Fungivarius Beats $2 Million Stradivarius Violin

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."

Comments

Violins

[Spazztastic]

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...

Re:Violins

[CannonballHead]

That's more of a fiddle player's song. No difference in the instrument, necessarily, but definitely a difference in the player/technique.

Re:Violins

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

That's because you're too stupid to tell the difference between a violin and a fiddle.

Re:Violins

[albedoa]

No please, go on. What's the difference?

Re:Violins

[Bruiser80]

I've almost wanted to learn the song, just so I could do it when asked. Fortunately, I stopped playing after college, so I don't get the request anymore ;-)

Re:Violins

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Violins

[Itninja]

Yeah kind of like playing a trumpet, saxophone, etc...or simply playing a 'horn'. The horn players produce a completely different style of music.

Re:Violins

[zippyspringboard]

Many fiddlers also alter the shape of the bridge and make it flatter. It's not a 100% sort of thing, but fiddles are often set up differently. My favorite explanation? A violin is carried in a case, a fiddle is carried in a sack :)

Re:Violins

[Joelfabulous]

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

[gardyloo]

Huh. In that case, I've got two fiddles right here.

Re:Violins

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I'm sorry, but the Devil could kick any mortal's ass. A normal human, no matter how skilled, could not defeat him without kiting him around and around and possibly needing to get him snagged on a corner or something.

Re:Violins

[treeves]

Yeah, especially the hand horn players.

Re:Violins

[Anonymous Coward]

No please, go on. What's the difference?

You don't even have to hear the difference, the smell should give things away.

Re:Violins

[CannonballHead]

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...

Re:Violins

[fifedrum]

nobody cries if you spill beer into your fiddle

Re:Violins

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What is the difference between a fiddle and a violin?

A: The cost of the lessons!

Re:Violins

[Chris Burke]

nobody cries if you spill beer into your fiddle

I do. Wasted beer!

*sob* No! Give it here, I can still drink what's left out of the fiddle!

Re:Violins

[Falconhell]

Reminds me of an old joke.

There is no difference in size between a violin and a viola-Its just the violinists big head makes the violin look smaller......

Re:Violins

[gardyloo]

Makes the tunes more hoppy.

Re:Violins

[Roland Deschene]

I would bet anything Itzhak Perlman could play "Devil Went Down to Georgia" Without a doubt.

Re:Violins

[dov_0]

I saw a documentary on using fungus for violin wood and comparing it with Strads about 15-20yrs ago. This is slow even for /.

Re:Violins

[cloudmaster]

Have you heard the Charlie Daniels song? The Devil *did* win, IMHO. The band of demons really adds to his particular work. :)

Reminds me of

[Monkeedude1212]

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

[raddan]

That's too bad. There's some really amazing classical music. You'd probably be surprised to find that many tunes are already familiar to you.

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!

• Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (I like the Boston Symphony Orchestra recording with Ozawa conducting)
• J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (I like Glenn Gould's second recording, from 1988) or Brandenburg Concertos
• I'm not a huge Mozart fan, but you've probably heard (and might) like much of his stuff
• pretty much anything by Beethoven
• Niccolo Paganini's 24 Caprices for Solo Violin (I like Midori's recording-- wow!)
• Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (the orchestral re-work done by Ashkenazy is amazing)
• G. F. Handel's Water Music (Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music recording is my favorite)

Anyhow, give it an honest try. You might like it.

Re:Reminds me of

[BrokenHalo]

I still think I'd rather watch Kill Bill then listen to classical music.

Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but at least try out Bach (the Musician's Composer)'s sonatas/partitas for unacompanied violin, or the sonatas for violin and harpsichord.

Of course, this music is not classical, but baroque - but this is another part of your education.

Re:Reminds me of

[amplt1337]

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.)

Re:Reminds me of

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Reminds me of

[Cyberax]

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, ...

Re:Reminds me of

[mhajicek]

Check out Emilie Autumn, and her two disk album "Laced / Unlaced". The first disk is some impressively technical classical, the second modernizes and goes industrial.

Re:Reminds me of

[djl4570]

I tried listening to classical music for years and discovered that I prefer simple music. Sonatas where much of the work is solo or with an accompaniment.
Adding to your list:
Mozart's sonata's for violin and piano. They have not gotten old for me. Variations on a theme in G is my favorite.
Arcangelo Corelli - Twelve Violin Sonatas opus five (Get the recording by Manze)
Pietro Locatelli - The Art of the Violin.
Weinawski - Scherzo Tarantella
I found Paganini's Caprices harsh but numbers five and twenty-four are among my favorites. Keep in mind these are exercises for advanced students and among some of the most difficult pieces ever composed.

Re:Reminds me of

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's too bad. There's some really amazing classical music. You'd probably be surprised to find that many tunes are already familiar to you.

I know plenty about classical music. I've studied it, I've listened for fun, and I've given it "an honest try". It's not my favorite thing in the world, but I'm OK with it.

As nice as you -think- you're being, you sound like a snob when you suggest that anyone who doesn't like something you like just don't know enough about it to be able to appreciate it.

Re:Reminds me of

[Anonymous Coward]

As nice as you -think- you're being, you sound like a snob when you suggest that anyone who doesn't like something you like just don't know enough about it to be able to appreciate it.

I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't get that from the GP's post at all. Perhaps you read a little more into it than what was originally there?

Re:Reminds me of

[Anonymous Coward]

um, "pretty much anything by Beethoven" does not match up well 'these are good beginner pieces to listen to".
They are great, but the late quartets are extremely challenging ( but richly reward the patient listener).

As a better intro to Bach for the non-expert. listen to the Swingle singers,
then go back and find the pieces they selected as done in more standard ways.

This also works for Mozart.

PS: I first heard Glenn Gould's version of the Well Tempered Clavier and am glad I did, but there
are a lot great Bach piano players. PLEASE do not stop with him.
(Till Fellner's WTC is a revelation. Murray Perahia and Andraas Schiff are amazing.)

Re:Reminds me of

[jeoxenx]

To be precise - they do borrow heavily. That does in no way make them necessarily only nearly as rich. Only by looking at a Van Gogh painting, recognizing a tree and then painting a similarily looking tree in my painting doesn't make my painting comparable to a Van Gogh. What they of course do is copy the power of an orchestra and the multitude of simultaneous sounds - but that's just overpowering our brain, not richness and depth.

Blind Sound Test.

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Spazztastic]

They did it with the monster cables vs a coat hanger. 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.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeng]

Yes, it was in TFA, you would know if you had RTFA

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Fujisawa Sensei]

They did it with the monster cables vs a coat hanger. 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.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Spazztastic]

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.

[cayenne8]

Hmm...It would be cool to seem them use the 'wood' to create super versions of say...a Telecaster that would be a perfect specimen in the future...

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[mpapet]

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 single performance that attracts lots of paying customers, a Stradivarius in the first chair isn't relevant. Who's in the first chair? What songs will they play? etc.

Also keep in mind consumers of classical music prefer the sound of a modern violin. the tension of the strings has increased meaningfully over the centuries and so has the pitch. So a Stradivarius isn't really built to handle the tension or modern strings.

While there is some interest in playing classical instruments strung with animal-based strings and tuned like they were centuries ago, it's a tiny niche.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeremy Erwin]

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.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[TopSpin]

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 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:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeremy Erwin]

The $500 violin would fail. Miserably.

source

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[NotBornYesterday]

Not only that, but next to TFA were a series of links/summaries to articles full of similar "tests" and breakthrough explanations of why Strads sound the way they do. People have been announcing new Strad secrets like people announce bigfoot sightings. IMHO, it sounded like the article was a puff piece press release to sell new fungus-treated violins.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Subm]

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.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[BrokenHalo]

Also keep in mind consumers of classical music prefer the sound of a modern violin. the tension of the strings has increased meaningfully over the centuries and so has the pitch. So a Stradivarius isn't really built to handle the tension or modern strings.

