Fungivarius Beats $2 Million Stradivarius Violin 210
Fluffeh writes "Violins made by the Italian master Antonio Giacomo Stradivarius are regarded as being of unparalleled quality even today, with enthusiasts being prepared to pay millions for a single example. Stradivarius himself knew nothing of fungi which attack wood, but he received inadvertent help from the Little Ice Age which occurred from 1645 to 1715. During this period Central Europe suffered long winters and cool summers which caused trees to grow slowly and uniformly ideal conditions in fact for producing wood with excellent acoustic qualities. Now scientists are turning to fungi to recreate some of these amazing sounding instruments."
Violins (Score:5, Funny)
Any time I see someone playing a violin I ask if they can play "Devil Went Down to Georgia." I usually don't get positive responses...
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I am thinking more the difference between, say, jazz trumpet and classical trumpet. You can use the same horn, but different playing style, and sometimes different techniques. Definitely a different sound is desired...
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I can, and it's a fantastic and fun song. You should've asked me! :3
I'm classically trained but thoroughly enjoy fiddle music. Nothing is quite as crowd pleasing in a pinch, and it's great at parties. If I could play some Paganini perhaps, then maybe I'd stick to straight classical, but that stuff is bloody difficult. :)
Re:Violins (Score:4, Informative)
They're the same instrument. Fiddlers tend to use different strings, and different techniques, but the instrument is the same.
There are differences in playing techniques. For example, classical violin style tends to have vibrato, while fiddles are often played without. Fiddlers makes extensive use of shuffle bowing (the "dee diddle de diddle") rhythm and lots of double stops. But those are playing styles - the instrument is the same.
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Q: What is the difference between a fiddle and a violin?
A: The cost of the lessons!
Re:Violins (Score:5, Funny)
Huh. In that case, I've got two fiddles right here.
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nobody cries if you spill beer into your fiddle
Reminds me of (Score:2, Funny)
Hatori Hanzo and his amazing swords.
As interesting as this is, I still think I'd rather watch Kill Bill then listen to classical music.
Re:Reminds me of (Score:5, Informative)
I listened to quite a bit of classical music when I was a kid, but during high school I switch to rock. During college I rekindled my interest in it when I found that classical had the same-- if not better-- calming effect on my brain that some kinds of metal music had. In particular, almost everything by J.S. Bach and Girolamo Frescobaldi. I especially like Glenn Gould's Bach recordings (piano) and Colin Tilney's Frescobaldi recordings (harpischord).
I've found that the structure and depth of much classical music is much more complex and satisfying than most contemporary music. Don't get me wrong, I still listen to rock music, rap, folk, and electronica music, and I do like a good amount of what I hear-- but I think for many "artists", making a living is more important to them than making art, and this is really where a lot of the old masters excel.
Here are some good "beginner" pieces to listen to. They're accessible, and have catchy tunes, and they run the whole spectrum of expression. They're not dull at all!
Anyhow, give it an honest try. You might like it.
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when I found that classical had the same-- if not better-- calming effect on my brain that some kinds of metal music had.
I suspect that many people who don't listen to much metal would not find this statement surprising. (That's their oversight, of course.)
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There's a lot of modern music which borrows heavily from classics and is as rich as most of classical pieces.
For example: Nightwish, Falconer, Rhapsody, Aina, ...
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I still think I'd rather watch Kill Bill then listen to classical music.
So, which classical pieces do you intend to listen to after you've watched Kill Bill?
The most beautiful sound (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was much much younger I was purchasing a violin. While at this shop the owner had a 'cheap' Stradivarius. After I had selected the instrument I wanted (this had been going on for weeks of trying them) the owner let me hold, and play, his 'cheap' Stradivarius.
The sound that effused out of that instrument can not be put into words to hear and feel... it made the one I selected sound as if it were a cheap knockoff made of plastic. The tones could not even be compared in the same room- one was transmitted through steel cups and a string, the other was singing in front of you.
To this day that is one of the more emotional feelings of music I have ever felt.
