That title is misleading. This article is actually titled "Study confirms superior sound of Stradivari is due to how wood was treated".
It's a report about a new study that claims that it is NOT the varnish. Rather it was a secret recipe of wood preservative used by the Cremonese makers Stradivari and Guarneri to impregnate the spruce.
The linked papers are much better than the article.
I'm still following Ars Technica on Facebook, but it's only clickbait these days. I feel like I remember it being a quality publication at some point in the past ... What happened?
Fully agree. It was incredible when the tagline was "Ars Technica, the PC Enthusiast's Resource." It's become increasingly clickbaity. One wonders how a tech news site manages to justify using a school shooting to generate pageviews. In recent months they've been reposting stories from their "partner sites", most of which are spectacularly terrible. I think the decline began a few years ago when they starting amplifying Twitter drama about game developers. That's about the same time the rumors started flying about Peter Bright, which site admins continued to stomp on right up until he was arrested for pedophilia.
While not infused with borax and sulfates(that I'm aware of) Martin guitars is doing treatments to their VTS line to speed up the aging process to create the sound of vintage guitars on a brand new one.
Indiana University has long had an excellent music school. E.g., one of the violin professors was J. Gingold, long Concert Master at Cleveland. A cello professor was J. Starker, long a well known, good recording artist.
I liked music a LOT, had recordings of dozens of the most famous pieces from Bach through Tchaikovsky.
And I was a math grad student, but my dorm building was next to the music school with a lot of music majors. One of the violin students put his old Italian violin under my left chin and gave me a first lesson. So, I signed up for a course in violin, just me and one teacher, a violin student in the school. He was terrific, far ahead of what I as a beginner, deserved! E.g., after the semester was over, he played the Brahms concerto in Toronto!
But I did get a start. I continued, and took some more lessons off and on. Eventually I made it through a few pages of some of the famous music, e.g., the Bach Chaconne.
The student there at Indiana University I met again later, and he had swapped his old Italian violin for one made in NYC. His statement was that what he got new was as good as any of the old Italian instruments. That is, net, somehow some modern violin makers have learned how to make violins that are among the best ever.
Just how to do that? Uh, instead of what is in the OP, just talk to some such violin makers!
Nagyvary has made different claims about the "secret of Stradivari" over the last thirty? forty? years, and they're all authoritative, and none of them explain why Stradivari's instruments are so valued. I'm confident that the real secret of Stradivari is a lot of things, all working together, that he learned by being an excellent craftsman with a good ear and analytical mind, and by being trained by the greatest violin maker before Stradivari, Nicolo Amati, who was likewise trained by previous great makers of his own family.
There's no one change that, applied indiscriminately to an instrument, will reliably improve it. There are lots of things that work together to make a great instrument, and a great maker knows how to balance them.
(Side note: I'm also confident that there are instruments being made today that will equal Stradivari's given time enough. In my own experience, one viola made by Michael Darnton of Chicago was markedly better than any of the old Italian instruments I've played, though they were not of the first rank. That was an instrument fit for any use, and if I could have afforded it, I would never have let it go.)
About $16K, 20 years ago when I was leaving grad school. It was really magnificent, and the price was not too high at all, but it was beyond anything I could raise at the time.
I am always amazed at how much these old instruments go for, one of my uncles was an extremely good violinist and I remember that as a kid I wasn't even allowed to go near his instrument. (To be fair, I had a bit of a reputation...)
> I'm also confident that there are instruments being made today that will equal Stradivari's given time enough. In my own experience, one viola made by Michael Darnton
I know nothing about the subject, but decided to do a quick search about this guy.
> Essentially, the quality of violins dropped precipitously after the deaths of Antonio Stradivari (1737) and Joseph Guarneri del Gesu (1745), and it’s (sic) has never recovered. I figure that if I could ever merely replicate the work of Stradivari, I’d be the second or third best violinmaker that has ever lived.
Is this a commonly accepted viewpoint in the violin world? It just seems so surreal to think that it would take ~275 years just to match the craftsmanship and talent, let alone exceed it.