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.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it says nothing in that book about the cost of the instruments.

So they could have been comparing a number of 'shiny and expensive' instruments, but just found that the makers name doesn't make much difference above a certain level of quality.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[BrokenHalo]

Unleash the anecdotes!

Sure. There's no doubt that violins made along a similar pattern will sound approximately similar to an independent observer.

But to the player, the difference can be quite profound. I am a violinist, and love well-made istruments of any vintage, but there is nothing that says modern instrumnts are in any way inferior to classic Italian achines.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[badasscat]

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 ensure they'd all be played the exact same way every time.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Bertie]

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 Strad anywhere.

Now, just think how unlikely it is that someone will roll up and busk with a Strad, and yet this guy was sure he knew what he was hearing. So yeah, they have a distinctive sound all right.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Joce640k]

What about a $5000 violin...?

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[profplump]

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.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Play the instrument louder? One of the supposed advantages of the Strad is is that it can be played loudly, 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:Blind Sound Test.

[WinterSolstice]

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 version, however, sounded like a cheap guitar :D

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[ezzzD55J]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQmoTJFScMY

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[fifedrum]

snobbery is hardly a surprise coming from NPR or violin players, either group has a certain tendency towards that behavior.

My fiddle instructor couldn't tell the difference between my 200 year old German fiddle and my 10 year old Chinese fiddle... It could be that his hands were over his ears the whole time, or the medication, not sure which.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeremy Erwin]

I think that the analogy has been stretched to the limit.

Violins are finely crafted instruments. They are hand tuned, and require some expertise to build well. If there was some sort of formula for precision crafting great violins, mass production would be simple.

But even then, there would be measurable differences between a $100 violin and a $10,000 violin. It's not as if there's some foundry cranking out violin chips, and the difference between models lies in whether the "case" is woodgrained plastic or genuine maple, spruce and willow.

You can look at a multi thousand dollar DVD player, say "digital's digital", and eschew it for a $30 version-- if you don't mind the occasional jams and vibrations that come from using a plastic case.

But apply that same reasoning to a turntable, and you'll end up with a device that simply can't play records very well. Every wobble, every slew of the motor, every imbalanced gear will ultimately find its way into the sound and distort it.

Speaker cables? Bah. I'd rather use speaker cables than coat hangers-- flexibility is useful. But most of the arguments used to sell boutique speaker cable are false analogies to phonographs, where vibrations tend to matter.

Finally, the general public doesn't buy expensive violins Violinists do. If a violinist believes that the expensive violin's tone is sweeter to her highly trained ears, if the expensive violin is somehow more responsive to how she wants it to sound, then she'll find the money and pay the higher price. And if fungi treated wood makes a good violin sound extraordinary to a violinists ears, I'm all for it.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Maybe. This article says "ten thousand euros." 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, 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.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Chris Burke]

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 Strad anywhere.

Joke the First: What the article doesn't mention is that when he asked that he was pointing at a pigeon.

Joke the Second: That was "Stradivarius Joe", and he always asks that.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Compared to a virtuoso, its rendition was a trifle stilted and, well, robotic.

source

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[mr exploiter]

A better analogy: is a ferrari F430 better than a Civic? No need to answer that. If you don't understand the difference between a complex machine and a piece of conductor metal then you are an idiot.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better at what?

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[wyldeone]

As a violinist with a ~$5000 instrument, I can confidently say there is a world of difference even between a $5000 instrument and a $10,000 instrument. However, it's important to note that tonal quality is only one, and not necessarily the most weighted, factor in pricing a violin. Others are age, the fame of the maker, the construction of the instrument, and the condition, all of which possibly imply good tonal quality, but don't necessarily ensure it.

In other words, there are huge divergences in quality in violins, and good violins tend to cost a lot of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars). However, inside particular price ranges (say, $20,000-30,000) the more expensive instrument may not necessarily be the better.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Fuel Economy, naturally.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[geekoid]

no, there is a real different between a strat any every other violin. 500 dollar violin and 150 dollar violin? the only difference is quality of the assembly.

Yes, I hate 'magical' thinking the surrond the 'audiophile culture' especially when people push 100 HDMI 1.3 b cables when you can go to Amazon and get them for a nickle plus 2.95 shipping and handling.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[geekoid]

I do not have a musical ear, and my attempts to learn to play an instrument just dropped short of the instrument bursting into flames from the embarrassment.

I have heard one, and it seems a lot different. Considering the wood has a real measurable effect on the sound, I am tempted to think there is a noticeable difference.

Yes, maybe I was biased. I can say that until I heard one I didn't expect to be a difference. I wouldn't of gone, but the woman who invited me was hot.
Yes I know the value of an anecdote.

it's not like there trying to sell copper ina pretty package as being better then copper in an ugly package.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[geekoid]

That book doesn't really address several issue, and cite no tests. It talks factually when talking about human hearing, but anecdotal when talking about Strad.

Not to say there is a difference, but that book isn't a good go to reference.

Actually there is no argument, there is a difference, the discussion is it it enough to matter? Different woods effect sound differently. AS do different manufacturing techniques. Responsivness is another issue.

Blinded tests can be done.

Re:Blind Sound Test.

[geekoid]

You don't see the problem there?

The most beautiful sound

[purduephotog]

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

[Utini420]

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.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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?

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?

Re:The most beautiful sound

[popeye44]

As I play and listen to various guitars. I can unequivocally say that different woods and builds sound exceptionally better. Violins are no different. The better made ones do have better tonal qualities. I'm a lamp cord user over monster cable so i'm not an elitist :-]

Re:The most beautiful sound

[Locke2005]

I know it sounds strange, but I had a similar experience comparing the tone of an old Martin guitar to the ones I could actually afford. I'm not a good guitar player and don't have a really good ear, but dammit, it just sounds better!

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 cost the same as a small car instead of a large mansion.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[KraftDinner]

Exactly, what is it about a person's social status that makes them sound "better"? Nothing, that's what. It's all about talent and practice. Some of the greatest musicians I have EVER heard were busking on the streets. No amount of money, notability or stature will ever change how they sound or how their instruments sound.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[MBGMorden]

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. As someone also really into (electric) guitars, aside from pure collectors value, from a tonal standpoint I don't see the advantage in paying some ungodly sum for say, an original 1958 Gibon Les Paul Standard, versus any decent modern guitar for $500 and throwing a pair of Seymour Duncan Antiquity pickups in it. One might a lot more "rare", but if the commonly available one sounds as good for a lower cost, then I'll not be a snob.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Something a bit strange happened to acoustic guitars around the 1980s

Companies like Yamaha started making these really solid guitars that were indestructible and had thick varnishes on them, so they looked great and felt solid. The only thing was, they don't sound so good.
When you pick up an old Martin or Gibson acoustic, they feel quite flimsy and light compared to most modern acoustics, but they really sing.
The old guitar makes concentrated on tone, which meant using thin wood on the body quite often, and giving up a bit of strength in the struts. (Thicker struts in the guitar top = more strength = more wood having to be moved by the strings.)

The same thing has happened to drums. The shells of an old ludwig or gretch kit are sometimes half the thickness of a modern mapex or Yamaha kit, and the metal hardware parts much lighter and smaller. But they sing more, as the shells resonate a bit, and the hardware (nowadays often really just big lumps of shit powder alloy (monkey metal)) is not sucking the tone away.
Part of this was due to people needing volume, physically stronger kits for touring, and some really heavy hitting drummers. But a big part is just psychology as heavier sturdier drums with huge metal hardware parts sell better.

With an acoustic instrument, making it physically stronger is often decremental to the tone, but sadly people don't care so much nowadays.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[amplt1337]

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?