To have that sacred sound reproduced for everyone to have access to- I don't know. It is such a beautiful instrument that, currently, only the elite can have and play (most instruments are endowed to players- on 'loan'). Should everyone have access... would it be the same?
Re:The most beautiful sound (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that you even wonder if it would be the same if it was "common" strikes a blow to your assessment that it actually sounded different. I'm sure good ones sound better than cheep ones, but all you convinced me of was that elitism has a note all its own.
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I don't think the actual quality was being called into question, but rather the fact that the original poster specificed wondered if the sound would be as good if it was common.
That itself basically states that to some degree, the poster was prizing not the actual sound (which should be good aside from rarity), but rather the fact that he was hearing what was described as a rare instrument.
Personally, I agree on the quality issue, but I've never been much for "rarity" alone making something sound better. A
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Not to mention that if someone were really concerned with good music, he'd want everyone to play on the best instruments possible. How would the world be any less rich if it were full of more beautiful sounds?
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I think he was more concerned that if the quality was always that good if he would get the same emotional response every time, or if it would water itself down to the mundane.
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In an electric guitar the wood doesn't do an awful lot, it's just there to hold the strings and pickups in place.
An acoustic instrument is different....
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You will find that wood choice does make a difference in electric guitars as well (ash being very popular for example), though I'll readily admit that it doesn't make AS MUCH of a difference as in acoustical instruments. However, you completely missed my point. There are other things at work with electrics that makeup for wood differences (namely, quality of the pickups). You're back to arguing about a quality difference. Again, the whole point of my post was to say that a quality instrument is a quality
Perhaps a placebo effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine there might be some of that Placebo effect taking place.
They did a study a while back where they gave cheap wine to ordinary people and labeled it as expensive wine. Then they did the opposite, labeling the expensive wine as cheap wine. When people were asked which wine they liked better, guess what? they liked the "cheap" wine labeled as expensive wine the best.
While I don't doubt that the Stradivari violins may be top notch, I doubt there is that much variance between a "modern" top notch violin and what he created.
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I doubt there is that much variance between a "modern" top notch violin and what he created.
There's actually lots of differences. The listening scenario is playing the same song on two different instruments by the same player. It's obvious then, but that doesn't make a good performance that people are willing to pay for. NPR did a story like that one Sunday morning.
Also remember that modern violins are played at a higher pitch with modern strings that appeal more to listeners than really old violins. O
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A real double blind test would require a robot player that played each instrument exactly the same.
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A listener might attribute "better" sound to a more expensive violin, *and* the player might play the more expensive violin with more care, resulting in a "better" sound. A real double blind test would require a robot player that played each instrument exactly the same.
Some years back, I read of an interesting "double blind" test that showed another interesting complication.
The test setup was a violinist hidden behind a screen, playing the same pieces of music on several instruments. The listeners were a
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However, the listeners were highly inconsistent in their ratings of the sounds of the various instruments. How good a given piece of music sounded was different for different listeners, and unrelated to the commercial "value" of the instruments. It was also not very well corellated with the player's opinion of the instrument's quality.
The main conclusion I drew from it is that the significant difference in an instrument's "quality" is how well it plays (and that could well be different for different musical
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Exactly! It's painful to see all the slashdotters making final pronouncements about stuff they don't care about. I mean I'm sure plenty of violinists think MS-DOS is just as good as Unix.
To a life-long musician, differences between instances of the instrument they play are really obvious. You'd think that all this wonderful space-age technology would make every modern instrument perfect but it's just not being applied. I mean, why doesn't artificially flavored food taste exactly like the real th
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This is why one ought to have more than double blind tests.
I suggest Quad blind semiblind and misleading tests, to test the placebo effect AND the real. For each sample, double it; one blind, one with clearly marked labels which may or may not be correct. Then measure and compare the results of all.
One of the things I suggest that might be happening is that certain things do have a "difference" that one cannot measure accurately with scientific equipment.
Let us say for the sake of argument that it is not fu
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Let us say for the sake of argument that it is not fully possible to measure all the subtleties of a AUTHENTIC Stradivarius verses an otherwise high grade violin. Then what? What if humans CAN detect things like "warmth" that a scientific measuring instrument can't fully quantify because we aren't able to measure it with scientific instruments?
