper are present on the second. Simply Googling the name of the first paper indicates strong concerns that have been voiced about the experimental design of the first paper, which made even the newspapers that published the second paper call the first paper "controversial".
Then, when you look at the second paper, you'll find a number of concerning things. I'm not sure how many papers you write, but even if the number is small I'm sure you'll agree that "The Team" is not something you'll find often in published literature. I assume one of their cherry-picked reviewers realized this, and thus they added the sentence "Although it is unusual to describe the team..." right after starting their "The Team" section, which made me chuckle. Once you start actually reading the beef of the paper, things start to look much more concerning. 40% of the violinists voiced deep concerns with the study.
What really makes me laugh was the supposed selection process. They claim to have selected a good sample of violinists (and make the, er, interesting claim that their sample is equivalent - yes, equivalent - to the entire population.) Then, only in the Supporting Information - accessible only by a link at the end of the paper in small text, by the way - they disclose that some of the violinists that were used in this particular study were exactly the same violinists used in the previous study. This becomes even more concerning when you realize the sample size is 10. A sample size of 10 is not bad by itself, and can often be justified, but in this case they reused study participants who had played the same violins before, and then in the same breath boasted about the quality of their study participants.
I'm not sure how this paper got published a SECOND time. Oh wait, I forgot. PNAS Contributed Papers. Letting Bad Science Bypass Peer Review Since 1914!™
For a fun time (warning: your definition of fun may be different than mine) you should read the absolutely disgusting commentary article [2]. It's basically an essay by the author on "Why Science Trumps Silly Artists!". It includes things such as hilariously saying that irrational minds will see triangles in Kanizsa's triangles when (and I quote) "careful inspection" reveals none actually exist! Wow! Scientists™ realized Kanizsa's triangles don't actually have triangles?! I for one am glad that we have Scientists to tell us that! There's no way our feeble artist brains could figure that out ourselves! The author then continues to let free-form bullshit dribble onto the page. Pop quiz: Are these quotes from Deepak Chopra, or a scientist with a PhD published in PNAS?
- "Expectations retune neural circuits"
- "Our processing can change perception"
If you answered Deepak Chopra, you're wrong! These are actually quotes from a PhD professor published in PNAS. He goes on to say some downright inflammatory and ridiculous things:
- "The findings should put an end to the outrageously high prices charged for musical instruments" What? I really hope this guy doesn't actually believe what he writes.
- "Because artists rely so heavily on their own experience, studies like this have historically fallen on deaf ears—“I know what I know because my senses tell me so” may be the refrain of those who are skeptical of scientific methods." Excuse me? The singular previous study was discredited by scientists first, then musicians second, because of sloppy science.
- "Some musicians espouse decidedly nonscientific views, such as the existence of spirit guides" What? I'd like to hear this man try to justify the inclusion of this sentence. Exactly what was he trying to accomplish?
I'm shocked and appalled at the current published "research", if it can even be called that. Say what you will about Stradivarius violins - I myself prefer others - but please do not defend the "research".
[1] http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=28669
[2] http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7168.full
[3] for more notes on violin stuff in general, see http://pastebin.com/GCuK322j
Ok, so here's the deal: If it's really easy to get these things published, then I suggest (if you care enough, you clearly care a great deal) that you try to get a paper puplished on your double-blinded randomized trial (etc.).
Honestly, it sounds like you might have a beef with the scientific process[1].
Btw, what's going on with your (3) link? Was that your edit buffer or something?
[1] No, it's not flawless. There's publication bias, etc., but so far it's the best anyone's come up with.
And hah, no beef with the scientific process here. I'm definitely very pro-science, and pro-scientific process. But that also makes me very anti-bad-science, and that paper is definitely a jumble of bad science that somehow scraped by the peer review process because of nepotism in PNAS.
Yep, [3]'s my 3am brain dump. Mostly unrelated but dumped in that comment cause it's the only one I can edit.
And now you've got me thinking about how feasible it would be. If I actually go through with this, I'm blaming you for it :)
I definitely think there's room for improvement (no particular experience with PNAS) in general -- peer review is very flawed, and there are huge problems with publication bias, the area being so specialized that the reviewers (indirectly) know whose article they're reviewing, etc.
Actually, I think one of the most interesting things (science-wise) to come out in recent years is the meta-science of science-about-science, fuzzy as that may be. I'm guessing you already know of him, but Ben Goldacre has been a great source (for us outsiders) for information on this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12095164
TL;DR—fine antique violins seems to have a wider range of good tone colors available than modern instruments, but these tone colors take significant practice with the instrument (months, not minutes) to discover.
Then another study found competitions are biased as well, with judges rating people differently based on physical appearance and the amount of body english they use while playing.
http://www.thestrad.com/blind-tested-soloists-unable-to-tell...
He would wear 20 year old pants, never ever eat out, grew most of his veggies in a garden.
He would think nothing of spending $100's on a tiny piece of wood from god knows where.
The story as I've heard it is that there was a rather dry period preceding Stadivari's violin making, which led to particularly dry and hard wood, both good things for a violin.
The population of people that can recognize good sql vs great sql is tiny as well...
That means today we can build much more excellent violins with machines, but music is traditional, thus prefers the hand made things first. New machine made violin can never sing as beautiful as old mystery thing of ancient music rituals.