Study confirms superior sound of a Stradivari is due to wood treatment (2021)
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The paper doesn't claim it's the varnish, it claims it's the wood treatment and its effect on density. That would make some sense.
The varnish is the finishing layer that is on top. That layer is also, fwiw, about 3-5 mils most of the time (IE 0.003-0.005 inches). Depends obviously on what and why (IE marine finishes are thicker, etc). It's affect on sound is almost certainly near nil.
If you could produce serious damping effects with 0.003-0.005 of a coating, we'd use it on walls, etc.
In reality, mass is much more important, which is why the treatment affecting the moisture content and density of wood would make more sense.
Wouldn't the older wood just be lighter, dryer and less dense?
I recall seeing instrument making videos where they mentioned the importance of using wood that had aged long enough to stabilize so that dimensions would not change after it was on the instrument. Some instruments have parts whose dimensions are critical.
The only exception is if the wood is transformed in a way that does not enable it to absorb water (or as much of it), such as petrification, etc.
It's pretty unusual to use green/undried wood for anything, although I've heard of using it for log-cabin type things.
I wonder if this is green wood
https://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/a-home-that-heats...
Are you saying the varnish is that thick, or the layer the varnish is on is that thick?
Painting on a 3-5mm thick layer of varnish sounds like a lot of coats.
The below link is from someone who makes violins and they make the top 2.7-2.8mm total thickness.
https://www.violincellomaker.com/2021/03/17/how-the-thicknes...
Edit: rereading your comment makes me think that you’re saying the total top thickness is usually 3-5mm.
New wood stringed instruments do not sound as good as old, well-played instruments. I think the reason Stradivari violins sound so good is that they are so old and have been played for centuries.
Over time, vibrating wood with oscillating strings, it changes the wood, the atoms in the wood will literally eventually align in such a way that the wooden pieces themselves become tuned to specific complimentary frequencies, increasing sustain and improving timbre.
Awesome hypothesis. Should be testable. E.g. exposing the wood to extended high amplitude sounds?
Just so we are clear, to my understanding, I believe your claim is equivalent to:
Take 2 (2 * n in order to account for variations in individual instruments) instruments as close to identical as possible. Tune both instruments. Digitally record the sound profile of each one. Place one in a silent chamber. Place the other in a chamber with a music source. Ensures all other parameters of the chambers are equal (temperature, humidity, sunlight, etc.). After x amount of time, take the instruments from the chambers. Digitally record the sound profile of each one a second time. The outcome you claim is that the delta for the instrument in the music chamber is noticeably different to the delta of the instrument in the quiet chamber.
Furthermore you claim that this effect is known among guitar players.
I suggest that in addition to the effect being highly improbable, no person exists with actual knowledge of such a phenomenon, only with belief about it and anecdotal evidence that does not account for other parameters. I suggest that all anecdotal evidence can be explained by a combination of:
- survivorship bias (good sounding instruments are taken care of and survive longer)
- differences in maintenance, environmental conditions, source materials, construction technique
- differences in use (being constantly properly tensioned and calibrated compared to wood working unconstrained)
- observer bias (a beloved or famed instrument will be favoured)
I suggest that good sounding instruments are not left unplayed yet properly cared for and therefore no one has ever observed such a phenomenon. Chances are, any cared for instrument will also be played, therefore what people have observed is the difference between pampered instruments and neglected instruments.
If you actually have any evidence, please back up your claim.
But this:
> Over time, vibrating wood with oscillating strings, it changes the wood, the atoms in the wood will literally eventually align in such a way that the wooden pieces themselves become tuned to specific complimentary frequencies,
This is a textbook case of bullshit. A clasical case of using scientific words to sound more convincing.
What you are claiming is literally that wood cristalises. Unless you actually have research with electron-microscope pictures to demonstrate such a claim, you are talking crap and spewing it with confidence.
"atoms in the wood will literally eventually align" is analogous to to homeopathy. Compare "The water molecules in the glass of water vibrate according the energy level of the information of the message you shout at it."
Now maybe op didn't word the physics and material science precisely, but what they describe is real. Perhaps you have a better explanation for a commonly observed phenomena.
Has anyone tried to quantify this phenomenon?
I'm not an acoustical physicist nor a luthier. Perhaps I've used the wrong terms. But I think maybe you can't see the forest for a tree blocking your view, which you've gotten hung up on.
Here is a bad citation.[1] Your searchfu is probably better than mine. Feel free to find a better citation.
[1] https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/4661/manufacturer-...
I say that words have meanings, and that extraordinary claims need evidence.
A material in which atoms (or molecules) are aligned is called a crystal. The process by which atoms align is called crystallisation. If we expand the concept of alignment we may consider atoms that are part of a polymer molecule to be "aligned". A material in which larger structures are aligned is a metamaterial. Beyond this level, referring to the alignment of atoms does not make sense.
