# General Mandolin Topics > General Mandolin Discussions >  Study: Old, million-dollar violins dont play better than the new

## StuartE

An interesting study reports that extremely expensive old violins aren't superior to new somewhat expensive violins. Might this apply to mandolins?

The research took place at the Eighth International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, a prestigious gathering of violinists, violin experts, and violin makers. Twenty-one subjects were included in the experiment, and all were very experienced violinists. The researchers used six violins in their tests; three were new high-quality violins, ranging from just a few days to a few years old, and three were old violins (two Stradivari and a del Gesu) crafted in the 1700s. The three old violins were worth a combined total of $10 million, which was about one hundred times the combined value of the new ones. The musicians were unaware of the objective of the experiment, as well as the identities of the six violins used.
<SNIP>
...the violinists were remarkably inconsistent in their choices in this test. Barely half of the musicians made the same choice twice when presented with a pair of violins a second time. The experimenters suggest that this method may not have allowed the violinists enough time to choose the better instrument. However, one result was clear: the violinists didn't prefer the old violins to the new ones. This trend was driven by a definite dislike for one particular instrument: the oldest Stradivari. This violin was consistently picked as the poorer of the pair, while the other five violins were chosen with about equal frequencies.

In the second part of the experiment, the violinists had more opportunity to evaluate the violins. They had one hour to play all six of the violins in any order, and could switch back and forth between the instruments as they wished. At the end of the hour, they were asked to choose "the instrument they would most like to take home with them"<SNIP>

The old Stradivari was the least popular of the six instruments. It was chosen just once to take home, and was rated by six violinists as their least favorite. It also ended up being deemed the worst violin in a category sixteen different times. In contrast, one of the newer violins was the clear winner. Eight musicians wanted to take it home, and nobody called it their least favorite. The violinists rated this one as the best violin in a category 38 times.

Overall, just eight violinists (less than 40 percent) wanted to take one of the three "golden age" violins home.

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## OldSausage

Hands up all those with 300 year old mandolins?

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danielpatrick, 

DataNick, 

JEStanek, 

William Smith, 

zedmando

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## onassis

All it seems to "prove" is that "better" is incredibly subjective. FWIW, not having read the entire article, but only your excerpts, if the three newer fiddles were worth 1/10 of 10 million, then that's $100K or so for 3 instruments - so it would seem they're hardly run of the mill. And probably the major factor driving the price of old fiddles is rarity - Stradivarius isn't making any more, so what's out there is what's out there.

Another argument I've heard is that the ear of the modern player is more accustomed to the sound of a modern violin. That's what they hear most often, so that's the base-line for desired tone.

Not that I know squat about fiddles.

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## Marty Jacobson

I have a 70's Ibanez converted to a Antoniotsai Stratovarious, does that count?

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danielpatrick, 

DataNick, 

F-2 Dave, 

TC-in-NC

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## RichM

Wait... different players prefer different instruments? Old instruments aren't full of magical pixie dust that makes them sound better than anything made since?

Shocked! Shocked, I tell  you!

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Ellen T

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## JeffD

I am convinced, converted. It really is all hype. Anyone who spends more than $100.00 on a mandolin is wasting their money. 

 :Wink:

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## Gary Leonard

Blind tests, double blind tests are notoriously hard to administer without somehow affecting the outcome. Expectation bias of the tested can adversely affect the outcome. ABX testing (where you compare sound A to B, then listen to X, which can be either A or B then guess what X is) is also used in a similar manner to attempt to conclude which sound listeners prefer.  If you are emotionally attached to a specific instrument somehow (be it desire, vested interest, awe of the maker), then those emotions will affect the outcome of the test. This from my experience in dabbling with computer audio, where people swear up and down that expensive audio cables somehow improve their sound in their modest 5$ audio system. 

These tests rely on your ability to remember elements of a sensory input that are several seconds old. And obviously not played in the exact same manner. Short term memory typically lasts a few seconds at best. Is it truly possible to make any determination then? Or are only the "truly gifted" able to determine such things? I do not believe that there is such a thing as a golden ear, but there are people with decades of experience with music who could reliably choose a Stradivari over a *substantially* cheaper violin. And as Mitch points out, the 3 newer violins can be in no way considered cheap, the article evens calls them "..new high-quality violins..". 

What I find amazing is the number of like tests where the outcome isn't statistically different than random guessing.  It can suggest that there is some other factor at play, perhaps the testing scenario is inherently flawed? Perhaps this isn't how we "listen"? 

Give those very experienced violin players access to the instruments to play for a month under the same test conditions (welder goggle, ha!) and then evaluate them. I bet the outcome would be much different.

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Hudmister

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## Tom Smart

Maybe there should be a section of the forum dedicated exclusively to:

A. Scientific proof why Stradivari violins are so good
B. Scientific proof that Stradivari violins aren't so good after all

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## farmerjones

Had a couple of my violins appraised for insurance. They did not play them. 

If there's one thing that's basically a bunch of parts flying in formation, (like a banjer) it's a fiddle.
The nut, fingerboard, pegs, bridge, soundpost, tailpiece, and strings are all 300 years old? 
Then, if all this is equal, lets consider the bow and rosin. What percentage does the rosin and/or bow equate can't be truly settled upon either. Good forum fodder.

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## FLATROCK HILL

> Then, if all this is equal, lets consider the bow and rosin. What percentage does the rosin and/or bow equate can't be truly settled upon either. Good forum fodder.


Do they even make a Bluechip bow?

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David Lewis

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## JFDilmando

If you can't tell the difference between different mandolins.... you probably shouldn't care about this discussion at all....
All of you who can tell the difference between mandolins, and have preferences regarding what you are hearing, know that ears can tell the difference, and probably shouldn't care much about this discussion at all....

those who can hear the difference, you are blessed, as the differences are wonderful .... those of you who cannot tell the differences, are also blessed, as you can play a VERY inexpensive instrument, for the rest of you natural days and be blissful.

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MysTiK PiKn

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## SincereCorgi

The 'Indianapolis experiment' was a good start, but it has been very much superseded by the more recent test done in Paris:




I think this subsequent test has been abundantly discussed elsewhere on the forum, only this time everybody agreed that modern instruments are every bit as good as antique specimens and graciously accepted that there is probably something to these experiments. It was heart-warming.

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StuartE

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## Spruce

"As it turned out, the violinists were remarkably inconsistent in their choices in this test."

Hang out with some folks who _really_ know fiddles, and you'll find yourself standing at the rear of a fairly large hall listening to how well a violin projects...

_That's_ the strong suit of a really nice fiddle, and _not_ how it sounds under the ear...

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DataNick, 

DavidKOS, 

farmerjones, 

MysTiK PiKn, 

sgarrity

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## Nashville

I am quite sure that the better a musician gets on their chosen instrument, then the more discerning they become about what they prefer in sound and feel for an instrument. It worked that way for me on guitar and also now mandolin.

I used to poo poo the idea that anyone would spend more than $10k on a mandolin until I spent an afternoon playing on a great selection of top dollar mandolins. There really is a difference and I saw the light, I suddenly realized why someone with the cash would spend the big dollars. But for most players it is just not necessary. A working or hobby musician can find a really good mandolin for a lot less, same with guitars, same with fiddles. I am thankful there are so many choices nowadays by makers and in price range.

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## Caleb

No doubt there are fine violin makers now just as their were in antiquity.  But bottom line, there is a reason so many seasoned Classical players seek out the old and rare instruments.  I'm sure part of it is fashion/status, but that's not all of it.  

Thile plays a Loar, partly, I assume, because it is the Strad of the mandolin world. But can you honestly see him using it over the Dude if there wasn't _something_ else there, tonally, etc.?  I certainly can't imagine him using it if it were at all _less_ than the Dude.

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## wildhawk

Vintage only guarantees two things be it violins, mandos, guitars.... etc.

1.)  It's Old  (duh)
2.)  Money with the right buyer

A 2015 instrument can sound just as good as anything from another decade or century.

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## DHopkins

Coffee's good for you, now it's bad for you, now it's good for you.  Study results, including those involving musical instruments, are subjective.  It depends on how the study is conducted and, in many cases, who's paying for it.

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## JFDilmando

again.... if you cannot hear the difference between the sound from different mandolins.... don't insult the intelligence of others by saying it can't be done... or there is no difference.... that is just plain egocentricity, and ignorance.

Discerning ears hear a difference... whether it is better or worse is purely a matter of taste of the individual.... I just am amazed that folks who can't hear any difference can, with a straight face, claim that no one can, since they can't..... it is simply embarrassing that someone can actually say such an absurd thing.

This also goes for such statements as a "modern instrument can sound just as good".... of course it can !!! the are terrible old instruments as well as wonderful old instruments... please don't take that crazy jump into the world of "a good modern instrument will sound just as good as all old instruments".... that is the implication, and just a sad statement from a deaf ear.

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MysTiK PiKn

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## Hudmister

> A 2015 instrument can sound just as good as anything from another decade or century.


Not only that but a quality 2015 instrument can be purchased for many thousands less than the vintage issue.  The price increase for the vintage is the collectors value for the most part.

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## Londy

Someone already mentioned this but the test is misleading due to rarity, it does not mean it will sound/play better because of price. I am no fiddle player but is there a difference in tone desired 100 years ago verses modern players today? I guess trying to make all things equal...but what do I know...

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## zedmando

> I am convinced, converted. It really is all hype. Anyone who spends more than $100.00 on a mandolin is wasting their money.


Hmm, I spent over that for my used Mandobird!
Good thing I see the smilie...

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JFDilmando

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## Bertram Henze

Old, million-dollar ships don't swim better...

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zedmando

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## zedmando

Well, not that one any way...

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## Ivan Kelsall

As in nearly all things - one person's opinion is as valid as another's & we make our choices on ''what sounds good to us''. That's all we can ever do,& realistically, all we ever _need_ to do,after all,it's ourselves we're making the choice for,nobody else. Such blind listening tests,& this was simply one of maybe 100's carried out over the years on all sorts of instruments,only confirm this. My instruments 'sound good to me',the fact that others might think that they sound _less good_ to them,bothers me not one bit, because _i absolutely know that mine are infinitely superior !_ ( my opinion - sort of ), :Laughing: 
                                                                                                                                   Ivan :Wink:

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## jmagill

I find tests of this type to be of interest mostly as yet another example of how dollars drive everything. The ostensible purpose is to discover if new instruments are as good (whatever that means) as old ones, but really it's to find out if you have to spend a million bucks to sound like a million bucks. Would such a test even take place or be of public interest if there weren't such a vast disparity in the price tags of the instruments? 

Of course fine new instruments are made better than old ones; wouldn't you expect today's violin makers to have learned something new in 300 years, especially when they start by standing on the shoulders of such giants as Stradivari, Guarnari, Amati, etc.? Give a new instrument a century or so of playing time, and I'd bet it might be referred to in the same reverent terms we use now for the old Italian masters.

After nearly 50 years of playing and selling, I think of every instrument as having two dollar values. The first is what I call the 'intrinsic value', which is what the instrument costs to make, distribute and sell, with everyone in the supply chain making a fair profit. This is usually at or near the instrument's retail price. 

Then there is the 'market price' which is driven by factors such as name brand, scarcity, desirability, endorsement by professionals, market buzz, etc. Newer instruments are usually, but not always, closer to intrinsic value in price, but in the vintage world, market value dominates, and intrinsic value has little or no effect on what instruments sell for.

It's interesting to me how many forum posts show player's evaluations so clearly influenced by what instruments cost in relation to how they sound rather than on their sound and build quality alone. I think a lot of our obsession with vintage Gibsons and other high-dollar brands like Gilchrist, Monteleone, Dudenbostel, Nugget, etc. is because we're fascinated by how much they cost. It's darn difficult to make a living building instruments, and if these luthiers can get top dollar for their instruments, then I say more power to them, but are there instruments out there that sound 'as good' for a lot less money? It's all subjective, of course, but I'm convinced there are, if you ignore price tags and let your evaluations be driven by your ears and your subjective tastes alone. Find a great instrument first, then look at the price tag. If you can afford it, great; if you can't, you've learned something further about the sound you're looking for and the quest goes on.

As Warren Buffet famously said, "Cost is what you pay; value is what you get." It's when cost and value get too far apart that our perverse fascination with old/new (expensive/inexpensive) comparisons kicks in.

Be patient and let your ears, not your wallet, guide your quest for a great instrument  it's out there somewhere.

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Bernie Daniel, 

oneeyeross

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## JeffD

> As in nearly all things - one person's opinion is as valid as another's & we make our choices on ''what sounds good to us''. That's all we can ever do,& realistically, all we ever _need_ to do,after all,it's ourselves we're making the choice for,nobody else..


While this is 100% true, I think what provokes the endless discussion is when someone takes the "next step" and implies, or outright says "if I don't hear a difference, there is no difference, its hype" - or subtle variations of that.

Get what you like, and maybe even a little better than what you like, and enjoy it. 

There are some folks that seem to take inordinate glee in exposing hype, and making fun of those who fall for it. Certainly there is some hype, and I do think a healthy skepticism is a good thing, but too strong a fear of being "taken-in" by hype and you can miss some really transcendent experiences.

I have found that when you look into an habitual skeptic you often find and ex-zealot.

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## Nashville

An old friend of mine was convinced he had an authentic Stradivarius that he inherited from his father who was a concert master at the Denver Symphony. His father must have believed it to be authentic because his entire life my friend was convinced it so. Although he didn't play himself he kept it in it's original handmade coffin case with hand fitted brass hinges and locks. Finally when he was quite elderly he decided to sell it and had Sotheby's of New York appraise it for him. Sotheby's are the experts on Stradivarius and after examination they said it was not authentic but was a copy most likely made in Czechoslovakia between 250 and 300 years ago.

My friend was extremely disappointed after a lifetime of believing that his father had owned an authentic Stradivarius. So he gave it to me. I told him that I didn't play but he insisted, so I told him I would learn.

It was in the original coffin case with strings that must have been 50 years old or more, old rosin, etc. I took it to a violin shop to have it setup to play bluegrass/country/fiddle. And from that day on, every fiddle player that saw it and played it wanted to buy it from me. It's a beautiful violin and it sounds marvelous. I turned down offer after offer over the years.

Fast forward 20 years and a few years back I needed money and thought about selling it, knowing that if I let it go I would probably never again own such a fine violin, especially one that old. I took it to the premier violin shop in Nashville where all the best players have their work done. The owner of the shop took a look at it, played it, and then just dismissed it as not that special. He felt is wasn't any better than anything else he had in his shop for sale and didn't think it would fetch much at all, maybe $500.

So I still have it. I will keep it until I die, because for me it's worth more than the money. It's the best violin I will ever own.

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allenhopkins, 

mvlh, 

MysTiK PiKn, 

Rush Burkhardt, 

Ryk Loske

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## RichM

I've said it elsewhere on the forum, but I'll say it again here. My Peter Coombe A-style mandolin is the best mandolin I've ever played. Not "best for the money." Not best I've ever owned. Best I've ever played. And I've played many 5-digit instruments and one 6-digit (we're talking prices, not fingers here!).

Why doesn't Peter command the ultra-high prices that other worthy luthiers command? I can't say. I just know I'm keeping this mandolin forever. It doesn't know it was pretty reasonably priced. It just know it sounds great.

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MysTiK PiKn

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## JeffD

> The owner of the shop took a look at it, played it, and then just dismissed it as not that special. He felt is wasn't any better than anything else he had in his shop for sale and didn't think it would fetch much at all, maybe $500.


I wonder if that was perhaps just a snobby shop owner giving his standard response to a situation like that. I don't know. I have seen it.

What is also interesting is that a nothing special fiddle is valued at $500. This is accurate in my experience - a mandolin of similar quality would run about $250, and a guitar of similar quality about $125.  That is the way to think of it in most cases.




