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Study confirms superior sound of a Stradivari is due to the varnish

graphical

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Stupidity ;)

If you go to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, you probably fight a large crowd and never get close to the painting. Bring you binocs. The smart play is to go to the Prado and see the copy. Then you can actually see the painting.

Same thing with the Rosetta Stone. The real one in the British Museum is kept far from you. But, you can walk 25m across the courtyard and see the copy.

Oh, and I did go to see Yo-Yo Ma a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty sure I didn't notice if he changed instruments, but he did change my mood for the better. Dang I missed live music. Can you send Joshua Bell to demo the special violin, too? I really must evaluate that Stradivarius, too. Please.
 

Sal1950

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Dang I missed live music.
I'm really pissed tonight. I've had tickets to see Kenny Wayne Sheherd and the concert was called off at the last minute do to Covid in the band. :mad::mad::mad::mad: Now I have to wait till Jan something to see the make-up date.
 

Blumlein 88

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I have an artist friend, and we often talk about this. First, he does it himself. What keeps the lights on is copying pictures for rich folk who flit from house to house, with the original going in a safe as soon as their back is turned, and the copy being hung for decorative decorum's sake. (He says the only truly un-copyable artist is Piet Mondrian.)

Copies don't devalue the original, he feels - cf. the rare book market, where a natural hierarchy establishes itself, with first edition, first printing at the very top, and the millionth copy worth nothing.

I have a Cezanne forgery, that for years (about 100 years ago) hung in the Pasadena art gallery. It looks real to me.

There are some modern artists that make a painting then hire talented art students to do authorized copies. Some of those sell in the 6 figure range though actually done by the students and despite there being 500 or 1000 copies of them made. That doesn't make sense to me especially as those types of paintings are not very complicated being nothing like a portrait or scene of something.

It sounds pretty neat to have a good forgery of a Cezanne.

As for Mondriaan, surely his later geometric patterns couldn't be hard to copy?
 

Inner Space

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As for Mondriaan, surely his later geometric patterns couldn't be hard to copy?

Apparently, although the brushstrokes are tiny and seemingly repetitive, actually they're randomly imperfect in a crucial way, and would have to be copied one at a time, which would take years. Easily done with 3D scanning and printing, of course, which comes out physically identical, but there's a dull grayness to a real Mondrian, and they haven't figured that out yet.
 

Blumlein 88

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Blumlein 88

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In that sense you have a point. Hard for me to relate as I see little value in these things. I see paintings etc selling for huge amounts of money that look like they were done by a 6 yo in art class. It's all so subjective and to me completely irrational?
I don't disagree with some of the art especially the more recent things from mid-20th century and onward. Not all of it is irrational though.

There was an exhibition of Leonardo's notebooks in my town a few years back. You look at a pencil drawing of horses and your first impression is startling because you get the feeling they are so alive, so "horse-like" they might come to life and step off the page any moment. It is a strong feeling you get immediately and there are very few drawings that can do that. Certainly no 6 year old art class work.
 

Blumlein 88

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The more experienced violinists often have hearing loss on that same side

Maybe these days the younger ones where some protection on that ear
I don't think many do. I know a young violinist and I've suggested some of the musicians ear plugs which don't alter frequency balance. She so far hasn't started using them. And there is no way anyone who plays that instrument for years won't have hearing loss in the one ear.
 

Doodski

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There was an exhibition of Leonardo's notebooks in my town a few years back. You look at a pencil drawing of horses and your first impression is startling because you get the feeling they are so alive, so "horse-like" they might come to life and step off the page any moment. It is a strong feeling you get immediately and there are very few drawings that can do that. Certainly no 6 year old art class work.
What gets me going is when I see very few strokes used in the drawing or painting and yet it conveys enough information for the brain to fill in the blank spaces. A minimalism of sorts.
 

GXAlan

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Yes i remember that at the time. It is what I thought when I read the stuff in the link of the OP. We have double blind tests proving Strads are nothing special and now the confirmation of what was really different about how they were made. One or the other seems wrong or maybe not.

I think the blinded test was flawed in that they were asked what they PREFERRED or PROJECTED better as opposed to what sounded best. The presence of preference would suggest that differences can be heard. It just turned out that people chose the modern violin.

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

There is data to suggest that kids prefer MP3 to lossless because they are more familiar with it, and certainly modern violins are likely to be the ones used in most symphonies, soundtracks, and recitals. Alternatively, modern violins may have cleaner tones with fewer harmonics which is seen as better.
 

charleski

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If you want to hear for yourself, there’s one example I can find of a direct comparison between two old violins here:
https://tasminlittle.org.uk/free_cd/index.html (click on ‘What violin?)
It’s a single g-major scale, and obviously a comparison like this is useless for any sort of genuine test as we have two different performances. But even though I was sceptical, it did sound (to my thoroughly untrained ear) as if there was a slight timbral difference between them (I preferred the slightly newer Guadenini).

There are two questions here: do different violins actually sound different; and, are old violins better? The Fritz et al. study does seem to suggest that trained players are unable to distinguish most violins from each other (only 52% chose the same violin twice in the pairwise retests), but also indicates that certain violins may elicit a consistent preference (N2) or aversion (O1). The obvious test to do would be repeated pairwise presentations of N2 and O1 (interleaved with other pairs) to see if this resulted in a consistent choice.


I get stuck at "21 experienced violinists". I wonder how much extra value in perception this set of people actually brought.
The only way to conduct such a test is through performance like this. So the value they brought is simply that they were able to play the violins :). You can’t compare violins on a purely perceptual basis since you will inevitably be hearing different performances.
 
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Sal1950

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kyle_neuron

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The Stradivarius Museo del Violini is a really great museum, with an absolutely gorgeously designed auditorium for concerto. If you’re ever in the Milan area of Italy, pop out to the little town of Cremona and try to catch a showcase. I don’t think any music lover would regret hearing a brilliant performer play a 400-year old instrument - even if a newer violin maybe sounds better :)
 

dasdoing

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many blind experiments from 1817[33][34] to the present (as of 2014[2][35][1]) have never found any difference in sound between Stradivari's violins and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradivarius#Comparisons_in_sound_quality
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=WbW18PBXOEYC&pg=PA89&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Stradivarius are like Photoshop is to photo editors. even though there are dozens of alternatives clients expect you to use it, else they think you are not professional
 

charleski

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradivarius#Comparisons_in_sound_quality
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=WbW18PBXOEYC&pg=PA89&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Stradivarius are like Photoshop is to photo editors. even though there are dozens of alternatives clients expect you to use it, else they think you are not professional
Violins are tricky instruments to play, and the primary factors governing the 'sound' lie in fine details of the individual performance which are virtually impossible to control. This is why I think any attempt to distinguish based on hearing someone else play the same passage on different violins just doesn't pass muster from a scientific viewpoint. The strategy used by Fritz et al. is the only one I can imagine that has a hope of being valid, but really needs a follow-up to see if the players can discriminate consistently between the N2, S1 outliers. Unfortunately, this research made a bit of a splash when it came out and I suspect that anyone owning an expensive Strad is now even less likely to be willing to loan it to some researchers so they can demonstrate that it's not as good as a new violin.
 

dasdoing

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there is many tradition involved.
I remember hearing a carbon fiber acoustic guitar on youtube and it sounded superior due to much less resonances.
turns out players seam to hate it, because they are so used to those resonances.
those are the same resonances engeniers will EQ out in a recording
 
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