I'd say that's at least the late-19th and early-20th Century consensus view, and I'd be inclined to agree that there are very few makers from the late-18th through the mid-20th Century that were making really exceptional instruments. Other people today would insist that there's no advantage at all to a Strad or del Gesu, and that there are lots of instruments by Storioni, Pressenda, Vuillaume, and others that are just as good. (I don't agree.)
That being said, Stradivari and Guarneri were not so highly-rated in their own lifetimes; the Amati family and Jacob Stainer fit the ideal of tone and power of that time. It was only as violin technique and string and bow technology improved, and older instruments were modified with stronger bass bars and back-tilted necks mortised into top blocks, that the Stradivari and Guarneri instruments became so highly-prized. It's almost as though they only really worked properly when technique and technology advanced to be able to fulfill the tonal goals the makers had for their instruments.
Note that the "superior sound" is also very probably pure imagination
> In fact, a 2012 double-blind study of 21 experienced violinists found that most of the subjects preferred playing the newer instruments; the Stradivarius ranked last in their preferences. Most of them couldn't tell the difference between the old and new instruments, with no significant correlation between an instrument's age and its monetary value.
I worry that the takeaway for people that only read clickbait headlines about the 2012 Stradivarius study was: expert violinists can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive violins.
All the new violins in that study were high-end instruments by trained artisans, which can easily be $100,000 or more. So really the takeaway is: modern players like violins from today's masters of violinmaking as much as or more than those by Stradivarius.
AFAIK there were also cheaper ones, but the more important takeaway, IMO, is that Stradivarius isn't something magical (like this article also claims in the headline), but simply a very well crafted violin. Which is great, but no lost art.
They are master quality violins for the time period and they pretty much set the standard for modern violins.
If they were being made today they would be considered very good quality violins and fetch in the $10,000+ range or more most likely, especially considering the location they are made in, the materials, and the methods employed to build them.
That test compares them to modern violins. Maybe comparing them with their contemporaries would provide more accurate results? I know I prefer the sound of a Guarneri violin, but Strads are reputed to have better piercing power for carrying to the back of a concert hall, which was definitely an advantage in the days before electric amplification and computationally modeled and strategically baffled reverberant chambers for maximum audio enjoyment over the widest possible range of listeners.
Looks like it was only 3 Strads and 3 new violins, which were selected from a pool of 15 submitted by violinmakers. So only really good violins. (But also a very small sample.)
8 players chose a Strad as their favorite, so it's not as clear-cut as "new violins are better." It's more like, Strads are in a similar league, but do not outclass, new violins, despite costing an order of magnitude+ more. But then again, they are pieces of rare collectible art that are hundreds of year old–it's kind of amazing that you can play them at all!
So it's more like: imagine if there were a handful of surviving vintage audio cables from the 1600s (okay, the 1800s?) that performed almost as well as modern ones. I imagine they'd cost more money. And that wouldn't be so crazy, given their history.
Here's the original study & NYT coverage for reference:
>I worry that the takeaway for people that only read clickbait headlines about the 2012 Stradivarius study was: expert violinists can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive violins.
A key point that's omitted in most of the reporting is that the Strads were loaned to the organisers on the condition that they not alter their setup in any way, whereas all the modern violins were adjusted and given new strings immediately before the test. It's also not true that the testers couldn't tell the difference between the new and old violins; they weren't asked whether they could tell, they were only asked which they preferred.
I think that goes for all violins. I had two years worth of lessons and never managed to get to a point that I felt that it was time well spent. Compared to other instruments which are much more rewarding initially I found the violin to be absolutely beautiful to listen to when played by an accomplished violinist but a total horror to actually master.
May I ask - did you have a previous background in music? When I think of my own experiences and those of not only my kids but other musicians I've observed, two years is really just a starting point (IE: you should not have expected to have any degree of proficiency unless you already have considerable musical background)
No, I started out with violin, then moved to piano, did nothing for 5 years, then played saxophone for 17 years and then stopped for a couple of decades.
