Official Luthiers Forum!

I get your point about the studies author wanting to be published but that is all supposition. I have no idea of the motive. What it does prove, and it does do this, is those professional musicians did worse in picking the instrument and matching them to their sounds than chance would even dictate. This as others here have mentioned is not the first time this sort of experiment has been performed and it re-enforces their findings. This is science and it accomplished it's goal.

I think you missed the point of the article. It is not about violins or their makers. It is about humans and how they form opinions.

Bye the way, I'm still on my first guitar and will post the final result when it finally occurs. I do make nice chairs though.

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No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
Christopher Morley

That may indeed be what the article has tried to demonstrate, 'but', the testing was fundamentally flawed. The experiment had been conducted in an environment of convenience for the researcher, rather than one of specific design for the intended purpose of those instruments being tested. This had made it impossible for any of the subjects to form a 'valid' opinion and based upon that flawed data, the researcher had then concluded that the subjects had been unable to pick one instrument from the next so therefore there is no real difference, only a 'perceived' difference.

For all they have achieved, these ridiculous test may as well been blind AND deaf because the only things they have managed to demonstrated are the ineptitude of the investigator, the eagerness with which media outlets with print any crap just as long as it has a famous name attached and the gullibility of those who would take such foolishness seriously.

'Good' science is to start out with a theory, and then to do all you can to prove yourself wrong. Should you fail to do so after exhaustive test, 'then', just maybe, your on to something. But peer review will be waiting when your done to ensure you had not allowed the excitement of 'all most there' to fool you in to believing you could actually steal their thunder......The article you have posted in this thread Orion bares no semblance to good science whatsoever...its just plain bunk and I'm not missing a thing.

Cheers

Kim

Kim

I am all too familiar the Scientific Method how it works and how to apply it.

This was not an attempt to evaluate or critique the instruments beyond a simple comparison. Do you really believe the choices of which instrument was the Strad would have changed significantly no matter where played? This was not about which instrument was better, it was could the instrumentalists match the sound to the sound box. A lab and white coats nor is a degree required for "good science." Dropping a ball from your hand to help explain gravity is "good science." "Good science" simply needs to be repeatable. The hypothesis or theory is only the starting point the results are the conclusion whether they where what you were looking for or not.

I must reiterate. This was not about which instrument was best. This was not about are Strads any better or worse than those made today. The study was quite simple and to the point. Match the sound to the box.

This experiment is conducted everyday at guitar shops around the world except people get to see the instruments in question which leads to a large amount of bias whether the person(s) participating recognizes this or not.

Your as hard headed as I am and enjoy the debate and banter the same . We do have similar views as far as the media is concerned but I think we are looking at this particular argument from different angles.

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No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
Christopher Morley

kim, i doubt your punters analogy is appropo.

do you really think that a punter at the ascot or belmont saddling enclosure would not consider it a good bet on a maiden if he read it were by commands and trained in bart cummings stable when he went to visit his favorite friend at the rails? do you really think the odds would not be shorter than on dogmeqt by to the knackery out of plowhorse and trained by fred nurk?

as was mentioned several times, the question put to the players was not which was best or preferred, but can you tell which were old and which new.

i do not feel the comments on the venue are relevant either, as strads, guinaris etc., were originallhy built to perform in smaller, more intimate chamber settings of the baroque period, not a concert hall. it was only after considerable rebuilding that they were made suitable for the larger venues of the classical era.

So Kim, if this study was done in a concert hall and the results come back the same would you change your opinion?

IMO while it may not be 'science' this kind of test is about as useful as anything ever will be for determining what 'sounds best'. It's just too subjective.

my 2 cents is: i could not really hear a difference. the highs perhaps sounded slightly different for a moment in one recording.

I think there is just as much (or more) folly in comparing questionable quality digital recordings played back using a computer sound system as there is in trying to compare concert grade instruments in a hotel room.

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Jim Hansen

Regardless of what is being tested, if a blind test is conducted in an environment which does not provide the same conditions which the equipment/product/instrument was specifically designed to function within, then subjects in that test would be unable to provide any kind of useful evaluation.