> So I still have it. I will keep it until I die, because for me it's worth more than the money. It's the best violin I will ever own.


Great old fiddles will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no fiddle.

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## roysboy

> If you can't tell the difference between different mandolins.... you probably shouldn't care about this discussion at all....
> All of you who can tell the difference between mandolins, and have preferences regarding what you are hearing, know that ears can tell the difference, and probably shouldn't care much about this discussion at all....
> 
> those who can hear the difference, you are blessed, as the differences are wonderful .... those of you who cannot tell the differences, are also blessed, as you can play a VERY inexpensive instrument, for the rest of you natural days and be blissful.


Well ...this just makes too much sense to make sense .

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## Emmett Marshall

I've got the facts on this.  My new mandolin definitely sounds better than the serial numbered mandolin made right before it.

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## Jeff Hildreth

As a former violin hustler, I can tell you that "fakes" were purposefully made 2 and 300 years ago. I had a few. And, they were deemed as good as, if not better, than genuine originals.

Brand / maker means everything.

A dog Strad will get more money than a brilliant Czech or Hungarian fake that plays and sounds as good ,or better,  than a  genuine Italian instrument of fame and age.

I don't believe that the OP's subject test was "subjective" solely. It was objectively subjective and conclusive on two points.  The  one Strad was inferior as judged by the majority, and the modern instrument was deemed best by the majority. That is objectively conclusive.

I have a friend with two Strads.. one is a very fancy expensive dog and the other a plain jane marvel.  The plain jane was cheap by Strad standards.

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Ivan Kelsall, 

SincereCorgi, 

StuartE

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## wildhawk

> I have a friend with two Strads.. one is a very fancy expensive dog and the other a plain jane marvel.  The plain jane was cheap by Strad standards.


As a long time guitar player the same is true of six strings.  Price, manufacturer or year made guarantees zilch when it comes to sound.   I like vintage gear but if the day comes I believe it takes  $$$$$$$ to get a incredible sounding instrument you can stand me in front of a chalkboard and make me write I WILL PRACTICE MORE a hundred times.   :Mandosmiley:

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## sblock

> I have found that when you look into an habitual skeptic you often find and ex-zealot.


Perhaps, but a lot of habitual skeptics are called "scientists."  It's part of scientific training to remain skeptical!  I would not think that most scientists would qualify as "ex-zealots," however!     :Wink:

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## JeffD

Well.... Its a topic for another thread in another forum I am afraid, but in my professional life I have met more than a few scientific zealots. It is sometimes said that scientific views of the physical world do not change in light of new evidence, but change one funeral at a time.

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Caleb, 

Ryk Loske

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## Stephen Perry

There's a difference between playing with a moderate performance envelope and playing in a concert hall in front of 3000 people.  There's a difference between playing for a few minutes and giving an evening concert - again and again.  There's a difference between top level soloists and folks in the second violins.  

This kind of test doesn't begin to get at the important differences, which aren't generally important to lesser players.  

Someone who needs a minivan and can't drive a manual transmission is likely to reject a Ferrari.

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## PseudoCelt

> There's a difference between playing with a moderate performance envelope and playing in a concert hall in front of 3000 people.  There's a difference between playing for a few minutes and giving an evening concert - again and again.  There's a difference between top level soloists and folks in the second violins.  
> 
> This kind of test doesn't begin to get at the important differences, which aren't generally important to lesser players...


The more recent 2014 Paris study, mentioned by SincereCorgi in post #12 of this thread and discussed before on the Cafe, attempts to address at least some of these points.  They tested top-level soloists and found that they too were unable to reliably tell old violins from new ones by sound in the tests they performed.  The violinists who took part are described as "_ranging in age from 20 to 62, their combined awards included Avery Fisher career grants (2) and first prizes in the Tchaikovsky (2), Sibelius (1), Paganini (1), and Long-Thibaud (3) competitions, along with many other lesser awards, including a silver medal at the Queen Elizabeth Competition_."  Their names are given in the supplementary info accompanying the paper.




> Hang out with some folks who _really_ know fiddles, and you'll find yourself standing at the rear of a fairly large hall listening to how well a violin projects...
> 
> _That's_ the strong suit of a really nice fiddle, and _not_ how it sounds under the ear...


When a soloist is choosing between violins, do they usually listen to someone else playing them from the back of a hall?  It would make sense if they did.

The 2014 Paris study, where they play the violins in a large-ish 300 seat auditorium states, "_There is certainly no evidence here to support the belief that Old Italian violins come into their own in concert halls whereas new ones fall behind._"  It should be noted out that these studies aren't comparing "really nice fiddles" to lesser instruments.  They are comparing really nice *old* violins to really nice *new* violins.

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## sblock

> Well.... Its a topic for another thread in another forum I am afraid, but in my professional life I have met more than a few scientific zealots. It is sometimes said that scientific views of the physical world do not change in light of new evidence, but change one funeral at a time.


JeffD, you now seem to be saying that some skeptical scientists are zealots -- not _EX_-zealots!  You might have a valid point there, but it's not the point you were making before.  You said habitual skeptics tended to be ex-zealots. Which is it?   :Wink:   Please forgive me, but I had to tease you.

Anyway, I suspect that it's true that at least some (but probably not most) scientific views of the physical world only change one funeral at a time. But frankly, that rate of change -- as slow as you seem to imply that it is -- is still faster, and more responsive, than the rates of change evidenced by other dogmas and world-views, including philosophy, religion, jurisprudence, mythology, and so on. Science is arguably more, and not less, nimble in this regard.

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## JeffD

> JeffD, you now seem to be saying that some skeptical scientists are zealots -- not _EX_-zealots!  You might have a valid point there, but it's not the point you were making before.  You said habitual skeptics tended to be ex-zealots. Which is it?    Please forgive me, but I had to tease you.


What I was geting at is that I have found often times when someone is uber skeptical and thinks its all hype and 95% of everything is BS and takes inordinate pride in not buying into anything, an ad, a product, a religion, a theory, that often that person used to be a true believer who bumped up against a hard piece of reality and just dropped everything and went the other way. 

But I hadn't considered the professionally trained deliberate skeptics like responsible scientists. But, scientists being people there are undoubtedly some....




> Anyway, I suspect that it's true that at least some (but probably not most) scientific views of the physical world only change one funeral at a time. But frankly, that rate of change -- as slow as you seem to imply that it is -- is still faster, and more responsive, than the rates of change evidenced by other dogmas and world-views, including philosophy, religion, jurisprudence, mythology, and so on. Science is arguably more, and not less, nimble in this regard.


You are correct there.

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## Caleb

Jeff, you're onto something there, and you state your case well.  I've been thinking of it quite a bit since you originally posted it.

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## Ivan Kelsall

Jeff - What you posted is _i believe_ very true. Most of us have a bias towards what _we_ think of as being true,based very often on the opinions of others,not our personal experience. If we're told often enough,that 'this' (whatever) is true,folk will beginto believe it & not trust their own judgement.I alluded to this in a post re. comparing mandolins in a store & what effects the various instruments etc.. I stated that IMHO,we have pre-conceived ideas about various makes of mandolin & what to expect from them.
In other words,having read/heard so much about 'x' make of mandolin being THE instrument,would we choose one simply because of it's reputation,despite one not sounding the 'best' of a group of instrument _to us_?. Personally,i suspect many folk would & consider that their 'own' opinion isn't worthy & that the 'experts' must be correct,
                                                                                                             Ivan

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## Bertram Henze

> It is sometimes said that scientific views of the physical world do not change in light of new evidence, but change one funeral at a time.


Max Planck said that. But "one funeral at a time" may be faster than we think if the number of funerals per minute just climbs high enough. 
We tend to cling to the views we had because change would mean we'd been wrong all the time; but the goal of progress is not the good feeling of being right - the goal is the better feeling of being more right today than yesterday.

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sblock

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## William Smith

I'd like the test done with a few certain fiddle players, I don't believe any were noted who did this comparison? One on the top would be Raymond Legere, Marc O'Connor, etc...

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## sblock

> I'd like the test done with a few certain fiddle players, I don't believe any were noted who did this comparison? One on the top would be Raymond Legere, Marc O'Connor, etc...


The Paris test was conducted with noted _classical violin soloists_ comparing Golden Age (late 1600s to early 1700s) Cremona violins from Italy (Strads, Guarneris, etc.) to some of the very best violins of the modern era.  This was appropriate. _It was NOT done with fiddlers playing fiddles_!  I appreciate that you like bluegrass music (Hey, I do too!), but there are no bluegrass musicians out there who play million-dollar-plus Italian violins from Cremona.  Or can afford these. Furthermore, I'd wager you that there are few, if any, bluegrass musicians who play any of the top-end modern violins, either.  They use different instruments, and seek different characteristics! Most fiddles tend to be set up just a bit differently than violins, with different strings, different bridges, etc.  So why would you want to know if Mark O'Connor can tell the difference between a Stradivarius, say, and something by Joseph Curtin, when he has no real playing experience, or special expertise, with either of these instruments? Also, bluegrass fiddlers play into microphones on stage (or use pickups), and they do not rely on the acoustics of a concert hall to project over an orchestra. So the characteristics that make a Stradivarius (or whatever) desirable as a classical solo instrument are fundamentally distinct from what makes a fiddle a good one.  This is apples and oranges.  The test you propose would not measure anything of value.

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MysTiK PiKn, 

OldSausage, 

SincereCorgi

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## Stephen Perry

> The more recent 2014 Paris study, mentioned by SincereCorgi in post #12 of this thread and discussed before on the Cafe, attempts to address at least some of these points.  They tested top-level soloists and found that they too were unable to reliably tell old violins from new ones by sound in the tests they performed.  The violinists who took part are described as "_ranging in age from 20 to 62, their combined awards included Avery Fisher career grants (2) and first prizes in the Tchaikovsky (2), Sibelius (1), Paganini (1), and Long-Thibaud (3) competitions, along with many other lesser awards, including a silver medal at the Queen Elizabeth Competition_."  Their names are given in the supplementary info accompanying the paper.
> 
> 
> When a soloist is choosing between violins, do they usually listen to someone else playing them from the back of a hall?  It would make sense if they did.
> 
> The 2014 Paris study, where they play the violins in a large-ish 300 seat auditorium states, "_There is certainly no evidence here to support the belief that Old Italian violins come into their own in concert halls whereas new ones fall behind._"  It should be noted out that these studies aren't comparing "really nice fiddles" to lesser instruments.  They are comparing really nice *old* violins to really nice *new* violins.


It's not about the inherent sound of the instrument, it's about what one can do with the instrument.  I've listened to music and instruments with people who couldn't tell any difference and with someone who can tell WHAT specific violin is being used on many of the recordings!  

Listen to top soloists talking about how they chose their instruments.  Plenty of youtube vids and the like.  

Near as I can tell, most people commenting on these types of studies haven't compared top end old with top end new.  There's a difference in my hands, but not one I can exploit.

For considered opinions, see discussions on maestronet.

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## biosplonk

I think that there probably is difference between instruments, old vs new, cheap vs not-cheap (vs VERY not cheap) etc.  However, I think that beyond a certain level, the scale of difference becomes infinitesimal in either direction and loses all correlation to value and what the instrument is actually worth.  So sure, there are probably people that can hear differences between them, and people who think they can, and people who really want to... but the bottom line is you're still going to end up playing only the best instrument you can afford.  And who knows, maybe you can find a really nice instrument for a decent price that has no magical name associated with it.  Until then, I'll keep the faith and try to be worthy of that instrument.

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## David Lewis

I think we've hit on the wrong tangent. The study isn't comparing cheap instruments with expensive instruments. It's comparing expensive instruments made today with what is considered the ideal of violin. And it found that there's not a lot of difference. Now, if we were to compare one of Thile's Loars with a high end boutique mandolin made this year, getting Chris to play them both, what would happen? (I don't know, by the way)

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## OldSausage

> I think we've hit on the wrong tangent. The study isn't comparing cheap instruments with expensive instruments. It's comparing expensive instruments made today with what is considered the ideal of violin. And it found that there's not a lot of difference. Now, if we were to compare one of Thile's Loars with a high end boutique mandolin made this year, getting Chris to play them both, what would happen? (I don't know, by the way)


We all know what would happen, David, they would both sound absolutely wonderful.

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## Tom Smart

> So why would you want to know if Mark O'Connor can tell the difference between a Stradivarius, say, and something by Joseph Curtin, when he has no real playing experience, or special expertise, with either of these instruments? Also, bluegrass fiddlers play into microphones on stage (or use pickups), and they do not rely on the acoustics of a concert hall to project over an orchestra. So the characteristics that make a Stradivarius (or whatever) desirable as a classical solo instrument are fundamentally distinct from what makes a fiddle a good one.  This is apples and oranges.  The test you propose would not measure anything of value.


Mark O'Connor plays extremely fine instruments, including a modern Jonathan Cooper and an 1830 J.B. Vuillaume, and he has often played unamplified as a soloist in front of a full orchestra using the same instruments he uses on mic.

Generally, it seems the people who make the biggest fuss about all the differences between a violin and a fiddle are the ones who don't play, or don't play well. A top-tier instrument is likely to satisfy top-tier players in any genre.

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## Stephen Perry

The key folks miss is that this isn't about sounding better.  It's about being easier to play at a top level in some ways, offering a wide performance envelope to a relatively small group of players.  A short test isn't going to do much to determine which top end instruments top soloists prefer to play with every day and every concert.  A good deal of that is how tired one ends up after a concert.

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## Ivan Kelsall

From David Lewis -_ "Now, if we were to compare one of Thile's Loars with a high end boutique mandolin made this year, getting Chris to play them both, what would happen ?"_. Well David - That's already happend,but a while ago. CT originally played a top end mandolin built by Lynn Dudenbostel,as you may very well know. Many folk on here,including me, have expressed the opinion that the 'Dude.' sounded 'better',or to use my own term,had ''a more pleasing difference''. One other top Bluegrass mandolin player,Ronnie MCoury has returned to his Gilchrist after buying & playing a Lloyd Loar mandolin. He says that in his opinion, the Gil.is a more evenly balanced mandolin. I'm sure that others would think very differently.  
    These comparisons have been gone over & over & over & ........... & i'm sure they'll be dragged out again in the future. IMHO,when comparing the _highest calibre_ of instruments,one to another,they're futile,as we'll always have _our_ opinions which will be the opposite of the opinions of others & where does that get us, other than going around in circles ?. The old adage of ''You pays _your_ money & you makes _your_ choice'' is the best we can do,
                                                                                                          Ivan :Wink:

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## David Lewis

Two excellent points. One, of course ct would are either one sound brilliant. Two. Subjectivity is an intestate yet vital variable.

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## Bernie Daniel

> Blind tests, double blind tests are notoriously hard to administer without somehow affecting the outcome. Expectation bias of the tested can adversely affect the outcome. ABX testing (where you compare sound A to B, then listen to X, which can be either A or B then guess what X is) is also used in a similar manner to attempt to conclude which sound listeners prefer.  If you are emotionally attached to a specific instrument somehow (be it desire, vested interest, awe of the maker), then those emotions will affect the outcome of the test. This from my experience in dabbling with computer audio, where people swear up and down that expensive audio cables somehow improve their sound in their modest 5$ audio system. 
> 
> These tests rely on your ability to remember elements of a sensory input that are several seconds old. And obviously not played in the exact same manner. Short term memory typically lasts a few seconds at best. Is it truly possible to make any determination then? Or are only the "truly gifted" able to determine such things? I do not believe that there is such a thing as a golden ear, but there are people with decades of experience with music who could reliably choose a Stradivari over a *substantially* cheaper violin. And as Mitch points out, the 3 newer violins can be in no way considered cheap, the article evens calls them "..new high-quality violins..". 
> 
> What I find amazing is the number of like tests where the outcome isn't statistically different than random guessing.  It can suggest that there is some other factor at play, perhaps the testing scenario is inherently flawed? Perhaps this isn't how we "listen"? 
> 
> Give those very experienced violin players access to the instruments to play for a month under the same test conditions (welder goggle, ha!) and then evaluate them. I bet the outcome would be much different.