I once spent several hours helping someone to modify a guitar amplifier to sound "warmer". We achieved what he wanted eventually, and I came to the conclusion that "warmth" is a combination of a smooth, peakless frequency response in the range of 150-1500 Hz, a little attenuation of the frequencies above 2 kHz, and a slight attenuation of odd-order harmonics in the signal. At least in the case of this particular amplifier. Of course, a sample size of one amplifier doesn't make a scientific study, and th
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The cheap wine thing would fool the average wannabe wine snob but it wouldn't fool a real expert.
The audio cable thing - NOBODY can tell the difference.
The wooden instrument thing, there's very little difference between the best modern instruments and a Strad. But ... a Strad is a Strad. If it's a Strad you know you've got the best and it doesn't get any better. No need to get into any arguments with people over which is the best brand, western vs. oriental, etc.
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John Cleese, "Wine for the confused" on Hulu, did an unlabeled tasting of expensive verses inexpensive.. His best advice on the whole thing.. is buy what tastes good to you..
Your licorice comment has a different twist for me.. When I was small, I always liked it.. Then I caught some bug and was sick as a dog.. my mom gave me some black licorice cough drops,, could never eat it again.. aversion therapy I guess.
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Should everyone have the privilege of having access to cheap books? Should everyone have access to quality medical care? Oh, I see, they should not...or should they?
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As far as your last question, ultimately it is the sound that matters, not how it is produced. So if they can build a modern instrument with the sound of a Stradivarius or of Pachelbel's violin, they absolutely should. And don't worry -- it still won't be cheap; it'll just cos
So what does the fungus actually do? (Score:2)
Is that what it does, or is it something else to do with the acoustic properties of the wood?
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The fungal attack changes the cell structure of the wood, reducing its density and simultaneously increasing its homogeneity. "Compared to a conventional instrument, a violin made of wood treated with the fungus has a warmer, more rounded sound," explains Francis Schwarze.
But other than that, you're right, not much to go on.
Methodology (Score:5, Insightful)
The test was with 5 violins, which consisted of one Strad, two made recently by biotech, and two made recently in the traditional way. The audience had 180 members. If you were to guess at random, you'd have a 20% chance of picking the Strad, and a 40% chance of picking out one of the biotech productions.
Some comments on the methodology:
As it happens, one of the biotech productions got 50% of the vote for the best sounding one, and 63% thought it was the Strad. That beats random guessing by a good margin, but I think this could have been done better.
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"Of the more than 180 attendees, an overwhelming number â" 90 persons â" felt the tone of the fungally treated violin "Opus 58" to be the best. Truslerâ(TM)s stradivarius reached second place with 39 votes, but amazingly enough 113 members of the audience thought that "Opus 58" was actually the strad! "Opus 58" is made from wood which had been treated with fungus for the longest time, nine months."
It appears that two 'fungus violins' were used and that the longest treated one was picked out (
Hmm. (Score:2, Insightful)
Still an interesting start, though. Definitely merits further investigation.
So many variables and theories... (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, the wood for the Stradivarius violins were transported by floating them in salt water behind the boat. And there are theories about the varnish.
The top of a violin has decorative purling trim placed in a groove carved around the outer edge. The groove is thinner than the rest of the violin, and it eventually cracks, causing the face of the violin to resonate better.
Violins that are played sound better than new violins. This can be duplicated by placing a violin in a chamber with speakers, and p
Eye of the Beholder (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me six months and a soundboard and I'll reproduce and then better the best violin you've ever heard. Only problem is, you'll never accept the results.
You want to know why Stradivarius violins are regarded as being of unparalleled? It's because they are regarded as being unparalleled. Do you seriously think that in over 300 years of violin making that noone has yet beaten what must be by now ancient and squeaky artifacts?
This kind of "Golden Age" worship is not based on any objective assessment of quality or sound harmonics or anything else. When violins are so good that there is no realistic way to tell the difference, people need to make up myths and stick to accepted scripts in order to be accepted as "knowladgeable". It's like how in blind tastings no-one can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines. Blind test it and I guarantee you that 99.99% of professional music lovers wouldn't be able to tell a Stradivarius from a cubase.