So it does not matter which angle you look at it from, re; the evaluation of the old Italian instruments, 'or' what makes people choose one over the other, the point is simply that neither question could be examined to any affect whatsoever until that which is being tested is tested within the conditions for which it has a specific design purpose.

The problem with Dr Fritz's research and all those who were silly enough to offer comment in that hotel room is they have all assumed the sole purpose of design for every violin is simply to make music. Regardless of what acoustics physicist, professors of neuroscience and players may 'assume' to be true, if you understand anything at all about 'lutherie', then you will also understand that this is clearly not the case and it never can be.

It will always be horses for courses. Smallman's "thin, harsh, brash and soulless sounding" guitar played at some symposium or other can suddenly develop tone to move an audience to tears just a week or two later when played in a concert hall....Heavy back, very heavy sides, supporting a super light weight egg shell top with such projection of sound that it can only begin to open and be appreciated when some 20 metres out from the barrel of the cannon. Ervin Symogyi, very thin reactive back plates balance to a responsive top which fills the space of the player and envelopes those in a close environment with warmth and depth of tone...these people understand the purpose of their instruments are not 'just' to make music...

Those players which followed Dr Fritz into that hotel room lured by the dangle of the Stradivarius carrot understood little of this and that which they did understand was set aside for the once in a life time opertunity to play the violinist grail. Dr Fritz on the other hand is allegedly an acoustics physicist, no excuse for her, she was just lazy and seen this as a good way to use the fame of Stradivarius to get published....its not science by any stretch, turn it upside down, walk over to the other side of the room and look at it however you want and its still bunk and always will be.

I will say this again. I am not interested in which fiddle was better and could not really care less either way. To my mind fiddle necks are too short, the bodies too small, they don't have enough strings, have lousy action for tapping, and are no good in a bar room brawl...My comments are not to defend against anything but poorly thought out experiments which claim to be scientific research, but are so short on anything useful that controversy and a famous name become prerequisites to ensure publication 'regardless' of how poorly conducted they are. That is the only "VooDoo" going on here.

It's BUNK!!

Kim

I've played various instruments all of my life, majored in music for a while in College and did some instrument repair in those days although I would never call myself a "luthier." I have been to ITG (International Trumpeters Guild) meetings and heard plenty VooDoo. One year some guy played a prank by applying electicians tape to different locations of his horn and saying "hear that?, and making various comments about vibration and sound waves being affected by its particular placement. People would eat it up and ask questions and many said they heard a difference. He did this at a number of tables. It is amazing what people will swallow without question. An instrument is ONLY for making music. Yes some instruments work better in different situations and locales but a great instrument is a great instrument regardless. The player has as much more to do with the sound/ music produced than the instrument. Pearlman could play a student model and make many with a Strad sound as if they were the ones playing a student model. I'm not sure if he switches strad's for a performance at a small venue like the White House or a large one like the Kennedy Center because one just doesn't sound right at the other local. Tommy Emmanuel plays a Maton as his main instrument. He does have others but Matons aren't known as the elite of guitars.

The point was effectively made and the study served it's purpose. I realize mystique sells instruments as well as most everything else in this world. The question is are we willing to really ask ourselves how we are arriving at our conclusions about everything and anything. Brand image has a huge impact on our tastes whether we realize it or not. I mentioned earlier that the only reason any of us "know" strad's are something special is because someone else has told us so. An enormous assumption is made in thinking these instruments are somehow different enough sounding to be distinguished from a well made modern instrument when judged on sound alone.

Performed in a hall the results would have been, almost certainly, the same.

I'm out.

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No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
Christopher Morley

You were out the moment you gave credence to that pile of bunk and then posted it here claiming it as some kind of proof for one of your own beliefs Orion. That so called research was bunk from the moment Dr Fritz thought it would be cool and froody to conduct her test in a hotel room, and it will remain bunk until it has finally composted away in a few weeks time to becomes forgotten at the bottom of the pile of bunk yet to come from poorly conducted experiments that are yet to be undertaken by those so desperate to escape the company of lab rats they will do just about 'anything' to get their name in print. No amount of words will change that, but before I sign out I will offer my own interpretation of the 'test' results.