I have never heard anyone claim that double blind tests are "double blind tests are notoriously hard to administer without somehow affecting the outcome".   Can you cite a study that makes that case?  If so i'd like to read it.

The *whole point* of a double blind study is to eliminate the confounding biases and emotions you are mentioning.

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## Bernie Daniel

> again.... if you cannot hear the difference between the sound from different mandolins.... don't insult the intelligence of others by saying it can't be done... or there is no difference.... that is just plain egocentricity, and ignorance.
> 
> Discerning ears hear a difference... whether it is better or worse is purely a matter of taste of the individual.... I just am amazed that folks who can't hear any difference can, with a straight face, claim that no one can, since they can't..... it is simply embarrassing that someone can actually say such an absurd thing.
> 
> This also goes for such statements as a "modern instrument can sound just as good".... of course it can !!! the are terrible old instruments as well as wonderful old instruments... please don't take that crazy jump into the world of "a good modern instrument will sound just as good as all old instruments".... that is the implication, and just a sad statement from a deaf ear.


However, this test and the subsequent one conducted in Paris, proved scientifically that even people who claim to be able to discern an great old violin from a great modern violin can't do it.  The same would apply to mandolins most likely.  It does not matter what a person claims they can hear what matters what they can PROVE they can hear. 

If you would test mandolins in a double blind test like this and you can take it to the bank that the best mandolin players will do no better at picking out the "blue-blood" mandolins then these great violin players.

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## Stephen Perry

Some problems with the tests include that they are tests, and everyone knows that.  The players feel what they're playing.  And they're usually based upon sound or tone, which isn't the only reason players choose what they choose.

Regardless, it's very clear already that the best modern makers, and sometimes even intermediate makers, offer instruments with the performance equivalent to good old violins.  I suspect that less than 100 ancient violins keep at the top of the charts.  

My only long term experience with an 18th C violin, a good decent one, led me to enjoy the effortless way it did what it did when I got my bowing in the pocket.  Sensitive, but in the zone very easy to play for a long time, easy to use all of it's potential, no work required.  I liked that.  On the other hand, it didn't get sold cheap!

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## Bertram Henze

> The *whole point* of a double blind study is to eliminate the confounding biases and emotions you are mentioning.


I get it that a double blind test eliminates the test persons' biases and emotions, but not the test conductor's. Someone has to select what to test against what, and that someone has some goal in mind.

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## Bernie Daniel

> "As it turned out, the violinists were remarkably inconsistent in their choices in this test."
> 
> Hang out with some folks who _really_ know fiddles, and you'll find yourself standing at the rear of a fairly large hall listening to how well a violin projects...
> 
> _That's_ the strong suit of a really nice fiddle, and _not_ how it sounds under the ear...


FYI --one  part of the test in Paris *was* an evaluation of the violin's sound heard from the concert hall  The results were the same -- the experts could not tell the old from the new.

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## Astro

Old violins aren't worth large sums because they sound the best.

They are worth it because no one is making 300 year old mandolins anymore.

Seems common sense that any instrument passed down for 300 years is likely a good one. The bad ones were trashed long before as they weren't worth the effort of preserving and passing on.

So if they are 300 years old, AND sound good -they become sensational. Once sensationalized, they of course go for exorbitant sums.

Also, If you happen on a 300 year old violin, its worth the luthiers effort to make it sound really good. So most of them do.

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## Bernie Daniel

> ....I have found that when you look into an habitual skeptic you often find and ex-zealot.


The whole point of being a scientist it to be a habitual skeptic -- but it should have nothing to do with advocacy.

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## Bernie Daniel

> I get it that a double blind test eliminates the test persons' biases and emotions, but not the test conductor's. Someone has to select what to test against what, and that someone has some goal in mind.


I think the only *goal* in mind was to *answer a question*.  

The question was can experts really tell the classic old violins form the better modern violins from their sound alone -- taking away the sense of sight?

If you read the actual study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA you will see that a great deal of time and effort was expended to get a good set of violins for the study --they had detailed selection criteria  Of course there is no "perfect' study but this study was at least superior in every way and the results obtained were not ambiguous when subjected to statistical analysis.  

There is IMO no reason to believe that a different collection of old and new violins --or other violinists would have come do different conclusions.  However the test would have to be repeated to prove that. :Smile:

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## Stephen Perry

> I think the only *goal* in mind was to *answer a question*.  
> 
> The question was can experts really tell the classic old violins form the better modern violins from their sound alone -- taking away the sense of sight?
> 
> If you read the actual study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA you will see that a great deal of time and effort was expended to get a good set of violins for the study --they had detailed selection criteria  Of course there is no "perfect' study but this study was at least superior in every way and the results obtained were not ambiguous when subjected to statistical analysis.  
> 
> There is IMO no reason to believe that a different collection of old and new violins --or other violinists would have come do different conclusions.  However the test would have to be repeated to prove that.


Exactly, and the interpretations of others expands that finding.  One of the biggest problems I see is the definition of "expert."  Take a concert hall with the top 30 violin setup and adjustment people in the world and the results might well be different.  Ranking is difficult when one mainly plays or mainly listens as a listener.  Those who adjust and set up listen with different ears.

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## Bertram Henze

> However the test would have to be repeated to prove that.


Oh yes - a double blind tester test.

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## OldSausage

> Oh yes - a double blind tester test.


Hence the other important part of scientific experimentation, which is replication. It's not like science hasn't already spent centuries considering and figuring out the very objections everyone so proudly raises in this thread. That doesn't make it perfect, but it does mean you're not going to catch science out by pipe dreaming in your armchair.

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MysTiK PiKn, 

sblock

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## barney 59

> No doubt there are fine violin makers now just as their were in antiquity.  But bottom line, there is a reason so many seasoned Classical players seek out the old and rare instruments.  I'm sure part of it is fashion/status, but that's not all of it.  
> 
> Thile plays a Loar, partly, I assume, because it is the Strad of the mandolin world. But can you honestly see him using it over the Dude if there wasn't _something_ else there, tonally, etc.?  I certainly can't imagine him using it if it were at all _less_ than the Dude.


   Just like the countless articles attempting to belittle Stradivarius' achievements but coming up with some reason other than his skill for why his violins are so good --mini iceage--whatever. Maybe they are so good because he was that good!
   It seems that a highly skilled musician given the opportunity to have  a Strad tends to use it. They can have any instrument in the world,obviously have really good ears and most of them are completely aware of their status in the musical world and their legacy. They are not likely to have their opinion clouded by the fact that it's rare or expensive or it has a big name. A musician of that status might do that with the car they drive but I don't think it's likely that they would do it with the instrument they play! Michael Tilson Thomas is my newest neighbor --should I bake him a pie and go see what he thinks?

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## M.Marmot

> A musician of that status might do that with the car they drive but I don't think it's likely that they would do it with the instrument they play! Michael Tilson Thomas is my newest neighbor --should I bake him a pie and go see what he thinks?


Please do, and while you are there could you please find out what shampoo and conditioner he uses?

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## TheOne-N-OnlyHomer

Even if they don't "sound better" which of course is subjective, personally I would think that there is something to be said for all the people that have played the instrument before and all the emotion and feeling that's reverberated through the instrument through the centuries. Just the thought of the history in the instrument, the energy of those that came before, I don't know, does something for me.

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MysTiK PiKn

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## arizona

These tests have been going on for a long, long time and every one produces effectively the same finding - the best of the new can't be reliably discerned by professionals from the best of the old.

In a recent issue of "Strad" magazine they reprinted a story from either the 1920s or late 1800s (I can't remember which) that recounted a similar blindfold test, although less rigorously performed than the recent ones, and the results were the same: the pros couldn't tell the difference. Then. Now. Ever.

It seems like every few years there is another version of this test. I don't recall ever seeing one that found that pros *could* reliably tell the difference. The old violins still have plenty about them that is special -- many antiques do. And they have the emotional mystique of all the players who have played them before. 

What they don't have is tone or playability that is discernibly better than the best today. And to my knowledge no test has ever found otherwise. And that's ok, the old violins are still wonderful instruments. But let's not lose sight of the fact that among us, today, luthiers there are every bit as skillful as the ancients. I love that.

It's human nature, I suppose, to try to find a hierarchy in things. But in this case the best is horizontal, not vertical -- a WHOLE lot of best spread widely, but all equal, with only subtle individual differences to differentiate their personalities. Because that what it amounts to, personality. None is better or worse, just different.

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Astro, 

Hudmister

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## outsidenote

From a purely clinical point of vew, modern luthiers have many advantages over Stradivarius and Lloyd Loar.  Not the least of which is the ability to study their designs and replicate them.  They have modern machines, CNC etc, power tools, measuring devices, finish choices, free exchange of ideas and experience and decades or centuries of analysis of great instruments.  It's not surprising that they can make instruments of similar quality, if not better.  Perhaps Stradivarius and Loar had a better choice of wood, but maybe not, as transportation of lumber was likely more difficult.

Having said that, it would be really cool to play a really rare old instrument if it plays as well, and sounds as good the best of the modern crop.  Would that be worth a lot of extra money?  The free market says yes.

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## barney 59

> Please do, and while you are there could you please find out what shampoo and conditioner he uses?


Loreal --same as me, but he manages it better!

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## barney 59

[QUOTE=outsidenote;1387586]From a purely clinical point of vew, modern luthiers have many advantages over Stradivarius and Lloyd Loar.  Not the least of which is the ability to study their designs and replicate them.  They have modern machines, CNC etc, power tools, measuring devices, finish choices, free exchange of ideas and experience and decades or centuries of analysis of great instruments.  It's not surprising that they can make instruments of similar quality, if not better.  Perhaps Stradivarius and Loar had a better choice of wood, but maybe not, as transportation of lumber was likely more difficult.

  I doubt that their choices for wood were much better than ours. More plentiful yes. and cheaper certainly. But most luthiers are very careful about their selection of wood and very old trees still exist and get harvested, at least enough to sustain small builders. Manufacturers have a much bigger problem than small builders in that department.  I personally know of a 700 acre stand of hardwoods in Virginia that has been in the same family since the beginning and has never been touched by an ax. The present heir to the property will never touch it either.  There is enough ancient lumber in there to keep small builders going for maybe a couple of centuries,but as it goes it might have to wait another century to become available and by then it might become a park or something.  Transportation  for Gibson was no problem. Boats and trains and by the time of Loar it could come on a truck. 
I saw a thing about those trees that Stradivarius used for his tops. They were protected and "farmed" then and remain so today and this being done by gilds. They tend to do that in Europe much more so than we ever have done in the US. I guess they had figured out a long time ago that there is just so much of somethings. We're trying to come to grips with that idea here still! The import and export and transporting of wood is something that has gone on for hundreds of years and we aren't talking huge quantities for someone like Stradivarius. There is a lot of fiddles in a log! Where we went wrong was turning out huge quantities of not very good instruments using very good materials in the early part of the 20th century or millions of Stanley tools with Brazilian Rosewood handles!
One would think with science and prior knowledge and very cool machines that we should be able to improve on the past in the manufacturing of things and sometimes we do and sometimes we say "They don't make them like this anymore!" by which we usually mean that the old one is better! There are attempts to artificially age wood but if it takes some long period of time for an instrument to come into it's prime then we have to wait until the new one gets old to really know! As far as Loar instruments go I see quite a few mandolins made by our more famous makers today that are visually much better and skillfully made than any Loar that I have seen. Loars seem rather crude in comparison to some instruments I have seen made by some builders such as Arthur Poe. I have also heard and played quite a few that are better sounding than any Loar I have played (Which remains at about 6)--though I have never played John Reishman's -----

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## MysTiK PiKn

quality. and too much is about intellect. the lack of emotion is clear. mere appreciation would help. few know help is required.
strad and del gesu ordered and floated their wood annually down a river. it was all so real. 
the test best methinks would be put me in a room with many v's and go away until i sort it. no statistical analysis required. doubly blind intellect superimposed on the obvious, and it's so slow, the obvious is so quick an experience of appreciation and emotion. now it's your turn. quality.

i doubt that makes 'sense'.  i would it reach the senses. knowing, in touch, of quality, and once it starts, it continues experiencing it's own way regardless of making sense to some other way and it's failure to see and feel and hear here.

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## barney 59

> quality. and too much is about intellect. the lack of emotion is clear. mere appreciation would help. few know help is required.
> strad and del gesu ordered and floated their wood annually down a river. it was all so real. 
> the test best methinks would be put me in a room with many v's and go away until i sort it. no statistical analysis required. doubly blind intellect superimposed on the obvious, and it's so slow, the obvious is so quick an experience of appreciation and emotion. now it's your turn. quality.
> 
> i doubt that makes 'sense'.  i would it reach the senses. knowing, in touch, of quality, and once it starts, it continues experiencing it's own way regardless of making sense to some other way and it's failure to see and feel and hear here.


  Is this a poem?

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## MysTiK PiKn

ok but I forget who wrote it

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## Ivan Kelsall

IMHO these 'tests / comparisons' should be killed off !. They've been going on for donkey's years. I remember one being published in The Strad. magazine over 40 years ago (a work's colleague was a Violinist). If somehow,a group of people were to arrive at a '_definitive'_ conclusion (how they'd do that i don't know),there would be 100's if not 1,000's of detractors who would disagree. My point - where is all this getting us ? = nowhere fast !, :Whistling: 
                                                                             Ivan :Wink:

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## Astro

Dont miss the point. This is not just about the violins. Its not just about which one is better or what age is better. What the study revealed is that many of us -including talented professional musicians- think we can discern more than we actually can.

Much of the cork sniffing nuances of what we think we hear is actually in our minds ear--a built-in prejudice because we have a preconceived notion of what we want to expect.

When half the violinists didn't pick the same instrument twice, that says something. When almost all violinists rated the oldest strad worst, that says something about one strad anyway. When most did not rate the strads highest, well that says something too. Of course we shouldn't generalize the findings into blanket conclusions, but don't just throw out what it says.

Sure its possible it could be a malicious study. Always good to repeat it. I would especially like to know if the musicians were isolated from each other during the study. We are very influenced by others opinions too.

But at some point we have to acknowledge whether we choose to ignore the evidence or change our minds. Usually we choose the former. The latter often requires new friends. Sometimes even a new wardrobe.

----------

arizona, 

StuartE

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## JeffD

> -- but it should have nothing to do with advocacy.


 It should, shouldn't it.

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## Bertram Henze

> The latter often requires new friends. Sometimes even a new wardrobe.


 :Laughing:  :Laughing:  How true is that!

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## JeffD

As has been said before in many ways, there are many luthiers that can make a violin as good or better than a Strad, by every measurable parameter except that it is not a Strad.

Instead of the being the top of a hierarchy of violins, the Strad and the Strad sound have become the center of a bullseye, where every other option, _by definition_, is less adequate.

As long as the game is played that way, while pretending to be an honest hierarchy, there will be no satisfactory testing possible.


And I am not sure things are all that different in the world of signed Lloyd Loar F5 mandolins either.

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## Bernie Daniel

> It should, shouldn't it.


Maybe we are misunderstanding each other here (semantics?) but no.   I am saying advocacy is not truly a part of the decision process.  

The scientific method uses the null hypothesis mean you assume you are wrong unless the data proves you to be right (in which case you assumed wrongly - LOL!).  

In pure science you don't lobby for a point of view you marshal the data to prove it. (of course in the real world scientists are still people and people have opinions -- but those opinions are not part of the proof).