The big difference between violin and say piano is that with a piano if you hit a key with a certain velocity it will make a certain sound. Over and over again. On the violin it isn't nearly that simple and just forming the tone will take a long time (in a way you never stop getting better at that).
That's a really interesting observation you make, and one where I'll have to think on it for a bit. One of my thought exercises on this is to think about Glen Gould vs. Simone Dinnerstein's interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations. There's something I like about the way Dinnerstein hits those keys that is different to my ear than Gould.
There is the myth of 'touch', the problem with the myth is that the piano was designed with the very explicit goal of eliminating it, just like it's predecessor, the harpsichord.
A fun illustration of this with violin is this TwoSetViolin video [1] where they and 8 non-violinist musician friends play a game similar to "Telephone". They split into two teams each consisting of one of the TwoSetViolin violinists and 4 of the others.
Each round one of the violinists plays a simple melody for one non-violinist member of the other team. Then that person takes the violin and tries to play it for another non-violinist member of their team and so until the last non-violinist plays it for the violinist on their team. If the violinist can identify the piece their team gets a point.
Oh that brings back some painful memories, hilarious though, and some of them are surprisingly good! (and some are just horrific). The most clear memory I have from those days is that during one of the lessons one of the violin teachers dogs keeled over and died. I think she blamed me for that...
It also makes me wonder if I would be able to get any sound out of a violin today.
iirc there were two studies that included audience preference and performer preference, and the truth is the sound is typically average for a high end violin, there are much better contemporary offerings.
Woodworker here.
Yeah, the title is literally wrong - someone pointed out that they a/b test titles, etc. So just ars being ars i guess.
The paper doesn't claim it's the varnish, it claims it's the wood treatment and its effect on density. That would make some sense.
The varnish is the finishing layer that is on top. That layer is also, fwiw, about 3-5 mils most of the time (IE 0.003-0.005 inches). Depends obviously on what and why (IE marine finishes are thicker, etc). It's affect on sound is almost certainly near nil.
If you could produce serious damping effects with 0.003-0.005 of a coating, we'd use it on walls, etc.
In reality, mass is much more important, which is why the treatment affecting the moisture content and density of wood would make more sense.
Wood’s quality don’t change much once it’s harvested. Old wood is more often from natural forests where trees grow slowly due to resource competition and therefore have tighter growth rings. New wood is usually from lumber farms where trees are planted and managed such that they grow quickly and end up being less dense.
Doesn't the moisture content change over time after the wood is harvested, leading to small changes in size of the wood?
I recall seeing instrument making videos where they mentioned the importance of using wood that had aged long enough to stabilize so that dimensions would not change after it was on the instrument. Some instruments have parts whose dimensions are critical.
Moisture content changes to equilibrium with environment. The rate at which this happens is dependent on how well sealed it is, but as there is permeability, and time, it will happen ;)
The only exception is if the wood is transformed in a way that does not enable it to absorb water (or as much of it), such as petrification, etc.
I don't know much about wood in respect to drying/moisture, but I remember reading about the "enertia" house where they used wood with a certain resin that would phase change around room temperature to be comfortable naturally.
When doing woodworking, you typically want to let the wood get comfortable to the controlled temperature and humidity in the workshop for a couple days. This lets the wood warp and expand/contract to settle in a consistent shape and size. Then you'll cut it and fasten it together so that when the humidity and temperature does change, the joinery keeps the wood in the intended shape.
Probably. Professional musicians are unable to distinguish between modern violins and Stradivari. It’s just hype. The key point is summarized in this very article: “In fact, a 2012 double-blind study of 21 experienced violinists found that most of the subjects preferred playing the newer instruments; the Stradivarius ranked last in their preferences. Most of them couldn't tell the difference between the old and new instruments, with no significant correlation between an instrument's age and its monetary value.”
I stopped reading Ars regularly when they started replacing articles with videos. Apparently that was a commandment to them from on high, so I expect the authors don't have a lot of control on the final form of their articles.