You're telling me that one guy in the 1600 managed to get his hands on all the fungus infested trees in Europe brought on by the cold and "that's" what's making these things sound so good? When people have to resort to such Grade A bullshit like that, you know they're getting desperate. I find it far more plausible that the Emperor has no clothes, and that violins can only approach a theoretical limit of sound quality before physical forces, feedback, etc become dominant over the diminishing returns.
There's no secret to Stradivarius violins. If people want to throw money away on mythical violins, let them. The ones from your local dealer will sound just as good, and in any case, violins don't have any effect on human penis size.
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And you probably aren't much fun at parties.
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Do you seriously think that in over 300 years of violin making that noone has yet beaten what must be by now ancient and squeaky artifacts?
I'm willing to believe it's possible, with a caveat. In many artistic disciplines, the master may die without imparting all his knowledge to a student. When the student becomes the new master, he too later dies without passing on everything he knows. Thus, the knowledge base eventually dwindles. In part, the rigor in scientific fields of writing down everything in detail is an important part of fighting against this tendency.
You're telling me that one guy in the 1600 managed to get his hands on all the fungus infested trees in Europe brought on by the cold and "that's" what's making these things sound so good?
It wasn't the fungus that made Strads good (though I originally read it that way, t
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I'm willing to believe it's possible, with a caveat. In many artistic disciplines, the master may die without imparting all his knowledge to a student. When the student becomes the new master, he too later dies without passing on everything he knows. Thus, the knowledge base eventually dwindles.
This is one theory of knowledge transmission, and it deserves to be taken seriously; however, we're at the head of a four-thousand-year-long counterexample in our current technological progress. Many students learn things that their masters never knew, and the overall state of the art advances. So while I think it's possible that Stradivarius knew more about violin-making than his students, it also seems very unlikely to me that we've never recovered his knowledge.
If the difference is in materials (as is
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Mass produced violins will tend to sound tinny due to their mass-production. Placing immense care into an instrument that'll be in the hands of a 6th grader who really wants to skip school to smoke pot would be a waste of time, so they churn out low quality instruments.
Individually built violins have a warmer tone, as more care is put into them. But that's just on the outer rim of effort put in. The type of wood, the location of the tree it was cut from, how i
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Do you seriously think that in over 300 years of violin making that noone has yet beaten what must be by now ancient and squeaky artifacts?
Do you seriously think you're so much smarter than everyone else that you're the only one who would notice an instrument sounding like crap? The Strads may not be perceptibly better than the best modern violins, but I'm pretty sure people didn't save them carefully for 300 years based on absolutely no positive attributes. And exactly why "must" they be squeaky just because they are old? Making statements like that might give others the idea that you have no idea what you're talking about.
You're telling me that one guy in the 1600 managed to get his hands on all the fungus infested trees in Europe brought on by the cold and "that's" what's making these things sound so good? When people have to resort to such Grade A bullshit like that, you know they're getting desperate.
No, that's not what
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Old Strats are popular for a reason, too.
Was gonna say the same thing.
I'm inclined to believe the "nobody has made a better violin in 300 years" argument because I know from my own personal experience that nobody has made a better electric guitar than those early Fenders in 50 years either.
Actually, strike that - I'm sure that both arguments are overly broad, and not really what any of these people actually mean... 1950's and 60's Fender guitars all have a particular tone to them that just can't be precisel
I'm not convinced (Score:5, Interesting)
Nonetheless, this is promising work. A modern violin by the best makers is typically a $25,000 instrument, while professional players in major orchestras are expected to spend several times that for an older instrument. It's like having an extra house payment. If the quality of the modern instruments starts to rival and surpass those of lesser makers in antiquity, it will help young players immensely as well as giving speculators in such instruments a well-deserved comeuppance.
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If this response to the 'fungus violin' was consistent, they would still be better than the strad, no matter what the reason.
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Sadly, there's likely nothing new here. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm old enough to have seen that a breathless "the real secret to Stradivarius's violins discovered!!!" story comes up about once ever ten years, then fades away, making way for the next iteration.