Re:The most beautiful sound

[ArsonSmith]

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.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[wrfelts]

I've had very similar experiences with pianos. I'm by no means a master. I don't even consider myself proficient, but the opportunities that I have had to play a really excellent piano made things totally different. From the weight of the keys and their responsiveness to my touch to the acoustic quality and shape of the box surrounding the harp, everything sounded and felt different. I've only been "lost" playing piano twice in my life. Once was on a high end traditional full grand (can't remember the make). The other time was, to my surprise, on an simple Yamaha full keyboard (a high-end electric one with only 2 "voices"). It felt and sounded as good as the grand to me. I was shocked that an electronic device could really produce that sound and have such a velvety feel. It was a dream to play.

If instruments with that level of quality were accessible to everyone I believe that the amount of truly inspiring musical compositions would begin to soar. My piano play began to wane after those experiences simply because everything else left me flat. When you truly enjoy the experience of playing a quality instrument and the instrument itself is not fighting against you in the production of a really beautiful sound your creativity level goes way up.

With the studies out that have definitively proven the link between playing music (including singing) and the increase in abilities in language, math, and science aptitude I begin to wonder if more common access to high quality instruments would help to improve the math, science, and language problems we now have in the education system. I would certainly help reduce the amount of pop-noise that pervades our society today.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Should everyone have access to quality medical care? Oh, I see, they should not...or should they?

The differences being, of course, that the reason "everyone" will have access to "that sacred sound" is that it's going to come down vastly in price due to new technology, not due to a scheme that makes us all chip in for you to buy a Stradivarius. Universal health care advocates should take note that without a capitalist health care system, similar advances in medical technology will never be made.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[CorporateSuit]

Just as the honey-delicious manna from heaven eventually tasted like stale dust to the Israelies who had nothing but manna to eat, an awe-inspiring sound will eventually turn into pure noise without variety. Any violinist worth their resin can tell the difference between a $200 violin and a $200,000 violin -- and to them, the $200,000 violin has a sweet, full resonant tone to it. To someone who hates listening to his sister practice violin for 2 hours a day, a $200,000 violin sounds like a dopier at low notes, screetchier at high notes than the crappy one his sibling plays.

It's like telling the difference between the engine noise of a honda civic with new intake/headers/exhaust and a Koenigsegg CCX. To someone who doesn't care about cars, they're both engines. To a car enthusiast, to hear one is a practically orgasmic experience while the other is cheap. This difference is based on expectation and knowledge of what the two different cars' reputations and capabilities are.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[Anonymous Coward]

A Stradivarius instrument is not a book or a health-care service. It is a priceless, unequaled musical jewel. They should not be passed around to people who have not lived their entire life for the purpose of playing the violin. It would be, for all practical purposes, sacrilegious. When purduephotog was saying elite, he meant "elite violinists," as in, the best. The elite violinists do not own the violins, they are rarely wealthy enough. Violins are loaned to elite violinists by wealthy, and usually ANONYMOUS private collectors.

A connoisseur of violins can easily hear the difference between a Stradivarius and the very best selection of modern violins. Anyway, violins manufactured using the fungal process would likely be expensive enough relative to the average persons' income that it would be an impractical purchase, and so they will still be relegated to the more dedicated, career-oriented tiers of classical violinists.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[imgumbydamnit]

I can definitely relate. In the summer of 1974 I was a 17 year old violist at the Aspen Music Festival. Pinchas Zukerman would sometimes drop in on my teacher (Lillian Fuchs) during lessons (and made me nervous as shit). One time, he had his Guarneri viola with him, I think it was called the "King David". I didn't know what to expect when he let me try it. The sound was huge and deeply resonant across all registers, and somewhat forgiving of imperfect attacks in bowing. Granted, my own instrument was not the pinnacle of modern instruments, but it was no inexpensive knock-off either. There was absolutely no comparison, the Guarneri suffered none of the nasal highs, weak mid-range, or dull lows of any other viola that I had ever played. I don't know what made it a better viola, the varnish, the wood, subtleties of construction, naked virgins dancing around it to the light of the full moon. All I know is that the sound was fantastic!

Re:The most beautiful sound

[Joce640k]

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....

Re:The most beautiful sound

[MBGMorden]

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 instrument, regardless of how rare it is. If your "different" acoustical instrument sounds good then it will continue to sound good if it's the only one of it's kind or if there were 5 million of them made just like it. Whether it's wood, magnets, or pixie dust making it sound the same, if it sounds good it sounds good.

However a lot of people are always going to try and pick an extremely rare item and proclaim it to be "the best" not for any actual quality, but for the fact that it's rare, and they get to boast about owning it. It's e-peen comparison before there was an e in front of it. Elitism has always existed, and it's never been logical.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[Artraze]

If you look at the original poster's comment is the context of the rest of his post, it becomes rather clear (at least to me) that he was referring to the _emotional_ aspect of the sound. In other words, would the awesome sound quality of these violins elicit the same emotional response if one heard it everyday in the background of crap album filler songs? That, I think, is a very legitimate question that's got absolutely nothing to do with elitism or even quality (as we are talking about the emotions, not the sound itself).

Re:The most beautiful sound

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I am not claiming that Stradivari's lifetime work is not the perhaps single greatest achievement in the history of musical instrument manufacturing. However, I really see no point in not manufacturing a musical instrument that might - Apollo forbid! - produce a sound on par with the best instruments of the past, only cheaper, just because it might make Stradivari's violins look cheaper. Or is it that Slashdot readers suddenly approve of artificial scarcity?

Re:The most beautiful sound

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The differences being, of course, that the reason "everyone" will have access to "that sacred sound" is that it's going to come down vastly in price due to new technology, not due to a scheme that makes us all chip in for you to buy a Stradivarius. Universal health care advocates should take note that without a capitalist health care system, similar advances in medical technology will never be made.

I beg your pardon? I merely claim that when a new technology appears to produce a book (printing press, phototype...), a drug (reengineering Escherichia coli to produce insulin) or a violin (wood treated in a novel way), to reject it solely on the basis that "now everyone will have it and it will hurt my elitist feelings" is an utter bullshit, if you pardon the expression.

Frankly, I couldn't care less who made the instrument that a violinist plays and when. I *do* care about all those talented people that could not afford a better instrument...until today, since this might be their chance.

Re:The most beautiful sound

[Anonymous Coward]

It... really doesn't, though.

The ambient temperature probably has a greater effect on the vibrations of strings on an electric guitar than the wood (of course, varying designs would be affected to differing degrees by differing wood, but there's absolutely zero acoustic influence of the type or even presence of wood in an eletric guitar; the only influence is going to be caused by the string's vibration being transmitted through the entire instrument and the wood changing the way in which that vibration returns to the string and from the string then to the pickups).

Re:The most beautiful sound

[geekoid]

"...that elitism has a note all its own."

man, that is a well turned sentence. I wish I could mod you up for that.

So what does the fungus actually do?

[lordandmaker]

There's an implication in there that it makes the wood more uniform, as if it had grown in that mini ice age, but there's no explicit mention, and all I can find at the minute are links to the same story.
Is that what it does, or is it something else to do with the acoustic properties of the wood?

Re:So what does the fungus actually do?

[raddan]

Last two lines in TFA:

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.

Perhaps a placebo effect?

[LitelySalted]

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.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the violins from Guarneri del Gesà ( a descendant from guarneri companion of stradivarius)
are even more expensive.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[mpapet]

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. Old instruments are, for sure, a subculture buried deep inside a niche.

Stradivarius is just the most well-known name.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Maximum Prophet]

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.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[noundi]

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.

To be fair this could very well prove that ordinary people want to appear as wise, and not that they genuinely enjoyed the cheaper wine. Still the things that tickle our senses are very individual experiences and different methods provide different results. I wouldn't want to drink 50 year old Coke for example, but some people could find it tasteful, and who's to say that I should enjoy anything more than the other except for me? I do admit that I have preferred a more expensive wine at times, but I don't think it was my preference just because of the price. I draw this conclusion from also having chosen less expensive wines at times, but without focusing on the tag or naturally it would be an important factor. As for the example there's a difference between peoples inward opinions and their outward opinions, however I do think that we can be "taught" into liking things to an extent where we can honestly enjoy them. Licorice candy is an excellent example of mine which I learned not only to enjoy but to love. Just because it was recommended to me by someone it doesn't make my preference less "real" than if I would have stumbled upon it without any prior knowledge.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Krneki]

While I know jack shit about violins I do feel the difference for stuff I know and like. Of course the world is full of wannabes, but those who love one thing, can spot the difference easily.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[jc42]

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 bunch of professional musicians and educators. Neither the play nor the listeners had any information about the instruments, just a number.