Finishes like stain or paint as well as adhesives in the manufacturing industry are often called out in mils or thousandths of an inch. We use something called a thin film test to ensure paint is the correct thickness so that really tight tolerances can be maintained. We also using tiny glass beads of a consistent diameter that are mixed in with certain types of adhesives to create a controlled bondline thickness. We have a part that requires a really tightly controlled thermal interface to a circuit board. The solution is to use a specific amount of epoxy mixed with a specific amount of boron nitride powder and a specific amount of glass beads to have a consistent thermal conductivity for every squirt of the glue.
I think that if Stadivari were alive today making violins using the same materials and techniques, the instrument would not sound the same as those cherished over the centuries.
New wood stringed instruments do not sound as good as old, well-played instruments. I think the reason Stradivari violins sound so good is that they are so old and have been played for centuries.
Over time, vibrating wood with oscillating strings, it changes the wood, the atoms in the wood will literally eventually align in such a way that the wooden pieces themselves become tuned to specific complimentary frequencies, increasing sustain and improving timbre.
> Over time, vibrating wood with oscillating strings, it changes the wood, the atoms in the wood will literally eventually align in such a way that the wooden pieces themselves become tuned to specific complimentary frequencies, increasing sustain and improving timbre.
Awesome hypothesis. Should be testable. E.g. exposing the wood to extended high amplitude sounds?
And if done changes the tone of the instrument. Is not unknown amongst the acoustic guitar players that you can improve the tone by subjecting the instrument to recorded music for a _long_ time.
Just so we are clear, to my understanding, I believe your claim is equivalent to:
Take 2 (2 * n in order to account for variations in individual instruments) instruments as close to identical as possible. Tune both instruments. Digitally record the sound profile of each one. Place one in a silent chamber. Place the other in a chamber with a music source. Ensures all other parameters of the chambers are equal (temperature, humidity, sunlight, etc.). After x amount of time, take the instruments from the chambers. Digitally record the sound profile of each one a second time. The outcome you claim is that the delta for the instrument in the music chamber is noticeably different to the delta of the instrument in the quiet chamber.
Furthermore you claim that this effect is known among guitar players.
I suggest that in addition to the effect being highly improbable, no person exists with actual knowledge of such a phenomenon, only with belief about it and anecdotal evidence that does not account for other parameters. I suggest that all anecdotal evidence can be explained by a combination of:
- survivorship bias (good sounding instruments are taken care of and survive longer)
- differences in maintenance, environmental conditions, source materials, construction technique
- differences in use (being constantly properly tensioned and calibrated compared to wood working unconstrained)
- observer bias (a beloved or famed instrument will be favoured)
I suggest that good sounding instruments are not left unplayed yet properly cared for and therefore no one has ever observed such a phenomenon. Chances are, any cared for instrument will also be played, therefore what people have observed is the difference between pampered instruments and neglected instruments.
If you actually have any evidence, please back up your claim.
So, I’m unclear on the outcome measures. Some sort of shift in the power spectral density? E.g., play all 5 strings 10 times and average— then blast with sound for extended time (guitar music, single tone, white noise, silence) then repeat measures?
I do not know whether age has an effect on violin sound. Highly plausible that it does through a multitude of ways.
But this:
> Over time, vibrating wood with oscillating strings, it changes the wood, the atoms in the wood will literally eventually align in such a way that the wooden pieces themselves become tuned to specific complimentary frequencies,
This is a textbook case of bullshit. A clasical case of using scientific words to sound more convincing.
What you are claiming is literally that wood cristalises. Unless you actually have research with electron-microscope pictures to demonstrate such a claim, you are talking crap and spewing it with confidence.
"atoms in the wood will literally eventually align" is analogous to to homeopathy. Compare "The water molecules in the glass of water vibrate according the energy level of the information of the message you shout at it."
I've owned several acoustic guitar over the last 50 years and guitar tone changes over time, based on how much music it hears/makes. If you take a midrange guitar and put it on a stand near a speaker, and subject it to moderately loud music for days on end the sound _does_ change for the better. This is a commonly observed affect. Other guitarists have mentioned it to me.
