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View Full Version : Million-dollar Strads fall to modern violins in blind ‘sound check’



SEAWOLF97
05-16-2017, 01:34 PM
.
The secret of Stradivariuses may be that there is no secret beyond the great musicians who play them.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-strads-fall-modern-violins-blind-sound-check

Lee in Montreal
05-17-2017, 09:05 AM
.
The secret of Stradivariuses may be that there is no secret beyond the great musicians who play them.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-strads-fall-modern-violins-blind-sound-check

Reminds me of a test in Road'n'Track between a good old Porsche 356 and a Honda family minivan on an autocross. Yesteryear's champion lost. ;-)

Tony Sullivan
05-17-2017, 11:39 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/05/08/great-stradivarius-fiddle-modern-violins-sound-good-old-italians/

http://www.thestrad.com/research-suggests-chemical-wood-treatment-may-account-stradivarius-sound/

https://eic.rsc.org/feature/investigating-the-secrets-of-the-stradivarius/2020139.article

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0107_040107_violin_2.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/science/stradivari-violin-wood.html?_r=0

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/solved-the-mystery-of-why-stradivarius-violins-are-best-858329.html

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1878425,00.html

Tony Sullivan
05-17-2017, 11:48 AM
“What we might find from Frohlich’s work is that there’s a way to describe a perfect air volume before you hear it, before we finish the violin,” says John Montgomery, a violin maker who repairs instruments at Smithsonian museums and the Library of Congress. Such knowledge, he adds, “can be repeated from one instrument to the next.”


http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/scanning-a-stradivarius-13807009/

edgewound
05-18-2017, 12:08 AM
Live music listening is one thing. How it is captured in a recording could be significantly different from a purely harmonic standpoint.

Simply because the instrument is "louder" does not necessarily make it "better". There are WAY too many variables.

It's a pretty subjective exercise...BUT...it's good to know that a fiddler can get by with less than a 7 figure instrument. Much like my "partsocaster" can keep up with any local hack playing a vintage Les Paul.

Tone starts with the hands on the instrument. Players' tones vary as much as fingerprints. Each is unique.

hsosdrum
05-18-2017, 01:54 PM
...It's a pretty subjective exercise...

Everything about creating and experiencing art is a purely subjective exercise.

My drumkit consists of certain kinds of drums, cymbals and drumheads that are tuned a certain way because when I play them they provide a direct connection to my inner voice; when I play a different drumkit that connection is almost never as strong as it is when I play my own instrument.

I always change the channel when the radio plays Mahler or Springsteen, but I turn up the volume when it plays Stravinsky or The Beatles; someone else may do the opposite. There is no right or wrong — that's the difference between art and science.

SEAWOLF97
05-21-2017, 08:57 AM
https://ohmspeaker.com/news/hearing-is-believing-or-believing-is-hearing/

Tony Sullivan
05-21-2017, 10:46 AM
https://ohmspeaker.com/news/hearing-is-believing-or-believing-is-hearing/
Not understanding your point here SEAWOLF97
What is your point?
Are you somehow agreeing that Fritz Kreisler, David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman and a list that goes on and on are all retards and don't know shit about a fiddle compared to all those experts in those "scientific" blind listening tests
Gee whiz, wonder what all of those tin eared violin guys could have been thinking?
That they blew all that money on, or borrowed, expensive and rare old instruments when they really didn't have too? When they could have cashed in on an endorsement!
Did they let the people judging in those "tests" text in their votes for the best, like on "The Voice" or "American Idol"?

Think maybe there is some sort of an agenda here, maybe?

The maybe even more amazing part is not one single word mentioned about the bow or bows used, or for that matter, what great contemporary instruments were used for the purposes of comparison
Not that what instrument they used matters anyway, anyone that knows anything about stringed instruments already knows there are some fine fine fine makers out there today, even for VERY affordable instruments like the Jay Haide line here at Ifshin's
http://www.ifshinviolins.com/Jay-Haide-Instruments
http://www.ifshinviolins.com/

"sciencemag.org"
Is that an Al Gore - Reader's Digest publication?
Hilarious

BMWCCA
05-21-2017, 11:41 AM
Not understanding your point here SEAWOLF97
What is your point?

Thomas,

I've located your rock. You can crawl back under it now. :banghead:

Ed Kreamer
05-21-2017, 12:05 PM
Colleagues,

Years ago when I was a student, I had the pleasure the hearing the then concert master of the Seattle Symphony giving a master class for string players and he brought 2 fiddles with him. one was a Strad and the other was as Guarneri.
It was obvious that the guarneri was his preferred instrument. The tonal differences between the two were very subtle. At least to me they were but then I'm a lowly brass player so what do I know.
There was ( or maybe is ) a cello maker in Texas I think, who says that he can build a cello made of aluminum that can rival the classic instruments of old in tonal quality. Given where I sit in the orchestra, I can't hear the many subtlety's of the string players instruments. They would lost anyway with the chorus effect of the string sections.

My point is this: this debate will continue into perpetuity, much as those espouse speaker "cables" thicker the the lines holding an aircraft carrier to a pier vs. good old 14' zip cord. Maybe that is not a good analogy. String players such a those mentioned by Tony spend years honing their skills, and hearing things that most of us can't hear. If they like a certain fiddle and can tell us why who are we to doubt them.

Question for Tony Sullivan: are you a string player?

And now it's time to practice.

Ed

SEAWOLF97
05-21-2017, 04:26 PM
Not understanding your point here SEAWOLF97
"sciencemag.org"
Is that an Al Gore - Reader's Digest publication?
Hilarious

Hey there TonyJoeThomas SullivanSmithWagner ; (have I missed any of your alias's ??)

No agenda. Fiddles mean little to me, the testing methodology is interesting tho ...;)

and perceived value that doesn't fully relate to performance.



Can we have a contest to name your next Sock Puppet :dont-know:

Tony Sullivan
05-21-2017, 05:44 PM
No agenda.
How do you know that?

hsosdrum
05-22-2017, 02:21 PM
[In response to Seawolf97's "No agenda" comment] How do you know that?

He knows that because he's referring to himself not having an agenda, not to anyone else. If you're unable to take people here at their word (or are unable to decipher the meaning of their words) perhaps you need to take a break from the Internet for a while.

Tony Sullivan
05-22-2017, 03:05 PM
He knows that because he's referring to himself not having an agenda, not to anyone else. If you're unable to take people here at their word (or are unable to decipher the meaning of their words) perhaps you need to take a break from the Internet for a while.
That may be the case but it was my inquiry that appears to have been misunderstood - by you at least - and now I'm being lectured, for what I have no idea
I never said he did - I was referring to the topic - that should be obvious by post 12
All of those "scientific" articles - if you look at the dates, commonalities and sponsors, would be strong circumstantial evidence of an agenda in any civil court in the land
And I find that all extremely amusing - that folks go to such great lengths to debate non issues and frame it as some sort of legitimate intellectual exercise
I commented on that in a "general audio discussion" thread about an internet "news" article
Sue me
Understand now?
Maybe it's you that needs to relax?

hsosdrum
05-22-2017, 05:15 PM
If, as you claim, by quoting "No agenda" you were referring to the topic of this thread and not to Seawofl97's assertion in the very previous post that he has no personal agenda in originating this thread, then you did a poor job indeed of communicating your meaning.