When I was in high school it was that the wood he used was floated down rivers before it got to him, and therefore picked up minerals - which a modern maker claimed to have duplicated by boiling the wood in a broth made from shrimp shells. (I'm not making this up.) Earlier, it was something to do with the exact composition of the varnish. And no doubt numerous others that I never heard of.
Somehow, through it all, Strads are still prized above all other instruments, and keep increasing in value each year.
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That's becaues it's more mythology than reality (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no question, the man made great violins. However, they are not some amazing, "Oh my god you can hear a huge difference no matter what," kind of thing. High quality modern instruments. It isn't as though there haven't been blind tests and acoustic analysis done, and they haven't shown any difference between high quality current instruments and Stradivarius.
It basically is just a sort of self sustaining mythology, and thus is likely to continue. Even if we produced a violin with nanotechnology that was provably atom-for-atom identical, people would claim the Stradivarius sounded better.
You see this in other high end audio all the time. Cables would be the best example. You can, and people do, pay prices like $50,000 for speaker cables. However there is no research anywhere that shows that they do anything for sound. Yet people claim they can hear the difference, despite none being measurable, and shell out the money.
Also there's simply the status symbol. Stradivarius instruments aren't something everyone can own. As such owning one is a massive status symbol. This will remain true, no matter what replicas are produced.
So it won't matter. They'll be "the gold standard" forever, however in reality we've already matched them acoustically.
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My favorite example: Denon's AK-DL1: "Ultra Premium", a $499 5-foot Ethernet cable. [denon.com] It's so premium that "signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer" -- presumably the electrons read the markings to figure out which way to go, because moving under a voltage is just so out of style.
Funniest line ever: (Score:2)
the AK-DL1 will bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction
Ya that's a good one (Score:4, Interesting)
Especially because if you actually own a Denon device with Denon Link (I do) it tells you straight out that all you need is twisted pair cable. However my guess is that some audiophile types whined that they couldn't buy "audiophile grade" Cat-5 to Denon. Denon then decided they'd more than happily put a hose in their pockets and suck the money out.
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When you're stuck carrying around large piles of cash, of course things sound better when a company like monster unloads some of that from you.
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You see this in other high end audio all the time. Cables would be the best example. You can, and people do, pay prices like $50,000 for speaker cables. However there is no research anywhere that shows that they do anything for sound. Yet people claim they can hear the difference, despite none being measurable, and shell out the money.
In my misspent youth, I was in a band. I remember a show we played, at an outdoor venue, we were asked to put a speaker near a concession stand. We had a speaker and an amplifier to drive it, but the concession stand was about a hundred feet from the stage, and we didn't have a long enough cable. So, we used two sets of booster cables and a rusty barbed-wire fence that happened to be in the right place. I couldn't detect any sonic difference, and I haven't used anything but cheap lamp cords for speaker
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A guitar used and signed by Pete Townsend would be more valuable than the same type unsigned and unused.
There's really nothing about a Stradivarius that you can't get by spending $25000 or so. Except the provenance and prestige.
hang on (Score:2)
So it was the trees that created the conditions?
The Stradivarius Myth (Score:5, Interesting)
The "unparalleled" sound of Stradivarii is probably mostly the placebo effect---the Stradivarius myth [telegraph.co.uk].
Here's a quote from the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
Above all, these instruments are famous for the quality of sound they produce. However, the many blind tests from 1817 to the present (as of 2000) have never found any difference in sound between Stradivarii and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis.[2] In a particularly famous test on a BBC Radio 3 program in 1977, the great violinists Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman and the violin expert and dealer Charles Beare tried to distinguish among the "Chaconne" Stradivarius, a 1739 Guarneri del GesÃ, an 1846 Vuillaume, and a 1976 British violin played behind a screen by a professional soloist. The two violinists were allowed to play all the instruments first. None of the listeners identified more than two of the four instruments; two of the listeners identified the 20th-century violin as the Stradivarius.[3]
A few million of VC should do it. (Score:2)
Perfectly believable (Score:5, Interesting)
I’m really a trumpeter...the computer thing is just to pay the bills.