Now maybe op didn't word the physics and material science precisely, but what they describe is real. Perhaps you have a better explanation for a commonly observed phenomena.
I was not suggesting pieces of the instrument turn into diamond. Everything vibrates at some frequency. Sympathetic resonance occurs when a passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic. What I and others are suggesting is very similar to this phenomenon. The wooden body of the instrument changes over time as it is resonated by its own strings, such that it settles in such a way to be resonant of a fundamental frequency. For an acoustic guitar, depending on how it is played, this may mean the entire back piece of the guitar tunes itself to E, A, D, G, or C, as these are the most common open chords due to how the guitar is tuned.
I'm not an acoustical physicist nor a luthier. Perhaps I've used the wrong terms. But I think maybe you can't see the forest for a tree blocking your view, which you've gotten hung up on.
Here is a bad citation.[1] Your searchfu is probably better than mine. Feel free to find a better citation.
You suggest that I do not see the forest for the trees.
I say that words have meanings, and that extraordinary claims need evidence.
A material in which atoms (or molecules) are aligned is called a crystal. The process by which atoms align is called crystallisation. If we expand the concept of alignment we may consider atoms that are part of a polymer molecule to be "aligned". A material in which larger structures are aligned is a metamaterial. Beyond this level, referring to the alignment of atoms does not make sense.
But claiming that there is any crystallisation happening in a finished wooden stringed instrument requires evidence because it is implausible.
If we refer to polymers, wood and glue and lacquer all contain polymers. But claiming that those polymers are in any way affected by sound also requires evidence.
Also claiming that wooden instruments contain metamaterials and that the structure of those metamaterials can be altered by sound, similarly requires evidence.
What I am saying is that you not only claimed the existence of an unlikely phenomenon, but you also confidently asserted that it can be explained by physics that contradicts current knowledge. I am claiming that this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. I have read the page you link and find it unconvincing.
In my comment to Perenti ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31594035 ) I have proposed an experiment to measure such a phenomenon and proposed alternative explanations for the anecdata.
> You suggest that I do not see the forest for the trees.
Yes, that is right. That is exactly right. You are hanging on words I used, in order to introduce new words and ideas in your first post, so that you can say I am wrong, and even after I explained further, you are then repeating yourself and still arguing against my first post. You are indeed staring closely and intently at a single tree, when everyone else is talking about the forest. Here, I'll quote the citation I used:
> As you play a new guitar (or other wooden instrument), the fibers in the wood settle somewhat due to the vibration, and over time this causes the wood to become stiffer, more stable, and more resonant, which in turn improves the sound.
Different woods experience this phenomenon differently; for example, spruce takes about a year of playing to break in, and a guitar with a spruce top will sound better after a year of playing than it did right out of the box. After that, the aging process is slower and the marginal improvements smaller. Cedar, on the other hand, breaks in both sooner and more steadily---you may notice a slight improvement in resonance earlier than you would with a spruce top, but the overall improvement after a year may not be as much as with spruce.
When I shake a box of sand, the grains will realign, with the larger grains sifting to the top. I suppose you now think I am making crystals with a box of sand? Your employment of "crystals" is a straw man.
From wikipedia: "In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (flows) under an applied shear stress, or external force"
Sawdust may be a fluid but wood is definitely not a fluid. And in any fluid, the particles are not in any meaningful way "aligned".
What you are describing with different grain sizes is similar to the behaviour of different density liquids like oil and water. They are still in no meaningful way aligned.
So unless you want to claim that a guitar is a fluid, even this interpretation does not apply.
What I am saying is precisely that "the fibers in the wood settle somewhat due to the vibration" is a bullshit claim spouted with utter confidence and lacking any king of evidence.
I am NOT claiming that instruments do not "break in".
I am asserting that this does not happen due to exposure to sound or music. I am asserting that if you do the experiment I describe, there will be no measurable difference beyond individual variation (that is why I proposed repeating the experiment on 2 * n instruments). And I assert that playing the instruments from the same experiment in a double blind listener test no one will be able to observe a difference between the 2 sets of instruments beyond just guessing.