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## Bernie Daniel

> As has been said before in many ways, there are many luthiers that can make a violin as good or better than a Strad, by every measurable parameter except that it is not a Strad.
> 
> Instead of the being the top of a hierarchy of violins, the Strad and the Strad sound have become the center of a bullseye, where every other option, _by definition_, is less adequate.
> 
> As long as the game is played that way, while pretending to be an honest hierarchy, there will be no satisfactory testing possible.
> 
> 
> And I am not sure things are all that different in the world of signed Lloyd Loar F5 mandolins either.


The way you say it yes -- if *by definition* the sound of a Stad is accepted to be the epitomy of the violin sound then clearly no other violin could be better.  

*But there an obvious problem with this because to maintain that position you must also declare that all Strads sound identical!! LOL!!*

But the double blind study shows that it is likely that no one can actually tell the difference in the sound of Stad and an excellent modern violin.  

Therefore the definition of a Stradivarius being the standard of violins is hollow and kind of meaningless?

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## OldGus

...some settling may occur...

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## Bernie Daniel

> .....When half the violinists didn't pick the same instrument twice, that says something. ....


Good for you!  This is a point that wanted to emphasis too but forgot. 

In fact this point says better than anything how hollow the claims of being about to distinguish the sound of classical violin really are -- IMO.

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## Bernie Daniel

> ...some settling may occur...


...so shake well be for drawing your bow?

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## Jeff Hildreth

Observation:

One of the best threads in title and content in some time.  Thanks.

"The key folks miss is that this isn't about sounding better. It's about being easier to play at a top level in some ways, offering a wide performance envelope to a relatively small group of players. A short test isn't going to do much to determine which top end instruments top soloists prefer to play with every day and every concert. A good deal of that is how tired one ends up after a concert. "

Steve,  I'm not sure that this is necessarily/universally  true as with some classical guitars, notably the Fleta, they are notoriously difficult to play owning the neck angle , bridge height etc.. yet many choose to play them  The Fleta instruments were sold out for the lifetime of the makers over 20 years ago.

There was also a comment that only the "best" instruments have survived 300 years.. the reason was stated that was because they were the best.. that is confusing.  And, as I posted prior, a friend owns two Strads.. all who have played it, including the admission of the owner.. it's a dog.  It is valauable because it is old and a Strad.. no other reason.

Even some Steiners have survived and these are not considered "best" by  many.

AI find it enlightening that players did not always choose the same instrument twice.

The "best" violin I owned was a Fritzch made in America in 1909. Henley says they date from 1911 or 1913.. mine was the oldest known. A very large Brescian style instrument.. . originally thought to be a small viola. D'Atili said violin.  Marvelous instrujment with a deep red finish.  Manly me thinks.  My wife enjoyed it but alas too large for her.

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## Astro

> Observation:
> 
> There was also a comment that only the "best" instruments have survived 300 years..


Nope, not what it said. Go back and read carefully. The point here was that a _likely_ trend would be that good instruments are preserved, maintained, kept up, and passed on down the generations more likely than poor instruments. People in general would be more likely to pay money to fix a good or well known instrument when it needs fixing than a crappy one. They would be more likely not to trash a good instrument than a crappy one when it needs fixing up. So over centuries, as a favorable selective trait, the better ones (and/or well known ones) are more likely to survive than the crappy ones as a reasonable generalization.

Doesnt mean some inferior instruments also didn't make it through the centuries. Some go along for the ride on the back of the brand name, others make it just because they are novel antiques, some others just get lucky.

But its reasonable to assume a favorable selection for the better instruments over time.

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## JeffD

> In pure science you don't lobby for a point of view you marshal the data to prove it. (of course in the real world scientists are still people and people have opinions -- but those opinions are not part of the proof).


No we agree. Its the people part.  :Smile:  I am always be skeptical when a scientific study finds exactly what is set out to find. 

"We set up a triple blind study across fourteen different scenarios and we found that I was right all along. (Not only that, but it proves that I am smart and handsome and you should pay me more.)"

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## JeffD

> Therefore the definition of a Stradivarius being the standard of violins is hollow and kind of meaningless?


Not so much hollow and meaningless, but as a standard they can be exceeded. That they may be a standard but they shouldn't be the criterion.

Or something like that.

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## Bernie Daniel

> No we agree. Its the people part.  I am always be skeptical when a scientific study finds exactly what is set out to find. 
> 
> "We set up a triple blind study across fourteen different scenarios and we found that I was right all along. (Not only that, but it proves that I am smart and handsome and you should pay me more.)"


Well of course it happens that now and then scientists are indeed right!   :Laughing: 

But like you suggest, there is no doubt that in some situations politics enters and mixes with "science" -- but it shouldn't.  Without a doubt in the 47 years since I first became practicing scientist this landscape has change significantly.

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## Ed Goist

> An interesting study reports that extremely expensive old violins aren't superior to new somewhat expensive violins. Might this apply to mandolins?
> ...snip...


Yes, without question. There is a price point for all instrument types above which qualitative differentiation in performance becomes non-existent. 

I would argue that all pricing above that point is driven exclusively by non-performance related market-driven factors.

I would also argue (quite controversially, I admit) that the "qualitative price ceiling" for the various types of stringed instruments (violin, guitar, double bass, mandolin) is much lower than most aficionados are willing to admit.

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Astro

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## Ivan Kelsall

From Astro - " What the study revealed is that many of us -including talented professional musicians- think we can discern more than we actually can". We already understand that. We don't need 'comparisons' &/or pseudo-science spanning decades to inform us that we're not 100% infallible in our judgements. The vast majority of us realise that our 'personal opinions' will be different from those of others,regardless of 'whoever' trots out the next article as to 'why' this that or the other. The ONLY thing that these 'studies' etc.will ever prove beyond any doubt,is that ''opinions differ'' - but as i said,we already know that,
                                                                                                                                                              Ivan

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## Astro

> From Astro - " What the study revealed is that many of us -including talented professional musicians- think we can discern more than we actually can". We already understand that. We don't need 'comparisons' &/or pseudo-science spanning decades to inform us that we're not 100% infallible in our judgements. The vast majority of us realise that our 'personal opinions' will be different from those of others,regardless of 'whoever' trots out the next article as to 'why' this that or the other. The ONLY thing that these 'studies' etc.will ever prove beyond any doubt,is that ''opinions differ'' - but as i said,we already know that,
>                                                                                                                                                               Ivan


Well if we already know everything, there certainly is no need for study.

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## Bertram Henze

> Well if we already know everything, there certainly is no need for study.


We know all the answers, yes. But the questions...  :Whistling:

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## Stephen Perry

Certainly one has to distinguish playing for a professional soloist from playing for other purposes, and distinguish a set of thoroughly vetted instruments suitable for those soloists.  One of the aspects sought by soloists is that they generally seek a combination of playability over long periods, great projection over a wide range of perceived volume levels, and the relatively easy capacity for tone color changes.

I'm not really sure listening tests are useful at all without a better focus on the test's usefulness.  A wide range of instruments old and new offer sufficient performance to do the job of classical soloist.  A good soloist may well sound about the same on various instruments, that being part of the job.  

I continue to have my early observation that violin adjusters and setup people hear different things in instruments than at least violin soloists.  

It's a difficult subject, made more so by the combination of psycho-acoustics and the desire to have or hear something interesting and old.

Of more use might be determining the characteristics that good violinists prefer in violins under $10,000.  That way makers would have a more focused and utilitarian target!  Certainly I would prefer to know that over what top level soloists prefer.

What do top level (not sure how to define) soloists play?  A survey to determine the characteristics and origins of violins that soloists earning over $100,000 / year play with results sortable by various mechanisms would be interesting, too.

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## Bernie Daniel

> Certainly one has to distinguish playing for a professional soloist from playing for other purposes, and distinguish a set of thoroughly vetted instruments suitable for those soloists.  One of the aspects sought by soloists is that they generally seek a combination of playability over long periods, great projection over a wide range of perceived volume levels, and the relatively easy capacity for tone color changes.


Yes agreed there is probably more to violin preference than a simple comparison one on one for a few minutes.  But is that really germane to the discussion or the goals of this experiment?  I would say probably not in my view.




> I'm not really sure listening tests are useful at all without a better focus on the test's usefulness.  A wide range of instruments old and new offer sufficient performance to do the job of classical soloist.  A good soloist may well sound about the same on various instruments, that being part of the job.


The *intended usefulness (or the intended purpose)* of the described double-blind test was to establish if a great violinist, deprived of the sense of sight, and thus only relying on the sense of hearing, could pick out the three centuries-old, Italian master's violins from the best modern violins.

The answer is clearly not they can not hear the difference at a better than chance frequency.  Indeed these violinists *thought* that they could hear a difference between the two violins -- but at least as often as not they preferred the sound of a modern violin.  

In addition, these violinists could not accurately or consistently pick that same violin in a repeat comparison test of the same two instruments -- that second statement I would suggest is indisputable evidence that great violins are preferred over great modern violins simply because the violinist knows that they old violins (because he/she can see them) and therefore they are *supposed* to sound better.  

Deprived of sight the best human ears (or those of the professional violinists in the study) cannot pick out these 1700's master maker's violins.




> Of more use might be determining the characteristics that good violinists prefer in violins under $10,000.  That way makers would have a more focused and utilitarian target!  Certainly I would prefer to know that over what top level soloists prefer.
> 
> What do top level (not sure how to define) soloists play?  A survey to determine the characteristics and origins of violins that soloists earning over $100,000 / year play with results sortable by various mechanisms would be interesting, too.


This topic was touched upon in the study and the violin seemingly most preferred under the conditions tested (I realize you are calling for more robust evaluation criteria) was a modern violin.

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DataNick

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## Stephen Perry

One of my points is that the hearing isn't necessarily the most important or even key criterion.  I know people like to think about that sound or this sound, but it's a difficult thing to categorize.  When a soloist falls in love with a fiddle it isn't because it makes a sound the public will prefer.  It's because it's a better tool for his or her particular needs, which likely includes liking to play it. 

Do the test with some good adjusters and specialists listening.  The success rate will rise dramatically.  They will like the old violins much better, because they can make more money with them.  

I'd still like to find out what the typical person with $7000 in hand wants to get.  Much more real-world useful!

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## Ivan Kelsall

From Astro - _''Well if we already know everything,I didn't say that we 'know everything'........ ''_ I never implied that we ''know everything'' - i said that we know that our 'opinions differ' & that we know that our perception of many things isn't in any way perfect ie. thinking that we are _more discerning_ than we are. Is that true or not ?. 
   What i can't really understand is this - are these 'reviewers' seeking to bring down the reputation of the Old Violins by asserting that new ones sound just as good,or,are they seeking to promote the sound qualities of the 'new ones' ?. Either way,i just don't see the point. Any musician,including us,will purchase what they themselves like,regardless of _any_ comparisons carried out by others. _My_ ears & _my_ hands are _my_ reference, despite what _others_ might think of any instrument i choose to buy & _their_ preferences,& i suggest that it's the same way for the vast majority of us. If somebody found a $100
Violin that sounded just like mega-buck Strad.,i'd bet that more Violinists (who could afford it) would opt.to buy the Strad. regardless,because after all,they are the 'best' - aren't they ?.At least we've been conditioned to think so,& it takes a lot of nerve
to go against peer pressure,
                                      Ivan :Wink:

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## jmagill

I once saw an interview on PBS with Itzhak Perlman (who plays a Stradivari) and Pinchas Zukerman (who plays a Guarnari). At one point, as they were discussing their instruments, they spoke of how each player's violin perfectly matched their playing styles, and to demonstrate, Zukerman played a passage on Perlman's Strad, then on his own instrument. Perlman did the same, playing a bit on the Guarnari, then his own Strad.  

When playing the other's instrument each player performed with characteristic skill, but when playing their own violin, the music was richer, more powerful, with greater expression and feeling. The difference was obvious, remarkable and something even an untrained ear could hear.

So, just to muddy the waters still further, in the study under discussion, the player is assumed to be a constant; that is, each player connects with each violin in the test the same way, and plays it in an identical fashion to maximize its characteristics, when in fact, the player's preferences and playing style, their 'bonding' with each violin, might have a significant effect on what a listener might hear, as well as the player's determination of whether a particular violin was a good match for them, i.e. they 'preferred' it over another.

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## Astro

I dont think there is an "intent" to this type study. At least I hope not. I don't think they are out to prove one thing or another. I think this type study is done to provide some insights for those interested in the subject matter. I don't think it was done to sell or discourage selling or effect pricing of instruments. I think it was done to explore the tone/playability interactions in a more objective manner. With all the energy, passion, and money that revolve around the fairly subjective perception of tone/playability interaction, I think the study did provide some insights that were outlined nicely in various posts above. 

Even if the study wasn't perfect, and none are, I think it conveys more useful information than the romanticized cliche's and musical folklore that we keep hearing... "it plays like butter; its bell like tone; notes jump off the strings; these are the best ever made because the wood was rare and floated down the Rhine for 3 days in the purified air of the 17th century which allowed a now extinct fungi to saturate the wood to just the perfect degree for unworldly tone". 

I think its a bit  of a convenient dismissal to say there is no use studying any of this because its all personal preference anyway. Sure you can always find some one out there that likes a dog and finds a way to make good music with it. But I'd rather pursue the instrument that 9 out of 10 professional musicians ranked highest in a double blind study than the one 9 out of 10 ranked as a dog. I dont have the time or means to play them all or the experience to pick it out in an hour. And surprisingly the study revealed that many of them dont either. Sometimes you get information you weren't even looking for in a study. 

But they sure were able to pick out the dog-- which happened to be a strad. And I learned from the study that just because its a strad, doesn't mean it plays or sounds heads above modern well made instruments. Thats new to me. I grew up hearing musicians state over and over that these were in rarified air and nothing made today was in the same class. So there is information in the study that is useful to some. The purpose wasn't to tell anyone what instrument any individual person would prefer. Its studying a cultural consensus. Always interesting to throw a little light on them from time to time.

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## Bernie Daniel

> One of my points is that the hearing isn't necessarily the most important or even key criterion.  I know people like to think about that sound or this sound, but it's a difficult thing to categorize.  When a soloist falls in love with a fiddle it isn't because it makes a sound the public will prefer.  It's because it's a better tool for his or her particular needs, which likely includes liking to play it. 
> 
> Do the test with some good adjusters and specialists listening.  The success rate will rise dramatically.  They will like the old violins much better, because they can make more money with them.  
> 
> I'd still like to find out what the typical person with $7000 in hand wants to get.  Much more real-world useful!


But Stephen the test was conducted on concert violinists.   Would there be more authoritative voices?  There might well be for all I know I'm just asking.   :Smile:

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## Bernie Daniel

> I dont think there is an "intent" to this type study. At least I hope not. I don't think they are out to prove one thing or another. I think this type study is done to provide some insights for those interested in the subject matter. I don't think it was done to sell or discourage selling or effect pricing of instruments. I think it was done to explore the tone/playability interactions in a more objective manner. With all the energy, passion, and money that revolve around the fairly subjective perception of tone/playability interaction, I think the study did provide some insights that were outlined nicely in various posts above. 
> 
> Even if the study wasn't perfect, and none are, I think it conveys more useful information than the romanticized cliche's and musical folklore that we keep hearing... "it plays like butter; its bell like tone; notes jump off the strings; these are the best ever made because the wood was rare and floated down the Rhine for 3 days in the purified air of the 17th century which allowed a now extinct fungi to saturate the wood to just the perfect degree for unworldly tone". 
> 
> I think its a bit  of a convenient dismissal to say there is no use studying any of this because its all personal preference anyway. Sure you can always find some one out there that likes a dog and finds a way to make good music with it. But I'd rather pursue the instrument that 9 out of 10 professional musicians ranked highest in a double blind study than the one 9 out of 10 ranked as a dog. I dont have the time or means to play them all or the experience to pick it out in an hour. And surprisingly the study revealed that many of them dont either. Sometimes you get information you weren't even looking for in a study. 
> 
> But they sure were able to pick out the dog-- which happened to be a strad. And I learned from the study that just because its a strad, doesn't mean it plays or sounds heads above modern well made instruments. Thats new to me. I grew up hearing musicians state over and over that these were in rarified air and nothing made today was in the same class. So there is information in the study that is useful to some. The purpose wasn't to tell anyone what instrument any individual person would prefer. Its studying a cultural consensus. Always interesting to throw a little light on them from time to time.