How about this, Dr Kim says, seven probably said they 'WOULDN'T' because they were not stupid enough to believe it possible for anyone to make a valid assessment of such instruments within the confines of a furnish hotel room full of people and glass and other crap, seven got it wrong because they knew that also but had all these serious looking people humming around them with an expectation of an answer written all over their faces so they felt obliged to take a quick and dirty stab in the dark just to get the hell out of there, and three got it right because their leaned upon poke at the unknown just happened to pin the tail on Dr Fritz's silly donkey...

The only useful thing I can think one could use this stuff for is a 101 for uni students on how they should 'not' conduct research.

Cheers

Kim

I find it interesting that a man named Smallman is known for making instruments that sound bigger.

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

It's impossible to tell how good a guitar really sounds unless it's played in a concert hall. That's the problem with ad-hoc anecdotal arguments.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Kim, why are you so hung up on "hotel rooms"? hand held, bowed stringed instruments far predate any fancy italian marbled auditoriums; the Mongols, Persians, and god knows whom else were playing iterations of them at campfires, many centuries before the Cremona school "perfected" them. they were never "designed" to be played in special rooms; they were designed to project sound loudly, period.
i have been a guitar player since the early eighties; a year ago i bought a cheap chinese violin, and it totally rekindled my interest in acoustic instruments. every millimeter of a violin, with the exception of the ornamental scroll, exists for a good reason. violins are far louder than any dreadnaught guitar, in their range. so loud that i considered wearing an earplug on the left, until i bought a rubber bridge mute.
if two objects are compared under identical environments,then it is a valid "scientific" experiment. it doesn't matter if both violins were played submersed in a chamber full of sewage in Eritrea, as long as they both were recorded in the same circumstance. your hatred of the violin/listening tests are curious to say the least. what exactly are you trying to say? i am confused.

Right there is 'the' issue...every violin in that test was either made for concert performance, or has been adapted to concert performance and it all goes back to the similarity with Smallman's guitars insomuch they all share the same focus, acoustic projection inside a concert hall, hitting the back wall of the place so hard that 'everyone' goes home happy. That is the skill of the luthier right there. Regardless of the stringed instrument, these instruments all represent the formula 1 of our craft and it is no more possible to assess how they perform in a hotel room than it is to assess how good a McLaren Mercedes is in traffic.

What is 'my' issue??? Well lets see, this Dr Fritz has gotten together with a bunch of players on a promise they can play Stradivarius and, in the most inappropriate circumstances possible, made an assessment she then put forward as valid science stating that there is not really 'that' much difference. Now that may in fact be the case, but regardless, in making such a determination without due consideration of the luthiers intent, that woman has completely ignored the apex of our craft and all those who have stood upon it....It 'is' horses for course..Its one thing to build a good sounding guitar or violin, it is another thing to build a great sounding guitar or violin, but it is the pinnacle of understanding of our craft to be able to build a better sounding guitar or violin which stands upon the shoulders of great in a specific circumstance...to not consider that 'fact', and it is a fact, this woman has snubbed the intellect and hard won skills of those who would make her look as mediocre as one would need to be to splutter out such nonsense as valid scientific research.

If any of you do not understand that, then you have some understanding of this craft to come. But don't misunderstand me, I do not for a second claim to breath that same air, but I do know what separates a good luthier from a great luthier...these guys don't just get lucky, it starts at about $25,000 more than anyone else gets and works its way up, and just like 'anything' at the cutting edge of a craft or sport, or whatever, it can never be a 'good all-rounder' for that would require compromise, and there is no room for compramise when your target is so clearly defined....this article is an insult to lutherie, it has ignored you, every single one of you, no matter how good you are, no matter how good you hope to be.