Sound can affect the process of crystallisation of a liquid because the formation of crystals is influenced by pressure. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao2Jfm35XeE
But claiming that there is any crystallisation happening in a finished wooden stringed instrument requires evidence because it is implausible.
If we refer to polymers, wood and glue and lacquer all contain polymers. But claiming that those polymers are in any way affected by sound also requires evidence.
Also claiming that wooden instruments contain metamaterials and that the structure of those metamaterials can be altered by sound, similarly requires evidence.
What I am saying is that you not only claimed the existence of an unlikely phenomenon, but you also confidently asserted that it can be explained by physics that contradicts current knowledge. I am claiming that this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. I have read the page you link and find it unconvincing.
In my comment to Perenti ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31594035 ) I have proposed an experiment to measure such a phenomenon and proposed alternative explanations for the anecdata.
Yes, that is right. That is exactly right. You are hanging on words I used, in order to introduce new words and ideas in your first post, so that you can say I am wrong, and even after I explained further, you are then repeating yourself and still arguing against my first post. You are indeed staring closely and intently at a single tree, when everyone else is talking about the forest. Here, I'll quote the citation I used:
> As you play a new guitar (or other wooden instrument), the fibers in the wood settle somewhat due to the vibration, and over time this causes the wood to become stiffer, more stable, and more resonant, which in turn improves the sound.
Different woods experience this phenomenon differently; for example, spruce takes about a year of playing to break in, and a guitar with a spruce top will sound better after a year of playing than it did right out of the box. After that, the aging process is slower and the marginal improvements smaller. Cedar, on the other hand, breaks in both sooner and more steadily---you may notice a slight improvement in resonance earlier than you would with a spruce top, but the overall improvement after a year may not be as much as with spruce.
When I shake a box of sand, the grains will realign, with the larger grains sifting to the top. I suppose you now think I am making crystals with a box of sand? Your employment of "crystals" is a straw man.
From wikipedia: "In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (flows) under an applied shear stress, or external force"
Sawdust may be a fluid but wood is definitely not a fluid. And in any fluid, the particles are not in any meaningful way "aligned". What you are describing with different grain sizes is similar to the behaviour of different density liquids like oil and water. They are still in no meaningful way aligned.
So unless you want to claim that a guitar is a fluid, even this interpretation does not apply.
What I am saying is precisely that "the fibers in the wood settle somewhat due to the vibration" is a bullshit claim spouted with utter confidence and lacking any king of evidence.
I am NOT claiming that instruments do not "break in".
I am asserting that this does not happen due to exposure to sound or music. I am asserting that if you do the experiment I describe, there will be no measurable difference beyond individual variation (that is why I proposed repeating the experiment on 2 * n instruments). And I assert that playing the instruments from the same experiment in a double blind listener test no one will be able to observe a difference between the 2 sets of instruments beyond just guessing.
I am claiming that this whole idea is the acoustic equivalent of audiophile grade ethernet cables.
It's a report about a new study that claims that it is NOT the varnish. Rather it was a secret recipe of wood preservative used by the Cremonese makers Stradivari and Guarneri to impregnate the spruce.
The linked papers are much better than the article.
There's no one change that, applied indiscriminately to an instrument, will reliably improve it. There are lots of things that work together to make a great instrument, and a great maker knows how to balance them.
(Side note: I'm also confident that there are instruments being made today that will equal Stradivari's given time enough. In my own experience, one viola made by Michael Darnton of Chicago was markedly better than any of the old Italian instruments I've played, though they were not of the first rank. That was an instrument fit for any use, and if I could have afforded it, I would never have let it go.)
At least the dealer that handed her a Strad told her what it was. She preferred the little Italian.
I know nothing about the subject, but decided to do a quick search about this guy.
https://soundpostonline.com/profile-michael-darnton-in-his-o...
> Essentially, the quality of violins dropped precipitously after the deaths of Antonio Stradivari (1737) and Joseph Guarneri del Gesu (1745), and it’s (sic) has never recovered. I figure that if I could ever merely replicate the work of Stradivari, I’d be the second or third best violinmaker that has ever lived.
Is this a commonly accepted viewpoint in the violin world? It just seems so surreal to think that it would take ~275 years just to match the craftsmanship and talent, let alone exceed it.
That being said, Stradivari and Guarneri were not so highly-rated in their own lifetimes; the Amati family and Jacob Stainer fit the ideal of tone and power of that time. It was only as violin technique and string and bow technology improved, and older instruments were modified with stronger bass bars and back-tilted necks mortised into top blocks, that the Stradivari and Guarneri instruments became so highly-prized. It's almost as though they only really worked properly when technique and technology advanced to be able to fulfill the tonal goals the makers had for their instruments.