All good points.  And yes, "intent" may have been a poor choice of words. The *purpose* of the *experiment* was to *test the hypothesis*.

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DataNick

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## Bernie Daniel

> I once saw an interview on PBS with Itzhak Perlman (who plays a Stradivari) and Pinchas Zukerman (who plays a Guarnari). At one point, as they were discussing their instruments, they spoke of how each player's violin perfectly matched their playing styles, and to demonstrate, Zukerman played a passage on Perlman's Strad, then on his own instrument. Perlman did the same, playing a bit on the Guarnari, then his own Strad.  
> 
> When playing the other's instrument each player performed with characteristic skill, but when playing their own violin, the music was richer, more powerful, with greater expression and feeling. The difference was obvious, remarkable and something even an untrained ear could hear.
> 
> So, just to muddy the waters still further, in the study under discussion, the player is assumed to be a constant; that is, each player connects with each violin in the test the same way, and plays it in an identical fashion to maximize its characteristics, when in fact, the player's preferences and playing style, their 'bonding' with each violin, might have a significant effect on what a listener might hear, as well as the player's determination of whether a particular violin was a good match for them, i.e. they 'preferred' it over another.



Interesting story. Would have like to have seen that!!

The Perlman/Zuckerman thing was probably as much related to their own set up preference as much as anything?  

But of course set up is just another variable that has to be controlled.  But in the case of the double blind study discussed we cannot assume that all of the old violins were set up one way that the moderns another?

But here is another point more important Jim.

For you to *really be able to say* which violinist-violin combination you preferred you would have had to listen to them in some kind of random order and not know which violinist was playing  which violin.

You might have been *expecting* a better perfrormance from the match up of Perlman on the Strad and Zuckerman on the del Gesu and so when you *saw it* you believed it!

Deprived of your sense of sight (i.e., in this case a single blind study) would you have still been able to pick out the matches? 

Perhaps you believe you could, but until you actually do the test you don't know!   :Smile:

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## Stephen Perry

> But Stephen the test was conducted on concert violinists.   Would there be more authoritative voices?  There might well be for all I know I'm just asking.


The problem that most (not all) instrumentalists play music and listen to the music.  Specialist setup people listen to the instrument.  I have always gotten better information from the mechanics than the drivers.  So I consider them an equal or better source.  Listening to someone play is useful, but not definitive.  Listening to a player tell me about instruments isn't nearly as much fun as listening to a maker or adjuster talk about the same instruments.

Regardless, it's an interesting subject.

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Billgrass

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## Jeff Hildreth

"Nope, not what it said. Go back and read carefully."

I did.

"Seems common sense that any instrument passed down for 300 years is likely a good one. The bad ones were trashed long before as they weren't worth the effort of preserving and passing on."

Stephen Perry,

Thanks for the reply, it met my expectations.

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## Bernie Daniel

> The problem that most (not all) instrumentalists play music and listen to the music.  Specialist setup people listen to the instrument.  I have always gotten better information from the mechanics than the drivers.  So I consider them an equal or better source.  Listening to someone play is useful, but not definitive.  Listening to a player tell me about instruments isn't nearly as much fun as listening to a maker or adjuster talk about the same instruments.
> 
> Regardless, it's an interesting subject.


Thanks for the imfo.  Yes it is a subject that will be "pondered and debated' for at least a long time yet!  LOL.

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## ralph johansson

> The Paris test was conducted with noted _classical violin soloists_ comparing Golden Age (late 1600s to early 1700s) Cremona violins from Italy (Strads, Guarneris, etc.) to some of the very best violins of the modern era.  This was appropriate. _It was NOT done with fiddlers playing fiddles_!  I appreciate that you like bluegrass music (Hey, I do too!), but there are no bluegrass musicians out there who play million-dollar-plus Italian violins from Cremona.  Or can afford these. Furthermore, I'd wager you that there are few, if any, bluegrass musicians who play any of the top-end modern violins, either.  They use different instruments, and seek different characteristics! Most fiddles tend to be set up just a bit differently than violins, with different strings, different bridges, etc.  So why would you want to know if Mark O'Connor can tell the difference between a Stradivarius, say, and something by Joseph Curtin, when he has no real playing experience, or special expertise, with either of these instruments? Also, bluegrass fiddlers play into microphones on stage (or use pickups), and they do not rely on the acoustics of a concert hall to project over an orchestra. So the characteristics that make a Stradivarius (or whatever) desirable as a classical solo instrument are fundamentally distinct from what makes a fiddle a good one.  This is apples and oranges.  The test you propose would not measure anything of value.


"Bluegrass" is a very limiting label and Mark O'Connor is far from limited. He can play bluegrass, to be sure, but my impression from the various contexts he's played in is that the people around him matter more than any  preconceptions of "style" or "genre". His first gig as a touring musician was with the Grisman Quintet, to be followed by the Dixie Dregs, far from  Bluegrass.
In the Strength in Numbers project each of the ten tunes creates its own genre.  He's led his own jazz trio, he's composed works for orchestra, string quartet, etc., and performed on vioin in some of these. On his retrospective album from about 12 years ago only one tune comes from the Bluegrass repertoire. Etc. etc. etc. He's above all an improvising musician. Yes, it would be interesting to learn about his preferences, what he looks for in an instrument,  what (if anything) he perceives as superior in more expensive or older instruments, etc.

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## Ivan Kelsall

From Jim Magill - _".....the player is assumed to be a constant; that is, each player connects with each violin in the test the same way,...''_. I agree Jim,& it was a point i almost brought up myself - however !. Personally,i think that most of the very finest Violinists will have a teqhnique that they do use to a ''very'' consistant level & should be able to play one Violin very much like another providing that the set up is very similar. I do agree that performers will perform at their best when playing their own instruments,as it should be.
   I still wonder about any requirement other than pure curiosity for any of these comparisons to be carried out. Ultimately it's all about 'opinions' & unless there is an as yet undiscovered 'ultimate' bottom line,_all_ (sensible) opinions are valid !,
                                                                                                                                                        Ivan

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## Bertram Henze

> Personally,i think that most of the very finest Violinists will have a teqhnique that they do use to a ''very'' consistant level & should be able to play one Violin very much like another providing that the set up is very similar.


I agree, from personal experience - even as a complete failure in learning to play the violin, I played all violins consistently bad  :Grin: 
But seriously, that comes with a consistent attitude. And I guess if the player does not like the instrument given to him as much as he likes another, he will involuntarily treat them differently. Therefore, for this test, the players should be blind as well.

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## Bernie Daniel

> I agree, from personal experience - even as a complete failure in learning to play the violin, I played all violins consistently bad 
> But seriously, that comes with a consistent attitude. And I guess if the player does not like the instrument given to him as much as he likes another, he will involuntarily treat them differently. Therefore, for this test, the players should be blind as well.


Yes, that is the beauty of the double blind experiment!  Neither the violinist or the listener (judges) were "encumbered" by the "debilitating" sense of sight!  :Laughing: 

This is, after all a question of sound, so the sense of hearing should be given the highest place a the "sensory table"!!!  :Smile:

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## Bertram Henze

> This is, after all a question of sound, so the sense of hearing should be given the highest place a the "sensory table"!!!


There exists a palate version of this already.
I picture this like "oooh this is a tasty mushroom!" "will you let go of my ear please!"

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## Bernie Daniel

> There exists a palate version of this already.
> I picture this like "oooh this is a tasty mushroom!" "will you let go of my ear please!"


I'd like to try that I think! 

(albeit not the Mike Tyson ear lobe part.)

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## Hudmister

> There exists a palate version of this already.
> I picture this like "oooh this is a tasty mushroom!" "will you let go of my ear please!"


"I'm sorry lady, I thought it was a grape fruit I was grabbing."

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Bertram Henze

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## Stephen Perry

I was once trying out my guitar on stage at a workshop / event thing.  A bunch of people came in, some carrying guitar cases and some not.  The cases and one fellow ended up by me and everyone else went to the top of the small concert hall.  I got handed a series of rather nice guitars, and sometimes instructions from the listeners, who talked very much about details of the sound and the what and why of what was happening.  The most noisy instruments in my hands gave the least bounce off the walls and were dismissed with.  The very most crisp and sweet sounding in my hands I could hear bouncing off the room well and got the most complements.  It was very interesting.  The listeners consisted of pretty high level makers and players, including the performers at the event.  Learned a lot.  Under my ear isn't the way to evaluate.  On the other hand, the fun to play and sweet smile-making instruments had a lot to offer to an audience too!

Keep in mind that maybe 50?  more or less old Cremonese instruments rotate among top-level soloists.  So there are probably 400 or more nice old Cremonese violins that do not rotate among top soloists and are probably, for the most part, very nice instruments that do not give the top-level performers what they want.  The biggest error most people make in thinking about violins especially is that branding type thing, where brand X is stated as 123 and brand Y is presented at 456, but where there's great and inherent variability in the production of both brands.  Looking at it another way, that Timonski and Putowski play mandolins from Farmboyski and perform miracles doesn't meant that every Farmboyski mandolin is up to that level or that players not of Timonski or Putowski will be able to use the inherent characteristics of the Farmboyski instruments to their advantage.  Farmboyskis might be inherently touchy to play and have lots of weirdness to play around, but that with great care and understanding some of them may give a particular performer something that they've been dreaming of since they were puppies at Julliard. 

On a personal level, I have played some high-performance instruments including some of those old Cremonese violins that were way out of my real ability to do anything with.  Some are nice and not too demanding, like a top-end civilian sports car, one of those where fun happens only when you're into the aggravated reckless driving domain in this country.  I've also played some like those early turbo Carrera's where a delicate touch and understanding of turbo lag was required to avoid popping the front end up 3 feet on upshifts.

With that as a backdrop, I'm going to read the Paris study and make some comments.  My background is that I've been a musician from the time I was 7, a decent enough one, trained in piano, classical guitar, viola da gamba, dabbling in early winds, organ, bowed strings, and the like.  I've built a goodly number of violins.  I've done extensive listening to recorded music, with piano deciding who does best with what composer and with violin on which violins I like and think others will like (I end up in my own tests liking long pattern strads and andrea amati - not what I expected).

Before looking at the Paris study, skim this, which is more in line with really evaluating an instrument: http://www.darntonviolins.com/violin...andingTone.pdf

So on to the Paris study:

"Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu are tonally superior to other violinsand to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated"

I would have put inherent tone far down the list.  Tone quality that can be varied on demand seems more important, although some violins are "darker" and so on.  I hadn't considered that there might be an "Old Italian" tone in general.  But I don't know what these people mean by "tone."

"We asked 21 experienced violinists to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu with high-quality new instruments."  

I didn't see who these people were.  The "myth" or whatever comes from the use of that limited set of 50 fiddles by the limited set of top soloists.  I might point out that a great soloist violin might not do well in the second violins.  One of my clients bought one of the best soloist instruments I've owned, and later had me sell it for her because it was too loud and projecting with too little effort, so she tended to annoy the other folks in the violin section and presumably the first violinist had a word or two.  Lovely instrument probably French.  Loved it, but could only have one good violin and downgraded to a top-end modern European that blended well.  Different strokes.  Paris might be taking the apple myth and using oranges and orange players to evaluate it.

"Almost all well-known violin soloists since the early 1800s have chosen to play instruments by Antonio Stradivari or Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu, the two most celebrated craftsmen of the so-called Golden Age of violin-making (ca. 1550 to ca. 1750)."

I will replace "craftsmen" with "masters of successful production shops."  Without going into why, there's no reason to think either of these fellows did all their work, or even most of it, themselves.  They ran shops.  They weren't solo craftsmen.  So we're looking at brands.

"A long-standing goal of violin research has been to correlate the playing qualities of these instruments with specific attributes of their physical structure and dynamic behavior,"

Hey, the research started out one tonal characteristics, which are independent.  Tone can be measured with a hammer, playing characteristics are something else.  This really has me questioning what these people are up to.

" and yet no [objectively measurable] specification which successfully defines even coarse divisions in instrument quality is known (author's italics)"

Well, that's not true, but the measures used are not dealing with tonal quality.  This is a fairly unfocused and non-crisp paper.

"Many factors have been proposed and/or investigated to account for the presumed tonal superiority of old Italian violins, including properties of the varnish"

Let's replace this with "finishing system."  I personally suspect this is a factor that is important, primarily the ground/sealer/primer/wood treatment level

"effects of the Little Ice Age on violin wood"

This is too easy to debunk - I imagine with a couple of hours of telephone work I can have a half dozen sets of early 18th C violin wood here.  Micro-environment is more of a good way to think about generating wood quality.

"differences in the relative densities of early- and late-growth layers in wood"

This one is quite interesting, and ties to some other nifty work.  Can't see it being sole cause, if there is an effect, but is really worth looking into further in a systematic way.

"chemical treatments of the wood"

Likewise, but simply "treatments" is more likely.  I do treatment myself.

"plate-tuning methods"

Well, in general this is a bit vague.  Tuning to do what?  I suspect we'll continue to see this.  An issue is that one can do relative tuning absolute tuning, tuning as a goal, tuning as an indicator for consistency, and probably 1000 other things.  I'm not even sure what it means any more.

"and the spectral balance of the radiated sound"

Clearly an important thing, but something very important lies beyond what we can measure and present at this point.

----------

Bernie Daniel, 

PseudoCelt

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## Stephen Perry

"However, although correlations between violin acoustics and perception have been attempted (12), the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated."

And I would say that this study doesn't really focus itself well enough to do much, other than the "I like" versus "I like less" from unknown violinists.

"Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu may well be the greatest violin makers ever, but it takes an expert opinion based on visual and historical (rather than tonal) evidence to say whether a particular example is genuine. Playing and listening tests never enter the authentication process, suggesting the difficulty of reliably rating playing qualities—and that they may not correlate well with an instrument's age and maker."

And no credible system is proposed here.  Just the "I like this better" test under artificial conditions.

"Weinreich (1) argues that any experienced player can classify a violin as a “student,” “decent professional,” or “fine solo” instrument; furthermore, “the judgment would not take more than about 30 s, and the opinions of different violinists would coincide absolutely.”"

Add good makers and adjusters. This is really easy.  I think anyone could go into this.

"According to Langhoff (13), “any musician will tell you immediately whether an instrument he is playing on is an antique instrument or a modern one.”"

That I find hard to swallow.

The wine tasting stuff is fun to consider.  Psychoflavor and psychoacoustics have much in common.  I've taken people's advise and raised prices on some things - I sell less, but make more.  Pretty amazing.  Let's digress.  My dad gets wine.  We drink it with dinner or sometimes otherwise, and sometimes we talk about it.  We never mention price and I don't know the price.  My dad doesn't care, he's not a self-proclaimed expert or anything, but all of us can taste.  If you want a description of a scotch I'll give one and it will match published ones well.  None of this is rocket science or fiddlemaking.  Sometimes there's a killer bottle of wine, and we'll run down to get a case.  It's always gone, all of it.  The bad wine hangs around at Aldi.  Fiddles and all these other things work that way, too, until that psycho-acoustics thing comes in, and it's clearly evident in this study.  The participants know there are some cool boxes in the mix, and they're trying hard to distinguish.  I know with wine and instruments that this distorts things for me and really makes the experience much less fun and useful, and I'm likely to have a very different opinion later after I get familiar with things.