It is interesting that many of you cannot see that, but it is not surprising, after all, when was the last time any of you that find my position difficult to understand pulled 30K+ for one of your carefully thought out builds???? When was the last time someone at the player skill level of Williams or Milos came knocking at your door pleading with you to be pushed to the front of your 5 year waiting list?

Milos, Tarrega, 2007 Smallman...where's the mic???..that would be at the end of the hall where it belongs..



Thanks for the clip Bruce Mc

P.S. If you don't like the tone of the guitar in the clip, you may need to take ur laptop down to the local concert hall to better appreciate the performance..

Cheers

Kim

I'm all for the effort put forth to debunk the myth of "holy grail" instruments. But the thing that is really missed when these conversations start is that the most important relationship is not between the instrument and the listener, but between the instrument and player. The instrument can not make music on it's own. No one will pay money and give up an evening to hear an average player give a concert with a "great" instrument. Who cares what year and name they are holding if the music isn't that good.

But put an instrument that inspires a great musician on a stage or in a studio, and time will stand still to admire the art that's made. Some great musicians will be inspired by contemporary hand built instruments, some by vintage factory instruments, others by old hand made instruments, and still others by downright cheap factory guitars.

When listening to a recording, most of us builders will only be guessing if the guitar being played has a sitka or cedar top, or if the guitar was built last year or 60 years ago. And who really cares? Just so long as great musicians find instruments that inspire them and help them to play their best, does it really matter what the guitar is valued at, what year it was built, or what name is on the label?

scratches head....

dunno, to me the two sound clips were miles apart in sound and tonality....#2 sounded far better to me and was the strad....I can honestly say I did NOT in any way enjoy the sonic properties of violin #1, but I was listening on my online computer which while it is using some decent Altec Lansing speakers is a far cry from my DAW hooked up to my much better home stereo system...the point being had the test been heard on a real sound system I might not have had such a negative reaction to #1

Against my better judgement, I'm jumping in on this.

What's missing in all of the discussion I've seen, here and elsewere, is any talk about the 'state of the art' in these sorts of tests. Putting this one in context might help in understanding why it was done the way it was done.

I've taken part in comparison tests of violins in the past, and heard and read about others. This has been going on for thirty years and more. Usually the test will involve something like four violins of 'reasonable' quality, a good player, standing behind a screen, and an audience. Often the violins are labeled, say 'A', 'B', and so on. One is handed to the player, and the audience is told: "This is 'A'", or whatever. The player performs a certain passage, and the next instrument is up. After going through the instruments once or twice in this way, to familiarize the audience with sound of each, the trials are then conducted randomly, and the audience is asked to pick them out, based on their memory of the sound. Generally speaking, in this sort of test, nobody in the audience does better than probabilty, but the player can almost always tell which is which.

One of the big problems with assesing the quality of a violin's sound has to do with having the player in the loop. As Curtin has pointed out in an article some years ago, it is part of the professional competence of a good violinist to get the sound they want from almost any 'reasonable' instrument. Handing a violin to a good violinist, and asking the audience to rate it, doesn't work. The general explanation is that the player automatically compensates for deficiencies in the instrument to the extent that they're able. That's why the player usualy knows which instrument is which: they know how hard they have to work to get what they want. Handing a violin to a _bad_ player is, of course, no more productive, since they can't get a decent sound out of _anything_.

As an aside, I've never heard of the player being blindfolded in the usual test format. Personally, I'd be quite leery of handing somebody standing on a wooden stage a multi-million dollar fiddle if they were blindfolded: one slip and the repair could cost more than I'm worth on the open market. Thus, in the usual test, the players do see the instruments. Although a lot of 'new' instruments are 'antiqued', and often quite cleverly, it's still usually possible to detect a 'fake' on close inspection. In the test I took part in, where the audience could also see the instruments, there was a decided preference for the 'antiqued' ones, and I'm sure the same holds for players. That's why the best makers, such as Curtin, learn to antique them: they're easier to sell if they look old. This raises the issue in the standard test format that the player might prefer an 'old' looking instrument because they've been told all their life that the old ones are better. They are more 'inspired' when they play an old looking one, and play better, and this may well hold true even when they know that the instrument is not, in fact, old. There is ample evidence for this sort of thing in other sorts of testing, which is why 'double blind' is the gold standard.