The result was that the player reported a quick judgement of each instrument's "quality", usually within just a few notes, and was consistent in that judgement even when the experimenters renumbered the instruments.

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 styles). The quality of sound heard at a distance is primarily a function of the player, not the instrument.

It would be interesting to read about other well-done experiments. But most of them probably aren't too useful, because the players and/or listeners know something about the instruments that they're listening to.

I learned a similar lesson a couple of decades ago, when I was shopping for a violin bow. I decided to carefully avoid looking at the names or prices of bows before playing with them. It turned out that my judgement was uncorellated with the price, and I ended up buying one of the cheaper bows. The shop owner just grinned when I chose that one, and said that he played with that type too, because he liked the sound.

But it's well known among players of bowed instruments that the best bow depends on the instrument, the player, and the style of music. It's meaningless to ask which bows are best without that information.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Archangel Michael]

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 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?

The only way to be able to fully able to know for sure, is by a test such as I have suggested. Is simply calling a violin a Stradivarius enough to sway people, or is there something else to these things which eludes measurement?

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[dbcad7]

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.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[badasscat]

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 styles). The quality of sound heard at a distance is primarily a function of the player, not the instrument.

As a guitarist, I disagree with this conclusion. The mistake I think you're making is in equating the fact that these people couldn't hear the difference with a conclusion that the difference therefore can't be heard. I don't think that follows, anymore than it follows to say that because somebody can't tell the difference between a Sizzler steak and a carefully prepared Wagyu steak at a fine restaurant means there is none.

I think a more reasonable conclusion is to say that a lot of people who consider themselves to have refined ears, don't. But that doesn't mean there aren't objectively measurable differences in sound quality, assuming you brought in equipment that was sensitive enough.

I say all this because as a guitar *player*, I, like the violin players in your example, can easily tell the difference between guitars of different makes just by listening to them, and I can do it with near-100% reliability, at least for the most popular makes and models. A Strat and a Les Paul don't even sound close to similar, for example, and an American Strat doesn't even sound like a Chinese Strat (though it sounds closer than a Les Paul). I guarantee that 99% of the rest of the world, though - even many rock music lovers - could not make these kinds of distinctions. There is a difference between knowing what a Fender Strat *is* and knowing how it *sounds* - the latter requires actually using one and then using other models and comparing it, or at the very least actively listening to others doing the same, repeatedly. (And by "actively" I mean really paying attention to this specific facet of the music, what guitar is being played when.)

So I would say that this has more to do with having a trained ear or not than with whether or not there are real differences in sound. If the players can so easily identify the differences, then there probably are differences, and not just in playability. They're the ones that hear these things the most, and also develop the "sense memory" to associate a particular tone with a particular instrument. That's a unique skill that most people never develop.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Skweetis]

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 this may not be a very good comparison, anyway, as one can't exactly change coupling capacitors in a violin to make it sound better. My point is more that I think "warmth" can easily be measured, I just don't think we're particularly good at quantifying the attributes of a sound that we hear as warm and pleasing.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[KC1P]

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 thing? It should!

 

I play the harpsichord, badly, anyway its recent history is relevant -- it underwent a really stupid mini-revival (yes I know, that no one but me cares about) in the early 20th century. It was exactly the same kind of thing -- a bunch of dweebs thought then-modern technology could "fix" the harpsichord, so they started cranking out monstrosities with cast iron frames, plywood soundboards, aluminum or plexiglass guides, brass jacks, felt-bushed keyboards, etc. etc. etc. It took them decades to get around to remembering that harpsichords underwent THREE HUNDRED YEARS of development by true craftsmen who devoted their lives to one thing, and these days the best harpsichords are abject imitations of antiques, right down to the glue.

 

Still, I think the fungi guys are on the right track. The wood is actually the biggest problem -- there are no old-growth forests any more, so now we have small trees that grew too fast with too much sun. We'll probably never be able to replicate the old spruce or boxwood or African blackwood etc. etc. etc. that grew very slowly over a long period of time, with tight, uniform grain, but we should try anyway. Just taking a bunch of low-density Home Depot style wood and blindly tossing it on a CNC router will never replicate what could be done in the old days by someone with a real ear for hand-carving high quality tone wood who's learned how to perfect each individual part long before the instrument is assembled. We SHOULD have the technology, but we don't.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I imagine there might be some of that Placebo effect taking place.

Sure but there are some moments need that kind of psychological effects(from Wikipedia):

Her teacher Ivan Galamian was also not in favor of this because Pinchas Zukerman, another of his students, was participating in the same competition. Because he was being supported by the famous and very powerful Isaac Stern, Zukerman seemed to have better chance of winning the competition. But to boost her confidence, Chung's determined mother sold the family house in Korea to buy her a Stradivarius violin.

I'm pretty sure the mother's bill paid off pretty quickly!

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be surprised if with modern material and sound technology they wouldn't produce superior acoustic musical instruments (I guess nobody challenges electronic sound). Cmon, wood is just that: wood covered with some varnish, there is nothing sacred about it. Today in virtually every field wood applications go together with carbon layers, and there is nothing really special about acoustics and musics. Google carbon violins. More cynical explanation might be that violin market is perhaps 1000 times smaller than guitar one, and there is only so little for a really talented master there to do, so all good masters abandoned the field for more excited venues.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[mr exploiter]

But this probes nothing... this is why science is difficult, it's not only making tests and rushing conclusions.

The key problem here is that this was made with ordinary people. What I think happens in this experiment is that people in general don't like new flavors the first time you taste them. And ordinary people drink ordinary wine (by definition), which is less expensive.

Only people that have a certain knowledge of wine and have tasted many different ones can make a adequate judgment of which ones are better. But I think this is seen as elitism or snobbery, so you can mod me down now.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Nithendil]

I'm not sure if that is true, surely there a differences between violins due to craftsmanship. I'm by no means a classical affectionado (I couldn't tell if something was from Bach or Mozart) but awhile ago someone recommended Vitali's Chaconne and while searching for the best version I came to realize that although Sarah Chang was considered "inferior" to Heifetz I preferred her version better compared to Heifetz and Milstein. It could be her playing style, but I believe Heifetz and Milstein use a strat and Chang uses a Guarneri. To me the Strat seems shrill and I prefer the sound of the Guarneri, and that was even before I found out that was considered to be a superior violin.

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Falconhell]

Personally, I prefer the Japanese Strats to the US ones, they are lighter and have a tone I like.

The Chinese ones I make no comment on....

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wood, its texture, finish, varnish, even its cutting can have big effects on its sound. I play an older high end acoustic guitar, that was scratched. It effected the sound, and people remark on it.

There is something extrodinary about wood and acoustics. The EV1, electronic strat underwent an extrodinary amount of research to be able to fool people, but one touch of the hand on one of these...( Check out Bond! )

There must have been some extrodinary effort to get Fungivarius to that level.

Most of the comments here are of extrodinary ignorance. ( Hell of a nice picture though ... Too bad, even at Carnige hall, its extremely rare to have two stratavari in the house. )

Re:Perhaps a placebo effect?

[222]

I was actually reading about this the other day...