OK.  On to the study.  Near as I can tell, maybe the 1700 Stradivari has a name and might be among the top 100 old Italians.  None of the players seem to be soloists of international reputation.  So we're outside of the source of the myth.  I see the study failing there.  

" Most violinists prefer to try out violins in a room with relatively dry acoustics, where the direct sound from the instrument is not so much colored by room reflections. Sessions were therefore conducted in a hotel room whose acoustics seemed well-suited to the task. We are aware that room acoustics may influence a player's preference for one instrument or another. However, that is a separate question not covered in this study."

Let's see, we have maybe 50 violins which give rise to a myth of superiority of all old Italian instruments based upon their performance in concert halls full of people and reflections (including intentional from stage set design) when played by top-level folks who need to stand out over an orchestra.  Many comments indicate that sweet and nice sounding instruments can project like mad, and loud and abrasive instruments under the ear may or may not be projecting.  So this test doesn't actually test the source of the myth or truth about those soloist violins.  I like to test a violin outside (dry as one can get) and then walk into a balanced and very quiet hall (I used to use our church).  The room is part of the instrument!!  Play a pipe organ for a while.  

"This study explores player preferences under two sets of conditions. One set, designed to maximize ecological validity, emulated the way players choose instruments at a violin shop, where they typically try a selection of instruments before selecting one to take home for further testing. All six test instruments were laid out in random order on the bed. Subjects were then given 20 min to choose (i) the single instrument they would “most like to take home with them” and (ii) the instruments they considered “best” and “worst” in each of four categories: range of tone colors, projection, playability, and response. These terms, all commonly used by players when evaluating instruments, were left undefined. If a term lacked clear meaning for a subject, he/she was told not to choose in that category. Although projection can, by definition, be judged only at a distance by a listener, players regularly estimate projection when testing a violin. They typically acknowledge (as did many of our subjects) the provisional nature of such estimates and the need to retest in a large hall with trusted listeners. Note, however, that our experiment was designed to test not the objective qualities of the instruments but rather the subjective preferences of the subjects under a specific set of conditions."

This is pretty fair, but do keep in mind that really hot soloist instruments are regularly rejected by teachers and students - it's pretty standard with a stuck up teacher and entitled student to hand them something really really good and watch it get rejected.  I tend to think the smartest thing to do is to talk to a person who sees lots of fiddles and them to help.  When I had a bunch and lots of visitors I could usually tell what fiddle wanted the player very quickly, but it would take an hour for the player to get there.  I was usually right about what they'd take home.

Given the testing conditions, I wouldn't expect most to take soloist instruments home - I'd expect the best top-end orchestral instruments with relatively easy playing characteristics and appropriate range of tone and dynamics to make the top list.

"Our second set of test conditions, designed with the statements of Weinreich and Langhoff in mind, asked subjects to assess instruments rather quickly. Each subject was presented with a series of 10 pairs of violins. For each pair, subjects were given 1 min to play whatever they liked on the first violin, then another minute for the second violin, without switching back and forth between them. The minute began with the first played note, including any tuning, and ended with the ringing of a bell. Subjects were then asked to state which violin they preferred. Unbeknownst to them, each pair consisted of a new and an old violin."

This is really a stretch - very few people who do not routinely grade anything can make a cognizant choice.  Now take a good violin dealer and a row of violins, ask him to rank their performance and order the instruments without playing them, only by plucking and you'll see a ranking pretty fast.  Get another dealer and he'll rank about the same.  These are people who are used to distinguishing instruments.  Players aren't used to distinguishing instruments.

I'd rather see some top folks in the industry who deal in fiddles and work on them go to B&F in Chicago, be blindfolded, and have them pluck or play or whatever 40 violins and rank them.  We'd really have some interesting data then.  As it stands, this study is pretty much useless because of the nature of the testers, the limited number of violins, the test of generic "old" v. "new" rather than the top end stuff - which is where the myth arises, and the conditions, which simply do not reflect the reason why top soloists choose from among a narrow set of violins.  

Personally, I would prefer that new and old be equal.  On the other hand, I've heard top soloists play top violins that I recognize by sound and projection, and they do get something I don't hear elsewhere.   I don't have the opportunity to swap out fiddles with them and see how they all do, but that is likely what it takes.  

As to my work, I don't want to make a pile of soloist violins.  The buying population at my price point wants sweet, clear, easy to play violins with a reasonable range of tone color and dynamics.  Lay into a fiddle hard and it's loud enough for most uses whether or not it's soloist level.  I'd rather have one that will whisper sweetly with relative ease than one which will project over an orchestra.

For example, I heard a Nicolo Amati get eaten alive by an orchestra, a small one at that.  But in the unaccompanied solo parts, the instrument carried so beautifully with an incredible round tone.  Loverly.

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JFDilmando, 

PseudoCelt

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## FLATROCK HILL

Now we a double blind study to compare the tone changes achieved through the MandoVoodoo process, implemented both before and after Stephen types 20.000 words. :Smile:

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SincereCorgi

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## JFDilmando

With a nod to the recounting of Pearlman swapping violins and demonstrating how one great instrument will sound different with different players.... This was demonstrated at one of the early "Loarfests" / gatherings, where some five or so pro players were on stage each with their Loars.... They swapped them around and demonstrated the different sounds from one player to the next with different instruments.....it was broadly noted that each sounded good, with each respected Loar, but every player sounded "best" with their own....

They all had grown to know how to "drive" their own instrument and could bring out the best in that instrument given that knowledge of what it required.....

Handing any instrument to another and asking them how they like it only goes so far inunderstandinf how it might sound in someone else's hands....and even the greats can only get to know and bring out the best in an instrument after living with it and understanding what it needs..... Those that simplify this entire subject into these kind of choice tests, I believe are generally those that don't quite get it.

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## Bernie Daniel

> With a nod to the recounting of Pearlman swapping violins and demonstrating how one great instrument will sound different with different players.... This was demonstrated at one of the early "Loarfests" / gatherings, where some five or so pro players were on stage each with their Loars.... They swapped them around and demonstrated the different sounds from one player to the next with different instruments.....it was broadly noted that each sounded good, with each respected Loar, but every player sounded "best" with their own....
> 
> They all had grown to know how to "drive" their own instrument and could bring out the best in that instrument given that knowledge of what it required.....
> 
> Handing any instrument to another and asking them how they like it only goes so far inunderstandinf how it might sound in someone else's hands....and even the greats can only get to know and bring out the best in an instrument after living with it and understanding what it needs..... Those that simplify this entire subject into these kind of choice tests, I believe are generally those that don't quite get it.


Again not to be overly argumentative or in any way disrespectful, but I don't think that *proves* anything really -- you are giving an anecdotal description that describes your perception of the different mandolin-mandolinist combinations you heard that day.  

Saying that others don't get it also is not proof -- rather it is yet another opinion.  Nothing wrong with opinions as long as they are recognized as such.

It is entirely possible (maybe likely?) that the reason mandolinist A sounds best to you when playing his own mandolin and mandolinist B best on his is because you *know* that they are playing their own instrument and you happen to* believe* that will be the best tonal combination.  

The only way you can be sure that you (or the other listeners) are not just responding to your own internal, preconceived, subliminal bias is to hear the various combinations of mandolinists and mandolins played while you are blindfolded or looking the other direction so you do not know what mandolinist is playing what mandolin.  :Smile: 

Said another way picking out something you already know to be true is not really the same as picking it out in the blind.

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Astro

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## Ivan Kelsall

From Bertram - _"....I played all violins consistently bad"_. It's a well know fact that the easiest instrument in the world to play,is a Violin played badly - so at least you've been a resounding success at failure,whereas,i'm simply failing to be a resounding success !, :Grin: 
    Bernie - I agree with your post above. In a blind listening test,_none_ of the instruments should be 'named'. The mere mention of a Strad.Guarneri Lloyd Loar etc. will give the listeners pre-concieved ideas about what they're listening for. Neither should the performers be named either,for similar reasons. Any such test has to be totally 'blind'. All that happens is that the listeners write down their personal preferences re.'which instrument' sounded the best 'to them'. At the end of the test,we have is a list of preferences which _may_ show that one instrument was preferred by many of the listeners,or,that _none_ of the instruments was preferred any more than any of the others. Organise _another_ group of listeners & the results might be turned on their heads, & so on for every listening group that comes along.
    The bottom line is that we're talking about opinions here,not hard facts,regardless of who,what,when,where etc.,& as long as opinions exist,so will these ultimately meaningless comparisons be made (my opinion). As i said in my previous post - _all sensible opinions are valid_,
                                                                                                                                                                        Ivan :Chicken:

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## Astro

The study reported on opinions. The results of the study are facts. (Those musicians did pick those instruments). No conclusions are necessary from the study. The findings stand on their own. If someone draws a conclusion from it, that is their opinion. The predicted validity of anyones conclusion is limited by the significance of the test number, which in this study is small. I did not see any p values. Probably because it didnt try to make conclusions. (At least I dont recall seeing that but I'm not going back to look).

 The interesting findings of this limited study are:  1) Not all strads are preferred instruments. At least one was less than impressive to the majority of the test group of professional musicians  2) A significant % of the test group of professional musicians cant pick a strad out the crowd by hearing and playing it  3) A significant % of test group preferred modern instruments over strads 4) A significant % of test group musicians were inconsistent in choosing their preferred instrument. 

The study did not "try to simplify the entire subject into this kind of test". It had very limited test parameters. And I havent read any ones post above that tried to simplify the entire question (whatever that means) by this test. Of course the number of test musicians was small and all findings are limited to the test group. Any other conclusions or generalizations made by anyone are only as valid as the test number predicts. 

There is important information to glean from a study for some of us. If its not for you, no worries. But just because someone cant use the information, doesnt mean the info was invalid or that the study was useless. The study did not try to address all the other points some posters have thrown out there like which instruments might match with who or what is the best instrument for a specific type music or environment ect. or even what is the best instrument. These are all interesting points and questions, just not relevant to this study. 

I think the disagreements over this topic on the thread may arise from some assuming that  sweeping generalizations are being made from a very limited study. That is always a danger when a study hits the public but I didnt see anyone over reaching the significance of the study here. Maybe some were but I dont recall it. I just remember folks reacting to assume people were overreaching. Im not going back to look.

Of course a world class musician will play thousands of great instruments over their career and gravitate to the ones they feel they play best. Then they will practice on it thousands of hours. Its understandable they may sound better on their instrument than another and pick it out over another even if the other instrument was equally good or better for another musician. But that has nothing to do with this test.

In short, we simply disagree on who is missing the point.

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JFDilmando

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## Stephen Perry

My issue with the study is that it didn't even attempt to do what it set out to do:

"Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri “del Gesu” are tonally superior to other violins—and to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated"

I am expecting a study that concerns tone.  This one didn't.  Didn't even break up tone into how one might consider it, and didn't involve the use of trained listeners of instruments.  For a tone evaluation, see my Darnton link above.

"Playing and listening tests never enter the authentication process, suggesting the difficulty of reliably rating playing qualities—and that they may not correlate well with an instrument's age and maker."

This is conclusory in that it assumes that reliably rating playing qualities and sound qualities are difficult.  Well, making a violin is difficult, but people do that all the time, and people talk about playing and sound qualities successfully.  I have a fellow I can call and ask about getting a vintage instrument that has a dead neutral tone, easy to play, not too much sizzle, quick enough response, sounds good under the ear, doesn't need to project, etc.  That instrument will arrive.  We know what general kind of thing we're talking about in terms of sound and playability.  I have absolutely no doubt that those top workers who deal with the top end instruments can evaluate and talk about them in detailed terms.  That this doesn't form part of the evaluation process for authenticity doesn't seem relevant to the issues considered.  Kind of a "these are sound making machines, we should look at the sound, nobody else does."  Which is nonsense.  When a nice valuable instrument arrives and doesn't sound as it should a good deal of work will go into it making it hit at the very least a minimum envelope.  The study seems to be misdirecting the reader.

The test itself involved unknown players examining unknown instruments under highly artificial conditions representing the first level of screening violins for players who do not normally do this kind of thing and who on average probably have less experience at selecting the most effectively performing instruments out of a group.  Take any 50 dealers and get them to do a ranking, as I mentioned above, and I imagine they'll be a different and interesting result.  

This highly limited and artificial taste test did nothing at all to address the overall performance of violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu relative to overall top modern violins in the real world, and comes to much much more limited and almost useless conclusions.

That's my problem.

Now take a random selection of 50 or 100 old Cremonese violins and a random selection of modern violins selling for over $100,000, put them in a room with 50 top-level violinists (first violinists, minor to major soloists), give them a couple of days and a mid size hall to play with.  See what happens.  Even if they know what they're playing, I imagine they'll be a good deal of "I really want to want the 1704 Stradivari, but it's a pain in the rear for what I do, even if it is lovely - I'd have to say the Farmboyski is a more effective tool."

With that test, I want rankings and numbers by these folks on many criteria such as presented by Darnton.  For good measure, throw Darnton and Burgess etc in there, too.  See how builders evaluate as compared to top level players.

Does show that when one breaks into the fiddle shop, it's best to know which ones you're going to take ahead of time.  Plucking a string on each isn't going to be of much use in effective screening!

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## Astro

_Re: "My issue with the study is that it didn't even attempt to do what it set out to do:

"Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri “del Gesu” are tonally superior to other violins—and to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated"_



Stephen, I might be wrong , but I dont think that was a quote from the study. I think that is a presumption/ editorial opinion by the writers of the entertainment piece on the study.


Yes the sample size was way too small to qualify this for a definitive study on tone or the best violins. I doubt they thought it was going to be a definitive study on anything but if they did, i agree it couldnt be. And I dont see the actual "study" -just an entertainment review. So who knows.

But definitive studies are rare and difficult. Insights are usually gleaned through baby steps instead. I take it as a baby step whose results ask important further questions.

Meanwhile I will no longer assume a strad is "better" than a nice modern instrument. Maybe, maybe not. And I will no longer assume that an experienced professional who thinks they "know tone" can reliably tell one good instrument from another. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe sometimes. 

?

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## OldSausage

> Stephen, I might be wrong , but I dont think that was a quote from the study. I think that is a presumption/ editorial opinion by the writers of the entertainment piece on the study.
> ?


That is how the text of the study begins - the full text of it can be found here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760.full

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Astro

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## Bernie Daniel

> The study reported on opinions. The results of the study are facts. (Those musicians did pick those instruments). No conclusions are necessary from the study. The findings stand on their own. If someone draws a conclusion from it, that is their opinion. The predicted validity of anyones conclusion is limited by the significance of the test number, which in this study is small. I did not see any p values. Probably because it didnt try to make conclusions. (At least I dont recall seeing that but I'm not going back to look).
> 
>  The interesting findings of this limited study are:  1) Not all strads are preferred instruments. At least one was less than impressive to the majority of the test group of professional musicians  2) A significant % of the test group of professional musicians cant pick a strad out the crowd by hearing and playing it  3) A significant % of test group preferred modern instruments over strads 4) A significant % of test group musicians were inconsistent in choosing their preferred instrument. 
> 
> The study did not "try to simplify the entire subject into this kind of test". It had very limited test parameters. And I havent read any ones post above that tried to simplify the entire question (whatever that means) by this test. Of course the number of test musicians was small and all findings are limited to the test group. Any other conclusions or generalizations made by anyone are only as valid as the test number predicts. 
> 
> There is important information to glean from a study for some of us. If its not for you, no worries. But just because someone cant use the information, doesnt mean the info was invalid or that the study was useless. The study did not try to address all the other points some posters have thrown out there like which instruments might match with who or what is the best instrument for a specific type music or environment ect. or even what is the best instrument. These are all interesting points and questions, just not relevant to this study. 
> 
> I think the disagreements over this topic on the thread may arise from some assuming that  sweeping generalizations are being made from a very limited study. That is always a danger when a study hits the public but I didnt see anyone over reaching the significance of the study here. Maybe some were but I dont recall it. I just remember folks reacting to assume people were overreaching. Im not going back to look.
> ...