Last night at a rehearsal, for an incredibly stupid reason (I mean, really, how do you walk out the door without grabbing that big yellow Pelican case?) I had to borrow an instrument.
The one I would have been playing on was owned by both Harry Glantz and Bill Vacchiano, perhaps the two greatest trumpeters ever to play with the New York Philharmonic. It’s a magical instrument, and the only C trumpet I ever want to play on again. Not perfect — it has its quirks — but it’s perfect for me.
The instrument I played on last night was barely adequate, and the mouthpiece was the polar opposite of mine.
It only took a measure or two for me to produce a sound that I considered acceptable. By the end of the first piece, only a trained musician who knows my playing very well would have been able to tell that I wasn’t using my own equipment.
Of course, I had to work a lot harder than normal to get to that point, and I still wasn’t achieving the results I consider optimal. But very, very few people reading these words would be able to tell that.
I learned that lesson decades ago at a master class with Charlie Schlueter, the principal trumpeter of the Boston Symphony. He wanted to demonstrate something but had left his horns at the hotel. So, he picked up whatever was closest, played a couple phrases, looked askance at the trumpet, set it down, and continued with the class. Everybody’s jaw dropped; the horn was the worst piece of shit I’ve ever played on — it leaked, sounded awful, and you couldn’t play it in tune to save your life. But Charlie still sounded like Charlie when he played it.
Cheers,
b&
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I think this is probably especially true with instruments that don't have frets - the musicians put the note where it should be - and isn't always there.
Violins, slide trombones, that sort of thing.
I'll take my frets any day ;)
Music is music (Score:2, Insightful)
ShroomVarius (Score:2)
Re:Blind Sound Test. (Score:5, Interesting)
They did it with the monster cables vs a coat hanger [gizmodo.com]. You could probably just grab a $500 violin and pit it against one of these 2 million dollar ones and see. The only problem is that the cost of $2m and $500 vs $150 and a coat hanger is a much bigger monetary difference.
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They did it with the monster cables vs a coat hanger [gizmodo.com]. You could probably just grab a $500 violin and pit it against one of these 2 million dollar ones and see. The only problem is that the cost of $2m and $500 vs $150 and a coat hanger is a much bigger monetary difference.
But in 10 years that monster cable will be worth the price of scrap copper and the Strad will probably go from $2M to $5M.
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But in 10 years that monster cable will be worth the price of scrap copper and the Strad will probably go from $2M to $5M.
That wasn't the point I was going for though. I was pointing out that a blind sound test has been done with two things, and the overall price of each test.
Re:Blind Sound Test. (Score:5, Interesting)
The $500 violin would fail. Miserably.
source [npr.org]
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What about a $5000 violin...?
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Maybe. This article says "ten thousand euros." [bbc.co.uk] Perhaps worth it to a professional. A student can learn on a less expensive instrument, but at some point, that student's talent might "outgrow" the violin.
There's competition from China [playbillarts.com], but many of those cheap violins are tarted up to "look like" a more expensive instrument. Unless they also "sound like" the real thing, it's pointless.
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That article says both:
A) Most people probably couldn't tell the different between a high-end modern instrument and a Strad.
B) That they didn't actually do any tests on any instruments, but they think (pure conjecture) that many people could tell the difference between a modern, mass-produced violin and a Strad.
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Yes, it was in TFA, you would know if you had RTFA
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You know, the Stradivarius like most instruments in the > $10,000 range (they go way up from there) has a sound that intuitively appeals to classical players/listeners. But there are a bunch of other makers that make very distinctive instruments of equal stature. They just don't have the celebrity status of Stradivarius.
Anyway, back to your blind sound test. The paying listener, is hearing the instrument in context of a song, so its characteristics aren't obvious. There is so much that goes into a si
Tension/wear/tear (Score:2)
Re:Blind Sound Test. (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't exactly true. Nearly all 18th-century violins have been radically overhauled to meet 19th-century standards for sound projection. The neck was re-cut to bend back to allow for greater string tension, which also had to be absorbed by a heavier bass-bar under the left foot of the bridge.