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 Gesú, 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]

The violinist Christian Tetzlaff formerly played "a quite famous Strad", but switched to a violin made in 2002 by Stefan-Peter Greiner. He states that the listener cannot tell that his instrument is modern, and he regards it as excellent for Bach and better than a Stradivarius for "the big Romantic and 20th-century concertos."[4]

Methodology

[hardburn]

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:

• The tested was done blind, but seemingly not double-blind. The player was behind a curtain, but could probably have picked out some visual differences between the instruments (a notch here, certain wood grain pattern there, etc.), which in turn could have affected his playing, consciously or unconsciously. It'd be preferable to get a pair of Strads on loan and have a master violinist play them without seeing them beforehand.
• 180 seems a small sample size to me, especially when you have a fairly high chance of guessing the Strad.
• Was the curtain acoustically transparent?

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.

Re:Methodology

[raddan]

Also, importantly, it appears that the audience members could talk to each other.

Re:Methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way that the person playing the violin would be unable to tell the difference between the violins. Just like if your wife was replaced by a prostitute, you would still be able to tell, even if the lights were off.

To make a car analogy, imagine if somebody was trying to determine if a '63 Ferrari was better than a modern replica. You would have to be an expert driver to make the test valid. As a driver you could easily tell which one was real; it would have aged leather, the paint wouldn't be fresh, it would sound different, and so on.

Re:Methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy's violins have had exceptionally good results when pitted against Strads - http://www.nagyvaryviolins.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nagyvary

Re:Methodology

[avandesande]

"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 (Opus 58)

Re:Methodology

[geekoid]

Yep, if they had simply given the player a random violin, it would have been a better test.

Hmm.

[Trayal]

This would be rather more convincing to me if the listeners were not part of a group where they could possibly confer with each other (groups of people discussing a subjective subject are likely to come to the same conclusion), and/or if the results have been shown to be consistently repeatable.

Still an interesting start, though. Definitely merits further investigation.

So many variables and theories...

[Anonymous Coward]

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 playing music for many, many hours.

The list goes on.

The reality is that some violins sound better than others. A Stradivarius is an instrument like any others - created by art and skill, not magic.

You want a Stradivarius? $150 gets you the downloadable version of the Garritan Personal Orchestra, which includes Stradivari, Gagliano and Guarneri violins.

Eye of the Beholder

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[ColdWetDog]

I'll bet you don't use these cables on your stereo.

And you probably aren't much fun at parties.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[gujo-odori]

Something tells me you're not a musician.

Old Strads are popular for a reason. Old Strats are popular for a reason, too. Wouldn't trade my old one for a new one, thank you very much.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[Anonymous Coward]

There is at least one luther who is regarded as close to (inferior or superior depending on the opinion) Stradivarius : del Gesu.
Now, you might tell he is overrated too. I personaly have no opinion on that.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[hardburn]

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, too), but rather that Little Ice Age produced long winters and short summers that made trees grow slow. Wood grown slow tends to be harder. The fungus is a modern attempt to duplicate this effect.

It's like how in blind tastings no-one can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines.

Not necessarily cheep and expensive, but double blind tests have made important changes within the wine industry. A well-trained sommelier can, completely blind, tell you the type, vintage, region, rainfall that year, and the type of wood in the barrel used to age the wine. If you're just talking about doing some taste tests in a shopping mall, sure, nobody is going to tell the difference, but the same doesn't apply to people who have worked at wine tasting. Mind you, those same sommeliers won't necessarily choose expensive wines every time, either.

Much the same is true of classical music lovers. There must be some stipulations here, though. Hearing invariably degrades with age, whereas taste buds can be regrown and made better at any point in a person's life, barring some severe accidents or certain life choices (smoking can kill your taste buds for good, in some cases). Also, human hearing isn't all that great to begin with, and is highly susceptible to placebo effects. Audiophiles are particularly stupid. They perpetuate views that have no backing in double blind tests, and are largely people with more money than brains.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[ZekoMal]

The digital age hath clouded thine judgment.

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 it was cut, weather it withstood, and so on...those all contribute to the sound.

Unlike say, a synthesizer, which can improve its sound exponentially with every additional advancement in computer technology.

You could no doubt improve a violin with digital enhancement, but only for digital distribution. For a live performance, while your digital diva would be setting up hundreds of wires, a simple bow is the only tool a violinist needs to play just as good.

Or, in simpler terms: when you get something right, you don't need to tack on a computer to make it better. Violins are very much so physical, and there is currently no known method to mechanically produce timber that is better than the Strad's timber. Nor is there a particular need to; with people like you saying that all violins sound the same, it seems a damn waste of time to even try.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[Maximum Prophet]

I had a wine tasting instructor that claimed that any bottle of wine over $25 was $25 worth of wine and $N - $25 worth of "rare". Sound and wine, it's easy to spot the crap, but the difference between a great violin and a priceless violin is less than the difference in your ears on a cold dry day, vs. your ears on a hot humid day. (b.t.w. I'm done some programming for an audiologist, so I've seen just how variable human hearing can be.)

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[amplt1337]

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 usually claimed), well that's certainly more plausible.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[badasscat]

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 precisely duplicated anymore (be it a Strat, Jazzmaster, or whatever). That doesn't mean that the current ones suck, or that you can't get really, really close to that old tone if you try really hard, but if you do want *that* specific tone, then the easiest way to get it is to just buy an original Fender.

I would doubt very much that classical music aficionados really consider the Strad the only violin worth listening to, more that they associate it with a particular tone that they like and that's very hard to duplicate today. Ditto for electric guitars - there are some great-sounding modern guitars on the market today making some great music, they just don't sound like guitars of yesteryear and that happens to be the sound a lot of people want to duplicate because that's the sound most associated with the kind of music they want to play. Rock bands of the 1960's were using guitars made in the 1950's and 1960's. Classical musicians in the 1600's and 1700's were using violins made in the 1600's and 1700's. So I think a lot of it is just trying to duplicate what people consider an "authentic" sound for a particular type of music, it's not that one instrument or another is the "best" or that you aren't perfectly valid in preferring something else.

But different instruments are better or worse for different things, and just like trying to play the Beatles with a Schecter Hellraiser is not going to sound quite right, I would imagine the same is probably true for some people when talking modern violins and certain types of classical music.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[Whorhay]

I can't vouch for the mass produced vs. individually crafted bit. But I played the violin for eight years when I was in grade school. I had three different violins in that time and I can testify to the varying quality of sound that each put out. The one I liked best seemed to be older than the others. It had a label inside it that I believe claimed it was made in 1879 or something. Anyways my point is that even an amateur can tell the difference in quality of many violins. I don't know that I could detect the differences in very high quality violins but I don't see why anyone let alone a professional couldn't.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[RedBear]

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 anyone said at all. Around the time when Stradivarius was making his violins there was a cold climate for a few years while the atmosphere was filled with volcanic dust from a very large volcanic eruption. The cold winters and cool summers caused the trees to grow denser wood in both winter and summer, and they were also attacked by more fungi than usual due to the cold climate, which probably slowed the tree growth even more, producing even denser wood. The theory is that the Stradivarius violins sound better than most others because of the difference in wood density.

Outside of that time period, the climate went back to normal and the trees used to make other violins since then have been less dense. In any particular time period in history I'm sure there have not been very many violin makers in the world, it is a rather specialized art. Therefore it is not that unbelievable that Stradivarius might have been the only violin maker during that time period who had access to this particularly dense wood and had the skills to make instruments of high enough quality in the first place for the wood density to make a noticeable difference to the quality of the sound.

This is not a difficult set of concepts to grasp if one is able to let go of one's self-assured ignorance for a moment and actually pay attention to what people are saying.

The mystery to me is only why they don't simply make some violins out of some other kind of wood that is already more dense. But, I know enough about wood to know that each tree even of the same species has unique qualities, so I'm going to assume that I don't know more than the people who make violins. I'm going to assume that they know more than I do and that they use this particular species because it has the best qualities for such an instrument.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[ZekoMal]

I forgot to add in that the bridge and strings also contribute to the sound: I know someone who put back together a violin from the 1860's. They hand carved the bridge, fine tuners, and so on from bone. They used a nice set of strings, and the sound was phenomenal.