Missing the point is often a case of not agreeing on what the point is or was in the first place?

I agree even this relatively large and very well designed experiment (you don't publish in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a willy nilly) is only a small part of the story on how individuals can (or can not) distinguish the sounds of a violin.  

As Stephen points out there are other faucets that play a role in how a particular violinist's appreciation of a particular violin is formed.   Some of these parameters may not be evaluated in the "Paris study".  So the study is not the be all and end all.

What the Paris study does *prove with a known degree of confidence* (not sure there were p-values given but the levels of confidence were stated in some fashion as I recall) is that most of the time, in the absence of visual clues, even trained professional violinists can not consistently pick out the sound of an ancient Italian master's violin from that of a great modern instrument. 

This means the modern violins are so close in sound to the classics that only visual inspection can be relied upon to identify them unambiguously.  

So, until shown otherwise (by demonstration) I am assuming that *no human can do identify a classical violin from a great modern violin on the basis of sound alone*.  Yes, that is an assumption (or opinion) because I concede that  *there might actually be such a person(s)*.  But so far they have not come forward to prove their skills.

I choose by common sense and logic to suggest that this same situation would hold for mandolins as well. 

Therefore, until proven otherwise (by a double blind demonstration ) I choose to believe that no person can pick out, on the basis of sound alone, a Gibson-signed Loar from a great modern (last 30 years) mandolin.  

If someone thinks they can then let's set up the double blind test and let them prove it to everyone.  If they can do it I salute that person (those persons?) --  in advance!  :Smile: 

I think this idea would extend to those claiming to be able the hear the difference in lacquer versus vanish finish, or Sitka versus red spruce tops, or hide versus aliphatic glue as well or a dozen other subtle changes on a mandolin that supposedly influence the tone/projection/"sound".  

That is my view and I will stick to it until it is proven otherwise -- adamant claims, not matter how often or eloquently stated,  are not proof BTW

----------

Astro, 

DataNick

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## outsidenote

I read the study quite carefully.  The study is well done, but like all studies it has some limitations which limit how one can interpet and generalize the findings.  Clearly the  6 violins were approximately equally "liked" except for 2 of the six (3 new and 3 old) tested.  The most "liked" was a new one and the least liked was one of the Strads.  These two stuck out in a postive and negative way.  One cannot generalize the result to all new or old  violins.  It would not be appropriate to say that (based on this study) any Strad beats any brand new violin.   Nor would it be appropriate to say (based on this study) that all good new violins are as good or better than any Strad.  Nor would it be right to say (based on this study) that nobody can tell the difference.  It would be reasonable, however to conclude that some modern violins may be preferred by many experienced musicians over some Strads when judged blindly.

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Astro

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## Astro

> That is how the text of the study begins - the full text of it can be found here:
> 
> http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760.full


Well there you go. Stephen is right the study begins that way. But when read in context, reads to me to be taken as background information rather than something the study claims to definitively prove. 

I understand that not everyone will see any practical or relatable information from these findings.

But I know some of us do. And I guess such is the way with most any study, or forum post.

Sometime the learning and the entertainment comes from the arguments. If we're lucky.

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## farmerjones

OK, it stated the price range, but did anyone find if anybody picked the absolute lowest priced? $1800 unit that held it's own with old masters? Or was that the Red herring effect? To push the subject toward the "center."  Will we ever know?

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## OldSausage

> OK, it stated the price range, but did anyone find if anybody picked the absolute lowest priced? $1800 unit that held it's own with old masters? Or was that the Red herring effect? To push the subject toward the "center."  Will we ever know?


That price range referred to the violins owned by the participants (subjects) in the study, not necessarily the instruments they used in the study. All they said was the combined value of the old violins was $10 million, and the combined value of the new instruments was 100 times less, so that would be an average value for the newer violins in the region of $30,000 each.

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farmerjones

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## re simmers

I would be curious to know the opinions of the fiddlers if they were playing with other musicians, like a symphony or a 5 piece bluegrass band.....at a domed theater/concert hall.      

Another point is that a lot of us have purchased instruments based on our 1 hour experience in the 'sound room' of a music store.    Then a month or 2 later realize we made a mistake.    

(I did not read all of the replies, so I'm sorry if this has already been said)

Bob

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Astro

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## red7flag

This is a fascinating thread.  It reminds me of Tony Rice and David Grisman in "Tone Poems" playing a variety of outstanding instruments that you would expect to sound very different.  Now, I do not have the best ear, but each of the guitars sounded like Tony Rice and all the mandolins sounded like David Grisman.  I know this is a shallow evaluation, but that was my take.  Another experience.  A friend invited Robert Bowlin, renowned Nashville guitarist, to a picking party at my house.  At the end of the session, he was kind enough to play a number of fine guitars that different people brought to the session.  Among those was a $25,000 prewar D28.  My friends daughter asked Robert to play a $100.00 Epiphone guitar.  I played the guitar.  This instrument was unexceptional in most regards.  In Robert's hands, this instrument sounded like a pre-war Martin.  I can say one judgement with surety, the Epiphone with Robert playing it sounded better than the pre-war Martin in my hands.

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## sblock

I, too, have read the two papers published in PNAS by Claudia Fritz, Joseph Curtin, and colleagues in detail.  I have also attended a wonderful lecture at Stanford University given by master luthier Joseph Curtin. Let me address just a few of of the problems that I see with some of the discussions I've been reading here on the MC.  I've read an awful lot of cheap pot-shots in this thread and a couple of others, and some of these lack any basis in science.

1) First, the finding in the Paris study that the soloists chosen for these tests cannot tell the sound of a high-end modern instrument from a Golden Age Cremona violin (by Stradivarius, Guarneri del Gesu, etc.) at any level greater than chance _does_ have statistical significance. Put another way, this is a scientific _finding_, and not a matter of opinion, even if it's based on wholly subjective evaluations to generate the data ("I like this one better than that one.") The "domain of validity" of this finding applies to the particular soloists who participated, and to the particular set of violins they tested, and to the particular protocol of blind testing with their players' own bows in the particular hall they used, and so on. How could it be otherwise?  The same thing can basically be said of any scientific test, irrespective of the scale of the sample.

2) Alas, some folks don't seem to understand the critical importance of _blind testing_ to doing good science. Blind testing is essential to control for other (unwanted) effects, including especially any bias (either conscious or unconscious) of the tester, who _should not know_ whether the sound he/she is hearing is coming from a Golden Age violin or a modern one. Some of you, and Mr. Perry especially, have proposed a series of "alternative" (but entirely non-blinded) tests that, in my opinion, constitute poor science, in the sense that these completely fail to control for several very obvious forms of bias.  Also, such tests are insufficiently well focused to provide useful answers, and therefore nonscientific. Reliable conclusions simply cannot be drawn from them, even in principle.

3) Part of doing good science is to _focus the question_ in a way that an answer can actually be obtained by testing. Of course, focusing the question narrows the _domain of validity_ of any conclusions at the same time, but it sharpens the discussion and makes it possible to actually come up with some answers in the end. To take a trivial example we can all understand:  It is simply not meaningful to ask whether one violin is better than another!  Better in what way?  Better in whose opinion?  What do you even mean by "better"?  Clearly, this type of question falls apart upon close inspection. Is _is_ meaningful, on the other hand, to ask if a given expert, under a given set of experimental conditions, can reproducibly and reliably distinguish the sound of one thing from another.  Now _that_ is something you can actually measure, and there's a clearly defined _metric_ to use.  We're left, of course, to discuss and agree upon an appropriate set of experimental conditions: one that will be most conducive to obtaining reliablity and reproducibility (see below). As second failure of Mr. Perry's alternatives is that these lack focused questions with proper metrics. It will not do to criticize this work by suggesting other tests that lack scientific rigor.

4) Because a properly focused question can usually be answered with a well-designed experiment, one can often arrive a result that has statistical significance, given a large enough sample. The answer you obtain will apply to the sample and to its "domain of validity", as just discussed. But does the answer _generalize_ to any larger domain?  Ah well, now _that_ is a matter for discussion!  For example, it is perfectly OK to ask if the 10 soloists whom they selected to participate are truly great violin players or hacks.  The paper says: "In the end, 10 soloists were invited, along with an eleventh who participated in the final session only. Ranging in age from 20 to 62, their combined awards included Avery Fisher career grants (2) and first prizes in the Tchaikovsky (2), Sibelius (1), Paganini (1), and Long-Thibaud (3) competitions, along with many other lesser awards, including a silver medal at the Queen Elizabeth Competition."  You may form you own opinion about whether these individuals are well qualified. Mr. Perry suggests that a group of lesser violinists, or some violinists who typically play in secondary positions in orchestral settings, as opposed to soloists, may have some very different ideas about what constitutes a great violin that they'd prefer to play.  That may be perfectly true, but it's also _irrelevant_ to main conclusion of the Paris study, which asked (among other questions) whether they could tell old and new violins apart, and _not only_ just whether they "liked" the violin or whether its characteristics were optimized for their playing.  But hey, if these top soloists can't even tell the difference in sound, I fear that the rest of us mere mortals don't stand much of a chance, despite anything Mr. Perry asserts, based entirely on his anecdotal experience.  Writing for myself, I remain skeptical: I very seriously doubt that any orchestral or ensemble players, or violin dealers, or luthiers, or even Mr. Perry himself could do any better job than these particular top soloists. Of course, I could be wrong about that, because we're speculating here about things that lie completely OUTSIDE the domain of validity of the experiment in question.  Which is precisely my point! Mr. Perry is way off base, in my opinion, when he questions the experiment simply on the grounds that he wishes the basic design were otherwise, and that it addressed a different set of questions of greater interest to him. 

5) In the end, one can legitimately ask about whether the conditions of the Paris experiment restrict our ability to generalize to other situations.  Perhaps depriving someone of the ability to see the instrument they're playing also impedes their auditory discrimination?  I seriously doubt that (and so would most blind people!) but it's conceivable.  It could be that the top soloists are partly deaf from having those loud fiddles played right under their ears all day long (there is some evidence for this, by the way), and are therefore terrible judges of tone quality. But I really doubt that, with all their talent and experience, they do any worse than the unwashed masses. It could be that there actually do exist some rare individuals who actually CAN discriminate, reliably and reproducibly, new from old violins. So what? How big a sample do you think you need to truly address that? 100? 1000? 10,000? If the answer turns out to be a tiny fraction of the best-trained ears in the world, as opposed to "no one," then what does that tell us?  It's probably not relevant to either a listening audience or to the violinists themselves. It could be that the sample of Golden Age Cremona violins they used in the Paris study was sub-standard, and unrepresentative of the best violins of that era -- as Mr. Perry implies -- but I'd take strong issue with that. For example, some of the soloists own great Golden Age violins themselves, and they commented favorably on the examples in the sample set. And every one of them has had previous (in most cases, extensive) hands-on experience with the best Golden Age violins. And you can read a lot more about how these Golden Age violins were selected by reading the paper.  There is no reason whatsoever to believe (other than driven by a prejudice) that these were inferior examples! I would tend to reject the idea that the old violins were somehow all below par, but this is hard to disprove entirely, because -- once again -- this issue is outside the domain of validity of the experiment. It could be that there was some uncontrolled, un-thought-of condition or parameter that contaminated these findings.  That's always possible! That's one reason why we always look for robustness and reproducibility in science, and why experiments get repeated, sometimes with modifications.  But just because an experiment has been done once (and rather well, I might add, to peer-reviewed standards) is no reason to dismiss its findings.  The results should hold until shown otherwise by further experimentation of equal or better quality.

Unless and until someone steps forward with hard evidence that some individuals can reliably and reproducibly tell great old violins from great new ones _based on their sound alone_, absent other information, then the Paris study will stand as our best example to date of a controlled scientific study. ALL studies have intrinsic limitations and domains of validity, as I've discussed.  But we're all entitled to speculate on how this narrowly-focused study would likely generalize.  I would conclude, myself, that the best violins being made today are every bit the equal, musically speaking, of the best violins of the Golden Era in Cremona.  Yes, that's an extrapolation, but it's a fairly safe one to make, based on the available evidence.

----------

Astro, 

Bernie Daniel, 

DataNick, 

OldSausage, 

outsidenote, 

SincereCorgi, 

StuartE

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## Stephen Perry

> _Re: "My issue with the study is that it didn't even attempt to do what it set out to do:
> 
> "Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu are tonally superior to other violinsand to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated"_
> 
> 
> 
> Stephen, I might be wrong , but I dont think that was a quote from the study. I think that is a presumption/ editorial opinion by the writers of the entertainment piece on the study.
> 
> 
> ...


see http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760.abstract the quote is how the abstract starts.

My concern isn't that the N was too low, it's that it didn't address tone at all.  

Better for what?  For whom?  

Given these instruments for a day and these players I can think of much more fun things to do than a hide the ball cartoon.

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## Stephen Perry

> I agree even this relatively large and very well designed experiment (you don't publish in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a willy nilly) is only a small part of the story on how individuals can (or can not) distinguish the sounds of a violin.  
> 
> As Stephen points out there are other faucets that play a role in how a particular violinist's appreciation of a particular violin is formed.   Some of these parameters may not be evaluated in the "Paris study".  So the study is not the be all and end all.
> 
> What the Paris study does *prove with a known degree of confidence* (not sure there were p-values given but the levels of confidence were stated in some fashion as I recall) is that most of the time, in the absence of visual clues, even trained professional violinists can not consistently pick out the sound of an ancient Italian master's violin from that of a great modern instrument. 
> 
> This means the modern violins are so close in sound to the classics that only visual inspection can be relied upon to identify them unambiguously.    . . . . .


Would be interesting to see whether folks who recognize some instruments on recordings (I mean "Oh, that sounds like the Plowden, doesn't it?) -- and such people do exist -- could distinguish in person a selection of the old and new.

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## Stephen Perry

What is "sound alone"?  

I always have a hard time with science and instrumental preferences.  It's a bit squishy.  I've done a fair amount of research science and applied science myself, developed designs and so on professionally.   

My personal preference would be for good modern violins to offer great performers, not so great performers, and everyone else the same many dimensional performance envelope and give the same tactile and other feedback as old fine violins apparently do for some.  I can't see any reason for these antiques to be as good as the best apparently are.  

So what is the null hypothesis?  Good players will prefer playing violins in a set of old Cremonese violins selected on the basis of their  availability over a selection of modern violins selected for good performance under the particular conditions of the test, which are blind playing in a dead room and selection based upon a quite short exposure.  

Sort of a which car to test drive test.

The null hypothesis gets rejected.  Not particularly a surprise.

I do have issues with the test's conditions in light of the statements in the abstract.  What I read is a popularity contest with some numbers. 

SBlock stated: "But hey, if these top soloists can't even tell the difference in sound, I fear that the rest of us mere mortals don't stand much of a chance, despite anything Mr. Perry asserts, based entirely on his anecdotal experience."

The selection wasn't based on sound, from what I read.  I don't claim that I can tell old from new reliably.  That these violinists can't tell and I can't tell by sound alone wasn't part of the deal, but that's not a surprise, either. 

I'll have to disagree about dealers and adjusters v. players.  Players usually play a few violins, rather that constantly doing comparisons and working to get the most out of things.  As to what a "better job" is, I am not sure.  I doubt very many groups of folks would do much differently under the conditions of the test, except that advanced students might well be less likely to enjoy any quirky instruments. 

"Mr. Perry is way off base, in my opinion, when he questions the experiment simply on the grounds that he wishes the basic design were otherwise, and that it addressed a different set of questions of greater interest to him."