Players, of course, hear the instruments 'up close'. Any guitar player is familiar with the fact that they sound a lot different from out in front. My discussions with violinists and makers suggest to me that violinists often have little idea of how they sound in the hall, but work with the 'under the ear' tone. This is not surprising; given how loud an instrument is up close, the feedback from the hall is not very important in the way the player plays. It is not unheard of, for example, for a soloist to go out of their way to borrow an instrument they like the sound of for a performance, even though it lacks 'projection'. The player is inspired by the under the ear sound, but nobody in the audience past the second row hears it. That's one reason orchestras have conductors: to get the balance right when the individual players can't tell what they're doing relative to the rest.

It seems to me, therefore, that the test under discussion here was pretty well designed for a particular purpose: that of removing as many clues about the fiddle as possible from the player. The room is far less of a factor in this sort of thing than some here seem to feel it is, particularly for violinists. Having the test done in a well-padded hotel room, where access to a number of valuable instruments could be easily controlled (ever hear of a valuable instrument being stollen from back stage? It happens...) would make the owners, and their insurers, happy. (BTW, there are all sorts of rooms in a hotel: maybe they used a ballroom or meeting room?) These controls allowed for the players to be blindfolded, and removed sight as a clue. It seems to have at least reduced the bias in favor of 'old' instruments.

_No_ science is defined by one measurement, or one experiment. As such things go, this is an outlier, and it is proper to preserve a degree of skepticism regarding the result. There is at least one thing that could account for that 'outlier'' outcome: better control, but it remains to be seen if the results can be replicated in similar experiments. Flat acceptance is probably not warrented, but neither, IMO, is flat rejection. It's 'interesting', and even 'suggestive', but hardly definitive either way.

Al,

Absolutely right!

The interesting part about these "Blind Listening" experiments is that they never seem to talk about all of the hurdles you need to run through to verify they are actually measuring anything in particular....

One of my favorites on this sort of subject is Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" graduation address to Caltech ... in particular, the section about setting up rat mazes and all the sorts of hurdles you have to go through to confuse the rats enough so that they don't use sensory clues (Smell, sound, sight, feel) to return to the same door rather than memory...
(Read it here if you are so inclined... http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm)

Here's a fun quote:

"Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one
experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running
experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat
is really using--not what you think it's using. And that is the
experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in
order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with
rat-running.

I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next
experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young.
They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on
sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats
in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries
of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't
discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the
things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not
paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of
cargo cult science."

If we did the same thing with modern "Blind listening" - to determine what we *ACTUALLY* need to do to make blind listening useful... What would we learn from blind listening tests when properly conducted....

My hunch goes back to my original position... that the Audience isn't listening to the nuance of the violin that makes the Player and Conductor love some particular violin... They are listening to Music that they like.... and for the most part - almost any old Violin will make music that sounds like Violin music to the audience...

But.. That being the case.. It would seem like the most logical thing to do is to maximize the enjoyment of the Musician.... and that sort of thing is pretty hard to do without allowing the musician to have some feedback from the instrument in their hands...

Thanks

I would have been very impressed with the article... if B had not been the strad. I am listening through tiny laptop speakers the difference was unmistakable to me.
Perhaps it would have been more obvious to the "professional " players if they had instead listened to the different instruments over the phone from home.

The stradivarius was not considered the most desirable violin when it was built, at that time it was the stainer that was the "best". It was the passing of chamber music that ended stainers rein, and the advent of the concert hall that led to the rise of stradiverius - because it had greater projection in large halls.

so 14 violinists can't tell the difference- I can. maybe they cant tell the sound of a cd from old vinyl -so what.

P.s. maybe someone should post an old instrument tutorial on here. Expand some auditory pallets.

So we can be taught to hear things the way they are "supposed" to be heard?