It'd be worth it to have little workshops showing off the differences in violins; it's really quite a fascinating thing to look at.

The reason why people claim to not hear a difference is very simple: they don't want to hear a difference because they don't care. As you go up the line of higher end violins, the differences become so nuanced that an amateur probably wouldn't notice. A $500 violin against a $50,000 violin, well that's easy to tell apart. But a $50,000 violin against a $55,000 violin?

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[Anonymous Coward]

As with all things human, there are diminishing returns as you scale quality upwards - the quality of muscle reflexes, the quality of ears to hear things, and so on. There's obviously going to be a quality range beyond which no human can tell.

And it turns out from tests where both the players and the listeners are masters, that the Strads and other top notch instruments are all somewhere in that range; the instruments are all excellent, and the masters can tell that the instruments are different, and the masters can tell who is the one playing it, but there results for trying to exactly identify which violin is which and which one sounds best come out the same as random guessing.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[Anonymous Coward]

actually the wine thing is a myth, laymen may choose the most expensively labeled bottle of wine as their favorite, regardless of quality, but actual experts can generally pick what is actually the best. for an example, check the vodka episode of mythbusters, the expert they get in successfully rates on the first try the vodka from rotgut, to rotgut filtered once, filtered twice, etc right up to the top shelf without a single misstep.

to put it another way, most people might be easily swayed, but sometimes things really are better, and you can train yourself to be able to tell objectively.

also for the record, some cheap wines are genuinely better than more expensive ones, the more expensive ones just have better names.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[Falconhell]

Before you get to carried away about Fender, you should know about the sign on the wall of the Fender factory.

It said "We dont make them like we used to but then again we never did"

That said, most wooden instuments improve with age.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[LizardKing]

I know from my own personal experience that nobody has made a better electric guitar than those early Fenders in 50 years either.

Speaking as a bass player, I can assure you that my 1998 Musicman Stingray plays and sounds better than any vintage Fender bass I've played. The vintage Jazz basses I've played all had a thin tone and overly narrow fretboard, while the Precisions sound dull.

Re:Eye of the Beholder

[geekoid]

"It's like how in blind tastings no-one can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines"

otoh you can have blinded tastes tests where the taster tells you what kind of wine, year, and crop.

So I would like to see a cite to that 'blinded' wine test.

"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?"

Yes. He didn't KNOW that, but that is what happened. Also, he was good at making violins. A far more impacting feature.

I'm not convinced

[bzzfzz]

Blind tests of violins and bows are notoriously difficult to conduct effectively. Much of the problem is that players become accustomed to particular instruments and unconsciously adjust their playing, and indeed their artistry, to the response of a particular instrument. Instruments have off days due to changes in humidity or string wear. The bow has to match the instrument and the performer. Differences among great violins are subtle. Selection of music to be played has a role. Performers, too, are variable, and rarely give three or more great performances of a work in a row.

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.

Re:I'm not convinced

[avandesande]

If this response to the 'fungus violin' was consistent, they would still be better than the strad, no matter what the reason.

Re:I'm not convinced

[PipingSnail]

Absolutely. A friend of mine once told me of a story where a band member friend had his violin case run over. He ran back to the case and was more concerned about the bow than the violin. He reckoned replacing the bow would be harder than replacing the violin.

As for instruments having off days - for sure. I play bagpipes. Some days they sing. Other days, best to put them down and not bother at all. Most days, somewhere in between :-)

Re:I'm not convinced

[Maximum Prophet]

That happened on "Antiques Roadshow" as well. A woman brought an old violin to the appraiser who told her that the violin was worthless, but the bow was worth thousands.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Funny - I've just spent $250 (including Dominant string, a case with hygrometer, ...) for my kid's first violin and believe it is the best one in that level and almost same as $25,000 or even Strad, at least to my kid :-)

Re:I'm not convinced

[rrohbeck]

Just have a robot play the violins. Motion capture the bow's movement relative to the violin from an expert player and replay it with a robot. Then run a double blind listening test.

Re:I'm not convinced

[MtViewGuy]

If I remember correctly, you CAN make a modern violin sound just as good as a Strativarius, but it takes extremely meticulous work to build such a violin from wood. I believe that Samuel Zygmuntowicz in Brooklyn, NY is one of a very few select people that could pull it off; indeed, it takes nearly a year just to build ONE Zygmuntowicz violin.

Now, I wonder why nobody has bothered to equal the sound of a Strativari instrument by building one out of all composite materials such as carbon fiber, epoxy resins, advanced plastics and aerospace-quality ceramics....

Re:I'm not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap! You didn't make that name up!

Sadly, there's likely nothing new here.

[thatseattleguy]

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.

Re:Sadly, there's likely nothing new here.

[SeattleGameboy]

Shout it out brother! Every few years there is some "new method" to replicate Strads. You missed the one about soaking wood in urine, making one out of ceramic, and countless others. Kinda sad, really.

Re:Sadly, there's likely nothing new here.

[Maximum Prophet]

Authentic Picasso's keep going up in value, but I doubt anyone really believes they look better than a great reproduction.

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.

Re:Sadly, there's likely nothing new here.

[guzzirider]

Yeah, There was the wood absorbed minerals theory, and always the secret varnish theory.
Personally I do not remember the urine theory. However that one kind of makes sense.
Maybe it was unicorn piss.

hang on

[edittard]

long winters and cool summers which caused trees to grow slowly and uniformly ideal conditions in fact for producing wood with excellent acoustic qualities.

So it was the trees that created the conditions?

I wonder who can actually tell if a strad better

[Anonymous Coward]

You really have to have a good tree ear for music to tell the difference between a Fungivarius and a Strad.

The Stradivarius Myth

[Z8]

The "unparalleled" sound of Stradivarii is probably mostly the placebo effect---the Stradivarius myth.

Here's a quote from the wikipedia article:

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]

Progress

[OrugTor]

The key element is that someone has demonstrated the effectiveness of modern instrument-making. It's a small step to use slightly different wood; I'm convinced one could make the perfect instrument from modern materials but the classical music culture is extremely resistant to tech enhancement. The perception that a wooden violin engineered to 18th century standards cannot be surpassed is so fimly embedded in the violinist culture that it may never be recognized as the myth it surely is.

That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Maximum Prophet]

Yep. An authentic Picasso is worth millions, but an exact reproduction might be too ugly to put in your living room.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Mr. Slippery]

You see this in other high end audio all the time. Cables would be the best example.

My favorite example: Denon's AK-DL1: "Ultra Premium", a $499 5-foot Ethernet cable. 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.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it is fair to compare this to audiophool cables. A new violin and a very old one are quite different.

A hundred years or so of playing changes the sound of a wooden instrument.

A few things happen. The wood ages and seasons, and the vibration changes the characteristics of the wood. A completely new violin sometimes has a few hot or dead spots in it's frequency response that get less obvious after a few years of use. Also, the bridge, nut and fingerboard get a little worn.
There have been studies that show these differences are large enough to be noticeable.

Of interest is "US Patent 5537908 - Acoustic response of components of musical instruments" which talks about using a vibration table to attempt to speed this process up.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[ArsonSmith]

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.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually for cables there are plenty of studies showing that it is all dreck and you should just go cheap.

For violins, not so much. I'd love to see some properly conducted studies making them as double-blind as possible, over multiple days, with large sample sizes. I think there would always be doubt if the results favored one violin over another, but it would be interesting to see what happened.