I would say of greater general utility.  The test is actually quite nice for me, because it means that modern violins can be presented to potential buyers as being potentially as good as the old Cremonese violins under some conditions.

Indeed, when given a short chance to make the acquaintance of this particular selection of violins the individuals involved could not distinguish old from new, on average, and didn't prefer the old ones to take home.  I'm not sure this is horribly relevant, but that is a good first cut result from an extremely limited experiment.  

"It could be that there actually do exist some rare individuals who actually CAN discriminate, reliably and reproducibly, new from old violins. So what? How big a sample do you think you need to truly address that? 100? 1000? 10,000?"

I suspect there may well be some, depending on what one means by "old" and "new."  Several people I've run across - no performers - seem to be able to recognize individual instruments, schools of production, and so on without much thought.   I have heard some very very nice old violins from 18th C Cremona that were excellent but certainly didn't automatically set my ears ablaze.  The reputation seems to spring from the rare number that soloists have been swapping back and forth for a couple of centuries.  Would we not need to test the best of the old against the best of the new?  A problem there is that the driver needs to know both the machine and the track to really wring it out.  Makes an experimental design difficult. 

"If the answer turns out to be a tiny fraction of the best-trained ears in the world, as opposed to "no one," then what does that tell us? It's probably not relevant to either a listening audience or to the violinists themselves."

I have no doubt that it's not relevant to most of the listening audience.  I'll go to a concert just to hear and focus on a specific instrument, or a specific piece, or specific soloist, but I tend to think this is not the usual reason.  The top end violinists tend to get what they like, limited by availability and price.  While I like science, market statistics are quite telling.  A form of science, I suppose, is analyzing that data.  I find telling that people will pay more for an antiqued copy of an old fiddle than for a straight varnished instrument that looks new and is functionally identical.  Pretty weird.

"It could be that the sample of Golden Age Cremona violins they used in the Paris study was sub-standard, and unrepresentative of the best violins of that era -- as Mr. Perry implies -- but I'd take strong issue with that. For example, some of the soloists own great Golden Age violins themselves,"   My point is that we don't know.  The 50 or so top instruments are out of a body of perhaps 400 or 500 survivors.  So the odds against the older instruments being used all being in that top level.  Now a test where the Soil came out on top and nobody knew it was in the mix would be fun!  So I don't think they were substandard - I just don't know where to place them, except that all three seem unlikely to lie within the top tier, which is what developed the myth of superiority.

Having dealers simply rank instruments while seeing them isn't blind and isn't science.  Dealers tend to be wary of things that will gather dust and enthusiastic about things that will move.  I suspect their choices on this would be consistent and interesting.  One can put them in the dark, for that matter.

One of the most important findings that isn't emphasized is that the new and old violins ranged all over the place in perceived performance and value.  If the null hypothesis was "New violins will be consistent with each other and old violins will be consistent with each other" then we'd have to reject that.  

This does have me thinking about how to do better tests.  It's like wine tasting - there's the public and experts within the public, and then there are professional tasters who evaluate, rank, blend and live the experience of the wine.  The kind of people who are disappointed when some cheap bottle from Aldi is really good, and are disturbed when a once great wine suffers a decline, and hope they can help fix it.  

I'd be very interested in presenting violins or mandolins to top adjusters and musicians with a big chart of characteristics to mark on.  Get them to independently come in and pull a number every couple of hours, grab that instrument, and grade it.  See how that works out.  1) Neither players nor adjusters consistently rank the same instrument the same in XYZ criteria.  2) Neither players nor adjusters are more consistent than the other in their ranking.  

Great instruments really have wonderfully different voices from each other.  I highly recommend listening through various instruments on youtube.  I've discovered my personal preferences are different from what I anticipated, and changed the way I voice violins on that basis.  So far, one instrument done differently with an aim at extreme clarity and sweetness, rather than power.  Very successful - and it actually carries as well as the instruments that sound loud!

Have fun.

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## Bernie Daniel

Well this is a great thread.  

At this point we are all reduced to saying the same thing over again in a different way!  :Laughing:  

sblock if you met Joseph Curtin at Stanford do you by chance have an opportunity to point out this thread to him as it would be fun to hear his take on our thoughts. 

Awaiting the next double blind violin or mandolin test!!!

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## sblock

Mr. Perry asked:  _"What is 'sound alone'?"_  

Are you really being serious in posing this question?! I would have thought that the answer to the question was perfectly self-evident! And if it's not, then you may be reading something rather different into the two PNAS papers, and all that's been written about them in this thread already.  OK, I'll play it straight: distinguishing an instrument "_by sound alone_," for our practical purposes, means "based on hearing the sound, produced live (i.e., not recorded) by the instrument, as it is played by the tester." Specifically, the testers did not get to see (or otherwise examine) the instruments they were playing. Yes, they could smell and feel it as they played it, of course -- but that DID NOT HELP THEM to distinguish old from new, as the results of the study showed so unambiguously. Also, the new fiddles were all "antiqued" so that their edges were a bit rounded and the surfaces a bit rough, to resemble the feel of old instruments.

Mr Perry also wrote this:

_"The selection wasn't based on sound [sic], from what I read. I don't claim that I can tell old from new reliably. That these violinists can't tell and I can't tell by sound alone wasn't part of the deal, but that's not a surprise, either."_

This is just plain wrong! What paper did you read? You said that was not "part of the deal." Actually, that *WAS* the deal!  The selection in the Paris study was based on the sound alone (in the sense just defined above). The soloists, who wore goggles to blind them, were asked to score a number of separate criteria, and _one of those criteria was whether the instrument was old or new._  And they chose 'old' or 'new' correctly at levels no better than random choice.



All this leads me to wonder whether you have actually read the Paris expt. paper, or just popular treatments of it.

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DataNick

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## Stephen Perry

I wonder the same!  This test was about preference and best/worst for some intentionally undefined criteria, and then about a quick shot A/B.  Preference for the whole experience of using the instrument, not how the instrument sounds when used.

Figure 1 is the two test sorting.

Figure 2 shows the criteria. Playability, projection, tone color, response.

Neither test covers sound alone.  Sound alone would be handled by listening without touching and manipulating.  This test was nice in that it took into account the interaction with the player, the ability of the instrument to give dynamics, tone colors, and anything else that led to liking or not liking.  Really, one of the big advantages of a great violin is supposed to be the tone color range, and the other the wide dynamic range while still projecting.

Test 1:

"One set, designed to maximize ecological validity, emulated the way players choose instruments at a violin shop, where they typically try a selection of instruments before selecting one to take home for further testing. All six test instruments were laid out in random order on the bed. Subjects were then given 20 min to choose (i) the single instrument they would “most like to take home with them” and (ii) the instruments they considered “best” and “worst” in each of four categories: range of tone colors, projection, playability, and response. These terms, all commonly used by players when evaluating instruments, were left undefined. If a term lacked clear meaning for a subject, he/she was told not to choose in that category. Although projection can, by definition, be judged only at a distance by a listener, players regularly estimate projection when testing a violin. They typically acknowledge (as did many of our subjects) the provisional nature of such estimates and the need to retest in a large hall with trusted listeners. Note, however, that our *experiment was designed to test not the objective qualities of the instruments but rather the subjective preferences of the subjects under a specific set of conditions.*"

That doesn't focus on sound or define sound at all, just gives four undefined axes with a best and worst.  In a dead room, the projection is going to be very difficult to estimate.  I stand the same distance from a window and guesstimate how much energy I'm getting back.  Not too hot.  I do know that the best violins can be heard clearly in the hall bathroom past the maze!

Test 2:

"Our second set of test conditions, designed with the statements of Weinreich and Langhoff in mind, asked subjects to assess instruments rather quickly. Each subject was presented with a series of 10 pairs of violins. For each pair, subjects were given 1 min to play whatever they liked on the first violin, then another minute for the second violin, without switching back and forth between them. The minute began with the first played note, including any tuning, and ended with the ringing of a bell. *Subjects were then asked to state which violin they preferred*."

That doesn't have anything to do with general sound at all.  Which is probably OK.  There are instruments I really don't like solo that come alive in front of an orchestra.

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## DataNick

> What the Paris study does *prove with a known degree of confidence* (not sure there were p-values given but the levels of confidence were stated in some fashion as I recall) is that most of the time, in the absence of visual clues, even trained professional violinists can not consistently pick out the sound of an ancient Italian master's violin from that of a great modern instrument. 
> 
> This means the modern violins are so close in sound to the classics that only visual inspection can be relied upon to identify them unambiguously.  
> 
> So, until shown otherwise (by demonstration) I am assuming that *no human can do identify a classical violin from a great modern violin on the basis of sound alone*.  Yes, that is an assumption (or opinion) because I concede that  *there might actually be such a person(s)*.  But so far they have not come forward to prove their skills.
> 
> *I choose by common sense and logic to suggest that this same situation would hold for mandolins as well.* 
> 
> *Therefore, until proven otherwise (by a double blind demonstration ) I choose to believe that no person can pick out, on the basis of sound alone, a Gibson-signed Loar from a great modern (last 30 years) mandolin.* 
> ...


I would like to emotionally interject the following into this otherwise science-laden discussion: *AMEN Bernie!*

Could it be that some out there in music land are terrified with the thought that after umpteen thousands of dollars of investment, that the emperor after all had no clothes on?

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Bernie Daniel

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## Stephen Perry

One thing I keep seeing in the writings and hearing in interviews with great players is the empty space concerning sound.  Really, the whole does what I want when I want it in a way that I like seems to be the main set of three criteria.  Violins all sound equally bad when badly played.  It's what the instrument offers the player that was the focus of the study, and quite reasonably so.  

Other tests involving untrained listeners have been done.  This one was for player preferences, with a nod towards some undefined elements of the sound they could produce.

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## sblock

Mr. Perry,

You talked about Figs. 1 and 2 of the paper, but you omitted a discussion of Fig. 3 of the paper. But that figure is the one that's most relevant to the discussion we've been having! In this figure, the top soloists were asked to guess whether the violin they played was an Old instrument ("O") or a new one ("N"). It _was not_ about player preference, for example. Nor was it about evaluation by specific criteria (projection, articulation, playability, loudness, overall quality, etc.).  So all the objections you raise about these are not germane. It was just about whether these people could distinguish a good old instrument from a good new one BY SOUND ALONE (and we both know what that means now).  Here's the figure:


The vertical axis shows each of the 11 instruments (5 new, 6 old), numbered as "N2" or "O6", and so on. The horizontal axis indicates the numbers of votes received (as "new" or "old") that were correct, shown as bars to the right, or wrong, shown as bars to the left.  A cursory glance shows that four of the new fiddles received just about as many right as wrong answers, meaning no on could tell at a level better than chance.  Furthermore, for new fiddle N11, all the scores were wrong:  soloists incorrectly thought it had to be old!  As for old fiddle O12, more soloists concluded, incorrectly, that it had to be a new fiddle.  Overall, there was no consistent ability of anyone to score the violins correctly.  There were 18 wrong guess about new fiddles and 15 correct ones.  There were 13 wrong guesses about old fiddles and 18 correct ones.  Overall, they might as well have been flipping a coin!  

This, of course, is only a fraction of the data (and the evidence) collected in the Paris study, but based on Fig. 3 alone, it's pretty clear that considered as a group, these soloists did no better than chance.  And considered individually (not shown here), there was also no stand-out star who could tell the difference.  

I will further tell you, and interested MC readers who have been following all this, that the Paris experiment was _also conducted with musicans and classical music aficionados in the audience_ of the concert hall (it was an acoustically good hall, by the way).  They, too, were unaware of whether the instrument was new or old.  They heard the violins played both with and without orchestral accompaniment.  The data from that part of the study are going to be published separately, probably later this year.  The audience results test something very different! They test the quality of the sound projected into the hall (and not under the player's ear), and how it does, or does not, 'rise above' the accompaniment, contrast with it, and so on.  I will tell you that the audiences were equally incapable of telling new from old.  The details remain to be published, of course, but I suspect there will be no real surprises.

----------

Bernie Daniel, 

DataNick, 

outsidenote

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## Stephen Perry

I didn't omit figure 3 - it isn't in the version I saw!  Which is here: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760.figures-only  Maybe we are looking at different things!  The old v. new wasn't covered at all.  This is likely a source of our differing opinions about the focus of the study!!!!  Pretty funny.  Where are you looking?  There may be other differences.

I direct attention to "In this figure, the top soloists were asked to guess whether the violin they *played* was an Old instrument ("O") or a new one ("N")."  Unless the paper says something different, this is about the playing characteristics of old v. new, not about the sound.  Violins all play differently, feel different, the bow sounds and acts differently, etc.  And the sound RIGHT THERE under the ear is pretty much too close.  I tend to test during setup by plucking, and then play while facing my windows, mainly trying to listen to the bounce when I'm making final adjustments.  Which is hard.

The results are about as I would expect - violins sound like violins!  I doubt the audience can tell, either.  If you tell me there's some old Italians in a quartet I might be able to peg the instruments more or less without looking up (I've done that), but substitute moderns and lie to me and I'll probably pick a more Strad-like one, point out the more Amati-esque one, etc.  That's not a difficult task at all.  

Certainly hearing the instruments from a bit of a distance gives a nice impression of the character of the instrument through sound.  I had a violin played here today that had a bit of fuzzy and some weakness in a couple of areas.  Sounded like the arching on the top in the upper bout, and a bit of extra resistance in the back.  Yup.  Arching from central island into upper bout wasn't well formed on the top (well, reasonably good for a commercial student instrument) and an big straight run down to the channel on the back longitudinal arch.  The instruments clearly show up in their sound, for better or worse, as does the player, and the room etc.  

So I would expect cognizant instrument listeners to be able to tell a good deal about an instrument being played at them.  I wouldn't put determining its age as one of the likely things to show up!  

Further results will be lots of fun.  It's really quite exciting that good players may not prefer old Cremonese, and that they can't tell the difference by playing the instruments.  I'd have expected that but have never been convinced that I'm simply not hearing the magic.  Now some of those top 50 have the magic, but I don't jump to the "must be old Italian" conclusion - I do want to know what the box is, though!

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## sblock

Mr. Perry, 

Aaagh, you are so confused, Mr. Perry!!!!!!!!!  I now see that you've been discussing the wrong study here all along. The rest of us have been discussing the *PARIS* Experiment here in this thread, which is described by the P.N.A.S. paper "Soloist evaluations of six Old Italian and six new violins" by C. Fritz, et al. (PNAS 111:7224-7229, May 20, 2014).  You can find it *by clicking here*.

In fact, you wrote the word "Paris" several times in your recent postings. Apparently, though, you've conflated this with the earlier *INDIANAPOLIS* experiment, which was conducted two years earlier, and published by the same authors as "Player preferences among new and old violins" (PNAS 109:760-763, Jan 17, 2012).  These are entirely different experiments.  I gather you read that and thought you were reading about the Paris study.

I hope this resolves at least some of the confusion. The Paris experiment used even better instruments with even better players and had even better-designed tests. It also featured a proper concert hall, an expert audience, a backup orchestra and piano, and more. Figure 3 (above) is from the Paris study, NOT from the Indianapolis study. I hope you will take the opportunity to read and digest the 2014 paper in PNAS before re-engaging.  Who knows?  Maybe you'll be better convinced?  :Grin:

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## Stephen Perry

I earlier looked at a Paris study - apparently I found the earlier paper second time around!  I can see why I was confused - the papers look the same upon first glance!  This silly loss of binocular vision and being ill doesn't help.

Much more realistic study.  Better design etc.  I like it.  I haven't seen any convincing technical magic presented about the older instruments. I expect that research and investigation has led to improvements in modern instruments.  I can't see how it wouldn't.  With all the emphasis on studying arching and wood characteristics, graduation, and so on we would expect performance to come up.

Will be fun to see what the audience comes up with.

----------