There was a time where Baroque violins would get their neck removed and re-glued at a larger angle, along with a bridge replacement. This happened to every single Stradivarius ever made.
And then, there's the shift to modern steel strings.
And most of them have been opened multiple times to seal cracks in the wood.
I liked music a LOT, had recordings of dozens of the most famous pieces from Bach through Tchaikovsky.
And I was a math grad student, but my dorm building was next to the music school with a lot of music majors. One of the violin students put his old Italian violin under my left chin and gave me a first lesson. So, I signed up for a course in violin, just me and one teacher, a violin student in the school. He was terrific, far ahead of what I as a beginner, deserved! E.g., after the semester was over, he played the Brahms concerto in Toronto!
But I did get a start. I continued, and took some more lessons off and on. Eventually I made it through a few pages of some of the famous music, e.g., the Bach Chaconne.
The student there at Indiana University I met again later, and he had swapped his old Italian violin for one made in NYC. His statement was that what he got new was as good as any of the old Italian instruments. That is, net, somehow some modern violin makers have learned how to make violins that are among the best ever.
Just how to do that? Uh, instead of what is in the OP, just talk to some such violin makers!
Bosendorfer [1] is trying (IMHO, without total success) to displace Steinway as the premier piano for concerts.
A couple items in the Wikipedia article made me LOL:
> In his memoirs, Arthur Rubinstein recounts having insisted on a Bechstein instead of the hall's Bösendorfer before a recital in Austria.
When my teacher moved away, she gave me her Bechstein on indefinite loan. It had a cracked soundboard, but she felt that it should nonetheless be worth $20,000 or so. A piano tech looked at it and said, "Maybe $2,000."
> Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett performed the solo improvisations (his Köln Concert) at the Cologne Opera House in Cologne, Germany on 24 January 1975 on a Bösendorfer and became a Steinway & Sons artist in 1981.
Somebody also discovers a different "secret of the Stradivari" every decade or so. Thirty years ago people were going to make carbon-fiber composite violins that imitated the mechanical properties of the wood used in them, for example.
Here's an episode of NOVA (PBS, WGBH) from 1982 all about it
> In fact, a 2012 double-blind study of 21 experienced violinists found that most of the subjects preferred playing the newer instruments; the Stradivarius ranked last in their preferences. Most of them couldn't tell the difference between the old and new instruments, with no significant correlation between an instrument's age and its monetary value.
FTA
In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8q3zrCYMRw, they managed to differentiate most high end violins (4/5 tests - 10 Violins).
Incidentally, the only mistake was with one of the two Stradivari examples.
All the new violins in that study were high-end instruments by trained artisans, which can easily be $100,000 or more. So really the takeaway is: modern players like violins from today's masters of violinmaking as much as or more than those by Stradivarius.
If they were being made today they would be considered very good quality violins and fetch in the $10,000+ range or more most likely, especially considering the location they are made in, the materials, and the methods employed to build them.
Classic literature is the same way. It's classic because of its influence, not just quality.
8 players chose a Strad as their favorite, so it's not as clear-cut as "new violins are better." It's more like, Strads are in a similar league, but do not outclass, new violins, despite costing an order of magnitude+ more. But then again, they are pieces of rare collectible art that are hundreds of year old–it's kind of amazing that you can play them at all!
So it's more like: imagine if there were a handful of surviving vintage audio cables from the 1600s (okay, the 1800s?) that performed almost as well as modern ones. I imagine they'd cost more money. And that wouldn't be so crazy, given their history.
Here's the original study & NYT coverage for reference:
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1619443114
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science/in-play-off-betwe...
A key point that's omitted in most of the reporting is that the Strads were loaned to the organisers on the condition that they not alter their setup in any way, whereas all the modern violins were adjusted and given new strings immediately before the test. It's also not true that the testers couldn't tell the difference between the new and old violins; they weren't asked whether they could tell, they were only asked which they preferred.
The big difference between violin and say piano is that with a piano if you hit a key with a certain velocity it will make a certain sound. Over and over again. On the violin it isn't nearly that simple and just forming the tone will take a long time (in a way you never stop getting better at that).
http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3139/can-a...
Each round one of the violinists plays a simple melody for one non-violinist member of the other team. Then that person takes the violin and tries to play it for another non-violinist member of their team and so until the last non-violinist plays it for the violinist on their team. If the violinist can identify the piece their team gets a point.
It also makes me wonder if I would be able to get any sound out of a violin today.
(Orchestra supporter and string player dad over here, so genuinely curious)
As quoted, this isn't a test for superior sound, but rather whether a violinist preferred playing a certain instrument.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/stradivar...