But this aside, the majority of violin players still tend to use gut strings (usually wound with silver) by preference. Synthetic strings can work well on some instruments, but YMMV. On my own instruments, I have had some success with synthetics on the middle strings.
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Did you even read the article?
In the test, the British star violinist Matthew Trusler played five different instruments behind a curtain, so that the audience did not know which was being played. One of the violins Trusler played was his own strad, worth two million dollars. The other four were all made by Rhonheimer â" two with fungally-treated wood, the other two with untreated wood. A jury of experts, together with the conference participants, judged the tone quality of the violins. Of the more than 180 attendees, an overwhelming number â" 90 persons â" felt the tone of the fungally treated violin "Opus 58" to be the best. Truslerâ(TM)s stradivarius reached second place with 39 votes, but amazingly enough 113 members of the audience thought that "Opus 58" was actually the strad! "Opus 58" is made from wood which had been treated with fungus for the longest time, nine months.
That's your blind test, right there.
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That's your blind test, right there.
Wasn't double-blind, though, which can make all the difference in a test of the tonality of a musical instrument. Much of an instrument's tone comes from the player, not the instrument. And a lot of what we perceive as "tone" isn't tone at all anyway - all a musician would need to do was play an instrument louder and a sizable number of people will think that makes it sound "better".
What's really needed is for a robot to play these instruments - that's the only way to e
Re: (Score:2)
Play the instrument louder? One of the supposed advantages of the Strad is is that it can be played loudly [npr.org], which is rather important in a large concert hall. No amplification, remember?
Teaching a robot to play a violin would be an interesting exercise in AI. I'd imagine that there's a certain amount of feedback involved--"this technique sounds particularly good on this violin, I shall use more of it."
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Blind Sound Test. (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder who can actually tell if a strad is better than a good modern violin. Is anyone aware of this sort of testing ever happening?
Wikipedia cites this book [google.com] by James Beament of Oxford as a source of blind tests and audio analysis that concludes there is no observable difference. The money quote:
there appear to be no characterizing differences between the perceived sound from well-made orthodox instruments on any age when played by a skilled player
The audiophile phenomenon is neither new nor isolated to electronics and turntables. Instruments are shiny and expensive and often rarefied; it is inevitable that a mystique emerges that lead to claims of dramatically superior audio quality. Never expect that the existence of actual evidence will dissuade the audiophiles; for every one tester there are a thousand bullshit artists and a million fools that want to believe them.
Unleash the anecdotes!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
there appear to be no characterizing differences between the perceived sound from well-made orthodox instruments on any age when played by a skilled player
That's because they used the wrong speaker cables and missed out on the warm sound only pure gold provides.
Ask the violinist. (Score:2)
I learned the violin a long time ago. I never got very good at it, but I got to talk to a lot of people that were a lot better than me. The general opinion was that above a fairly basic level, a good player could make a good noise out of most instruments. Indeed, there have been blindfold tests using violins made of aluminium or carbon fibre. However, most good players would agree that some instruments are a lot easier and more satisfying to play. This even extends to violin bows, which I find a bit more b
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This may be a bit offtopic (having nothing to do with violins) but I would agree that well-made instruments of various ages sound very similar.
My particular anecdote being that I was given a chance to play an original gibson les paul, and a modern remake of the same les paul, and found them to both sound incredibly nice. There was a bit of a difference though, but I'm not sure I could really put my finger on it. I did play the same bits on both (and on the same amp, in the same test room).
The epiphone versi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Independent newspaper carried out a lovely little experiment a couple of years ago. They took a very famous violinist (can't remember who now), gave her a Stradivarius, and sent her busking under a bridge by Waterloo station in London. At one point, the reporter who was accompanying her went to ask a homeless guy sitting under the bridge what he thought. "Is that a Stradivarius?", he asked straight out. Turned out the guy was from Stradivari's home town of Cremona and would've known the sound of a S
Re:Blind Sound Test. - Doesn't matter.... (Score:4, Funny)
A Strad is the best available. If you've got a Strad you can relax and stop worrying whether your neighbor's violin might be better.