Also, I wouldn't really trust the audience to know better. People prefer McDonalds to fine French cuisine, but the type of distinctions that are being talked about here require a baseline of experience and knowledge that the average person would not have - which is fine, not everything is meant for everyone.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[elrous0]

Museums used to have a term for this effect:"The Power of the Authentic." People value something authentic over a reproduction even if they can't objectively tell the difference between the two. So someone who can't even tell the difference between an actual Picasso and a reproduction will still bask in awe of whichever one he or she BELIEVES is the real one, and think that it looks better than the one they think is the reproduction (based soley on what some authority figure TELLS them is the real one and which is the fake)

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Skweetis]

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 wire since. YMMV.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[digitalhermit]

There was actually a study about this.. Alas, I don't have a cite, but the gist of it was that people want to justify their particular madnesses. They save face by believing the hype, especially if they've shelled out significant money for something. E.g., if someone buys a car that is notoriously unreliable, but expensive, they will make up all sorts of excuses for why they paid the premium for a lousy car. Same for speaker cables, wine, bottled water, etc..

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[ImprovOmega]

What really kills me is "premium" HDMI cables. Where Monster tries to get you to pay twice as much for their cable because it's "better picture quality". I mean...it's digital...it either transmits perfectly or you get a blank screen. This isn't rocket science.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Falconhell]

AC you are right on the mark. recently in a fit of madness brought on by playing another fellows Takamine acoustic,
I bought one myself. I tried a lot of new ones, but ended up buying a second hand one 10 years old. It played really well
and sounded much better than the new ones it was unreal.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Falconhell]

My favourite example regarding cables such as Monster cable, was an article in the dear departed Electronics Australia.

After extensive teasting the article finished with the conclusion there was no difference.

They put it like so "We are of the opinion that if we cannot measure any difference there is no difference.

Didnt stop the loonie "Golden Ear" brigade form complaining though!

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Falconhell]

Interesting anecdote, however there can be a big difference.

Amongst my many jobs over the years iIwas a live engineer and did some maintainance for one of the hire companies. they had a permanent install at a large hotel, which was always light on for bass on one side (This was a 3 way active x-over system with seperate amps for each frequncy band, the LF band dual 18" bandpass subwoofer was driven by a 1000W RMS /chan amp)

When I replaced the 2mm cables with dual 4mm the bass volume doubled! Its really a simple matter of the more copper the better! Note that more copper increases the damping factor of the system also, resulting in cleaner bass with less speaker flap.

Theres nothing wrong with lamp cable as long as it has sufficient cross sectional area of copper for the power it is required to carry.

Re:That's becaues it's more mythology than reality

[Skweetis]

This makes sense with high powered amps. A 1000W amplifier operating into a 4 or 8 ohm load will result in 10 to 15 amps on the wire (assuming you were running it full up, anyway). Anything lighter than 12 AWG or so will add impedance at these power levels, reducing power. I generally use 14 or 12 AWG cord for speaker connections. In the case of my earlier anecdote, booster cables can obviously handle the current; they are designed to carry hundreds of amps. I have no idea what the current capacity of barbed wire is. =p

A few million of VC should do it.

[proslack]

Seems like it wouldn't be that difficult to find a place in Canada that has a climate approximating that of "Little Ice Age", plant some trees, wait a few years, and then harvest Stradivarius-quality wood.

Re:A few million of VC should do it.

[Brett Johnson]

The only problem is "a few years" is like 150-250 years.

Re:I wonder who can actually tell if a strad bette

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show there's morel or less no difference in high end violins these days. A bad player can make a Strad sound like shitaki.

Perfectly believable

[TrumpetPower!]

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&

Re:Perfectly believable

[digsbo]

Charlie still sounded like Charlie, but he was working far harder to do it, and the things he could marginally do with a good instrument would be impossible or difficult with the crappy one. If you don't play acoustic instruments for at least several hours a day for a significant part of your life, you really have no idea of what level of depth of aural perception your ear is capable of, or how a defect of a thousandth of an inch on a particular part of an instrument can radically affect your ability to play something which is at the outer limit of your technical ability. I think your statement that you didn't consider the results optimal despite working harder to achieve them puts you squarely in the "gets it" crowd, but most people won't, not because they are wrongly interpreting their senses, but because a) their senses are not sharp enough, and b) they don't understand the intimate relationship between player and instrument.

Re:Perfectly believable

[WinterSolstice]

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 ;)

Re:Perfectly believable

[Overzeetop]

Many years ago I played horn (French, for the old school types), and the difference between instruments is just crazy. The amazing thing is that none of them play in tune, despite having (typically) 9 tuning slides. But you know which notes on _your_ horn are out of tune, and how to shift your embouchure to correct. It's true that great players can make almost any piece of junk sing, but it does take quite a bit of work.

Re:Perfectly believable

[digitalhermit]

I find that if I turn up the amplifier and distortion all the way, I can get by with approximating the notes on my Peavey. I lost most of my hair in the past decade so can't do the hair swish anymore, but I've since discovered that the Spandex tights more than makes up for it.

Re:Perfectly believable

[digsbo]

It's pretty pronounced on clarinet, saxophone, and flute, as each instrument gives various kinds of feedback about air pressure, lip placement, various muscular forces, and the shape of the air cavity behind the orifice delivering the airstream (it is critical to shape the interior of the throat correctly to get altissimo on sax). And even piano gives substantial tactile feedback, with different instruments having radically different "touch". I'm certain it's as big a factor on valved brass, too. Actually, trombone, violin, and similar instruments are the only ones you can play in tune most easily, since they are more easily adapted to the tuning being used (all valved/keyed wind instruments play slightly out of tune naturally due to the differences between the harmonic tunings which create the higher notes and the tuning of the scale being used, which is often closer to equal-temperament), so they may require *less* precision to easily play in tune.

Re:Perfectly believable

[JustNiz]

Wow, Dave Lee Roth is a slashdot member?

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the Fungivarius go to 11?

Tension/wear/tear

[GargamelSpaceman]

At some point an average jack-o-lantern with elastics stretched over the hole will sound better than even the best strad. That is because at some point everything that is used will break.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

[Anonymous Coward]

In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming !

Fun Guy

[musichead]

I contend that even though Stradivarius did not incorporate eukaryotic organisms into his process he still was a fun guy.

Funniest line ever:

[ArsonSmith]

the AK-DL1 will bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction

Ya that's a good one

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Music is music

[Riddler Sensei]

It's honestly REALLY fun to read dozens of people trying to rationalize the appeal of Stradivarius violins as being some sort of grand, elitist, social experiment. They're fantastic instruments, they're old, they're relatively rare, and they have a lot of history and legends behind them. Music is the full emotional effect. You can make an instrument that sounds as a good as a Stradivarius, but there are plenty of people that are swept away by the romanticism and mysticism of the original.

Not Idle

[XLR8DST8]

this is actually informative scientific news. don't see why it's in the Idle section.

Re:Blind Sound Test. - Doesn't matter....

[Joce640k]

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.

ShroomVarius

[PalmKiller]

And if you lick it, you have an awesome shroom trip.

Whoever "they" is.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Didn't "they" do a double-blind study that showed acoustic experts couldn't actually tell the difference between a Stradivarius and a Wal-Mart?

Stradivari

[Anonymous Coward]

His name was Antonio Stradivari, Stradivarius was his latinized name.
Being myself from Cremona, home of Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri violin makers, I suppose they'll have a long way to go to get the sound of a '700 violin. I'm not saying they won't, sometimes, tough, technology has costs too high to reproduce artisans craftmanship.
By the way in Cremona every day one of the Stradivari's is played in the City Hall. They need to be played to conserve their sound quality; so if you pass near Milan, you can arrange for a hearing.

On the contrary...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if it sounds that much better I would expect the unexpected! ;-)

I would expect violin playing to have a rennessance, as it will not sound all too horrible anymore when someone is practicing, thus more and better violin players will emerge..

Why fear change?

Ask the violinist.

[Richard Kirk]

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 bizarre.

This makes the blindfold test rather harder to do. The violinist could probably still be blindfolded, and they would probably recognize their own instrument. They might be able to use other senses, such as touch. However, it seems a reasonable thing to try.

Bullocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

The classic Italian violins have a different series of harmonics than virtually all other violins which means the sound from them does not become "striard" (like a strained voice) as you move away from them. Fifty feet from a modern violin and a Strad and there will be no doubt as to which one you prefer, but, conversely, a lot of modern violins are just as good sounding "under the ear" of the player. This is why when a player in any significant orchestra buys a new violin it is auditioned in a large hall. There are secrets not only to Stradivari but all the other classic period violins, although there is a lot of science being applied to close our understanding. A lot of the "science" is by squirrels and/or totally dishonest people claiming other's ideas! I can recall one idea which was communicated to one "authority" by a friend which appear instantly in a major violin publication in a letter by a friend of the authority. In another case, the photos in an often cited article in a major violin magazine (cited by non-experts, that is) which shows one clear conclusion while the author prates on about refuting another point: the author consulted experts and should have been clearly able to state X rather than merely saying Not Y. So, it really takes someone technically trained to sort through the science out there. The current article is significant in that it was done in Germany, and many of the German wood sellers will not sell to anyone treating their wood in any way. Most of the best violins in this country have been made by persons who use biologicals in some way or another to treat their wood, and this may be the beginning of a good maker being able to describe his process and continue to make a living (or be forced to buy his wood at retail rather than in bulk). In another 50 years, we will know which wood treatments work and prolong the life of the violin and which work in the short term but which shorten the life of the violin. Wood treaters will be able to come out of the closet.

Re:Denon

[Ben Jackson]

Even though I really like my (older) Denon receiver, I will never buy another one because of that "audiophile grade" Denon Link cable. If they'll rip someone off for 6' of cat 5 (with directionality arrow!!) I have to believe that they're ripping me off at least a little bit on anything I buy. I was really quite bummed when I saw it: I had always assumed that when I bought a better receiver I'd just get another Denon and not have to worry about it.

Okay, here's another one

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother got a violin from Jack Fry. When he got it, he had 4 different violins sent in, and tried out each of them in front of his teachers. His teacher ended up getting a viola from one of the other violin makers (she's a professional musician).

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/violin-0512.html

I'm going to guess that there are a lot of very good, scientifically made violins out there. And those violins are far and away better than the average good violin, which in turn is far and away better than the particle-board 1/4-size violins sold to beginners.

But none of them are Stradivarius. Stradivarius has history, and dollar value. In the end, whether another violin sounds better than a strad or not, is probably irrelevant. The investors will buy strads. The performers will buy best bang for the buck. The learners will buy cheap boxes with strings. I don't see a problem here.

Re:Denon

[Sycraft-fu]

Well I bought a 3808CI about a month ago and I love it. Good value for the money IMO. It is extremely capable, uses good parts, has good features, sounds good, etc.

I'd be mad if they said you HAD to use their cable, but they specifically say you just use twisted pair. Also Denon Link is more or less useless these days. They introduced it back when there was no way to do digital DVD-A/SACD to the receiver. HDMI wasn't done yet. Now that you can stream it over HDMI, nobody cares so much.

Actually

[Sycraft-fu]

There ARE such a thing as better HDMI cables. However they don't improve picture quality. What they do is improve the range at which you can get a picture at a given resolution. The higher rez your display (also higher frame rate) the more bandwidth it takes and the higher a signaling rate you need on HDMI. The cables have to be made with tighter tolerances to be able to do that over longer distances. So, a cheap cable might do 1080p to 25 feet, and 720p to 50 feet, a better one might do 1080p to 150 feet.

However, good HDMI cables aren't really what you get form Monster, and aren't worth the price you pay. Bluejeans sells some good Belden HDMI cables that are extremely well built and thus good for really long, high bandwidth runs. Monoprice also has some pretty good ones for a much lower price, that still get good distance.

So there IS such a thing as quality HDMI cable, you just don't need it if you are going 6 feet from your receiver to your TV. It's more of a custom installation thing. If you have a receiver in the front of a room that feeds a projector in the back, and the cable runs up through the ceiling, maybe you have a 50+ foot run and cheap cable can't handle the high resolutions.

Hrm

[Anonymous Coward]

I play the cello. I can't be the only person, but I'm not actually keen on the sound the strad cellos make. It's a very personal thing, and personally I prefer the sound of my own humble cello. I would have thought any string player would agree that there's no such thing as the perfect or best instrument, and it depends on who's playing and listening.

So if it's the wood...

[zwarte piet]

... slowly growing in cool summers and cold winters... why don't modern builders get their wood from Finland or something...? jeez

Re:Denon

[EvilNTUser]

What does "ripping you off" mean, though? What percentage of profit is excessive? Like with everything else, the important metric is what it's worth to you, personally. If you're comparing similar devices from two manufacturers, and reviews say that the slightly more expensive one is also slightly better, it's up to you to decide what you want to pay for. It doesn't really matter whether the better device's manufacturer also came up with a way to manufacture it really cheaply and is making a huge profit. Everyone will charge whatever the device is worth on the market.

The audiophile grade cable is obvious horseshit, so just don't buy it and you'll be fine.

$20K modern violin vs Strad

[suitti]

I'm happy that people are still researching violin making. And there are many new techniques in the last 20 or so years. But I keep hearing that while the Strads are good, a $20,000 modern violin is better. At least this seems to be a consensus view among professionals. The key problem with violin making is consistency. So people have attempted to make graphite violins, and so on. And if all violins could be top notch, they wouldn't cost $20,000.

I, personally, own a very poor violin. A modern $500 violin would be an improvement. My son's $200 3/4 size (it's really just an inch shorter than mine) sounds, in my opinion, better. And for MY violin, pretty much the only opinion that matters is mine. I'm my only audience.

There are people who have publicly said that if they obtained a Stradivarius, it would quickly meet with an accident, for insurance reasons. Not for personal gain. Such money could fund other music endeavours. I'd have thought he could have just sold it. A Stradivarius is an historical artifact, without regard to how good it sounds, and for that reason alone is worth the million+ dollars they often fetch.

Re:$20K modern violin vs Strad

[geekoid]

You play in a sound proof room, alone? That's sad.
Go find yourself an audience, even if its you won family.

Oh wait, they CAN hear you play? then you do have an audience.

Screw you, Agatha

[mgrinshpon]

You sent me off to Vault 92, but oh no, it wasn't that easy. I had to travel TO THE MIDDLE OF D.C. first. I had to break into a god damned super mutant fortress. Those bastards nearly shot my arm off! And don't forget about the droids! The Mr. Gutsies, the sentry bots, the robobrains, and the protectetrons. At least the robobrains had a cute voice. The lasers though, those weren't cute at all. Not at all. And then I got to the records, found the location of the vault, and had to bust my post-apocalyptic behind across the wretched wastes. And when I got there, was it all fun and games? Did I arrive to find some kind of chorus of angels, whose musical talent had been preserved in an underground fortress? Surprise! I fought bloatflies, mirelurks, and even a damn king. I got clawed at, magic mirelurk king circled at, and spat at, and it was very acidic spit, I'll have you know. Burned right through the vault wall. You wretched, old hag; I did all of that for one lousy violin that could be reproduced with some fungus? God damn you, woman. God damn you.

Re:Blind Sound Test. - Doesn't matter....

[geekoid]

My Strad goes to 11.

Robots, no.

[geekoid]

No robot needed. In fact, it would even be a good idea.

You have two violens The control and the strad.
you get 20 players.

label the Violens A and 1

The only person who knows which is which is the labeler. the label placing done in seclusion.

The labeler send the violence into the testing area via a third party.

You place the violence down.
A coin tosser tosses the coin. If it's heads the play A, if tails they play B

You have independent people select which one they think sounds better.

Do a second test with just high precision sound monitoring and recordings. So you can see if the frequencies are different.

You also ahve the players answer a survey about how the instrument played and sounded. This is data you can't get from the robot.

With enough people and random choosing elements you can get normalized unbiased data.

Also, The players are never in view of the audience.

Play that Fungi music!

[Anonymous Coward]

... sorry