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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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The museum hosts dozens of instruments it does not own, probably worth 10’s of millions and left there by the owners to be kept in a controlled environment, seen and heard (the instruments are regularly played on by local musicians and conservatory students). It could also be that taking these expensive instruments out to a studio without the appropriate security logistics is a security/legal nightmare and they were never going to be able to pull it off.

A couple of years ago I was driving through the area with a couple families and on a whim decided to check if Cremona had a violin museum. Kind it and spent the afternoon. To this day I think about it and I think it’s one of the top 3 museums I’ve ever been to. It’s mind blowing, exceptionally well done, super interesting and worth every second. An absolute, almost unreal gem, highly recommended!

Because they’re trying to promote the city and its history and its mystique. There are better sounding violins than Strads and better recording environments than this but would that get any interest from people?

Interesting question. I don't know the answer, but the whole Stradivarius mythos is unscientific [1], so I wouldn't be surprised if there is some kind of unscientific (or "artistic") answer to this too.

[1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-strads...

> the whole Stradivarius mythos is unscientific [1]

Seems to me a lot like new Coke. In blind tests people prefer new Coke, but if you tell them what they're drinking...

I suppose so long as people can tell the difference, recording the sounds of the Strads makes some sense, even if people prefer the new violins in blind tests.

Also I thought part of this had to do with the size of a sample vs a full serving. Sweeter or stronger flavors tend to do better in small volume taste tests (like the Pepsi Challenge). Drinking a whole glass can be another story.

> the acoustics of the auditorium, which was designed around the sound of the instruments, had to be studied, as well.

Seems like the room was made specifically for these instruments.

So sample the impulse response of the auditorium, at as many locations within the auditorium as you like, and apply a convolution reverb to the dry samples of the violins. If you sample both the violin and the auditorium together then your virtual violins will always have to play in the exact same location they were recorded. You're losing flexibility for no good reason.

The point is to record the violins in a hall that was designed for them in the town that they were made. Think there are already enough clean studio samples available.

The violins are not omnidirectional point sources. They have complex, frequency-dependent energy radation. A regular impulse response isnt going to cut it.

There are ways to capture non-point-source IRs, but none are the same as playing the instrument in the space.

Additionally, and perhaps more open to argument, the movement of the performer is part of the sound of an instrument. If the violin is locked in place, with a fixed IR applied, that's not really "what a strad sounds like" when its played for real.

I would suggest that having many more microphones would be a nice idea though.

Similarly to how farm cows get pregnant, with bull sperm being harvested with a machine and cows later manually inseminated, it is perhaps more efficient than the traditional way, but arguably lacks some... oomph.

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

An anechoic chamber is not a good recording environment. The musician won’t be able to play well.

In this case they would just be playing individual notes and scales, so would it be as important?

Yes, you can tell the difference between a virtuoso and a regular player just by how they tune up their instrument. A lot of violin is in the right hand.

Hardly. You give the musician IEMs (just like at a concert) and you can juice their sound however they like.

2nd and 3rd order reflections are extremely important to psychoacoustics. Unless simulated, it will absolutely affect a nuanced performance.

The goal here is, allegedly, to generate reference-level recordings. Or, to say it another way, you can add to existing sound but it's much harder to take away.

I can use Avid to make your reference recording sound like any one of hundreds of concert halls in under an hour. I can also generate almost that level of fidelity in real-time with an Alesis rack mount box into your IEMs.

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.

Thats a bit of a myth. They kick you out of the guided tour after 40 minutes.

That’s an urban legend, they’re fine: https://youtu.be/mXVGIb3bzHI

It's a bit spooky, but it's fine.

The violin was not built for a studio.

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