I am claiming that this whole idea is the acoustic equivalent of audiophile grade ethernet cables.
It is merely counterexample, and my use of it was intended to show that your employment of crystals is a straw man fallacy. You employed it only to attack it, but crystal was never any part of my argument. Love repeating myself.
I saw an article a while back about how, much like counterfeits that fool all the experts look amateurish after a few decades, the violins that compare well to Stradivariuses in these double blind studies eventually get considered inferior to new violins or at least go out of style. Something really funny is going on with how we perceive these old Italian violins and it's not all reputation-based placebo effect.
Somebody also discovers a different "secret of the Stradivari" every decade or so. Thirty years ago people were going to make carbon-fiber composite violins that imitated the mechanical properties of the wood used in them, for example.
None of the Stradivarius violins are in their original condition (not even the "almost never been played" Messiah Stradivarius).
There was a time where Baroque violins would get their neck removed and re-glued at a larger angle, along with a bridge replacement. This happened to every single Stradivarius ever made.
And then, there's the shift to modern steel strings.
And most of them have been opened multiple times to seal cracks in the wood.
Off-topic here but it does have to do with top-end musical instruments, and having the big name.
Bosendorfer [1] is trying (IMHO, without total success) to displace Steinway as the premier piano for concerts.
A couple items in the Wikipedia article made me LOL:
> In his memoirs, Arthur Rubinstein recounts having insisted on a Bechstein instead of the hall's Bösendorfer before a recital in Austria.
When my teacher moved away, she gave me her Bechstein on indefinite loan. It had a cracked soundboard, but she felt that it should nonetheless be worth $20,000 or so. A piano tech looked at it and said, "Maybe $2,000."
> Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett performed the solo improvisations (his Köln Concert) at the Cologne Opera House in Cologne, Germany on 24 January 1975 on a Bösendorfer and became a Steinway & Sons artist in 1981.
“The Red Violin” is a late 90’s movie about a famous and beautiful-sounding violin (clearly based on a Strad) that is passed down through the ages, which has a unique varnish on it.
89 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadIt's a report about a new study that claims that it is NOT the varnish. Rather it was a secret recipe of wood preservative used by the Cremonese makers Stradivari and Guarneri to impregnate the spruce.
The linked papers are much better than the article.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202105252
http://onemanz.com/guitar/articles-2/torrefication/
I liked music a LOT, had recordings of dozens of the most famous pieces from Bach through Tchaikovsky.
And I was a math grad student, but my dorm building was next to the music school with a lot of music majors. One of the violin students put his old Italian violin under my left chin and gave me a first lesson. So, I signed up for a course in violin, just me and one teacher, a violin student in the school. He was terrific, far ahead of what I as a beginner, deserved! E.g., after the semester was over, he played the Brahms concerto in Toronto!
But I did get a start. I continued, and took some more lessons off and on. Eventually I made it through a few pages of some of the famous music, e.g., the Bach Chaconne.
The student there at Indiana University I met again later, and he had swapped his old Italian violin for one made in NYC. His statement was that what he got new was as good as any of the old Italian instruments. That is, net, somehow some modern violin makers have learned how to make violins that are among the best ever.
Just how to do that? Uh, instead of what is in the OP, just talk to some such violin makers!
There's no one change that, applied indiscriminately to an instrument, will reliably improve it. There are lots of things that work together to make a great instrument, and a great maker knows how to balance them.
(Side note: I'm also confident that there are instruments being made today that will equal Stradivari's given time enough. In my own experience, one viola made by Michael Darnton of Chicago was markedly better than any of the old Italian instruments I've played, though they were not of the first rank. That was an instrument fit for any use, and if I could have afforded it, I would never have let it go.)
At least the dealer that handed her a Strad told her what it was. She preferred the little Italian.
I know nothing about the subject, but decided to do a quick search about this guy.
https://soundpostonline.com/profile-michael-darnton-in-his-o...
> Essentially, the quality of violins dropped precipitously after the deaths of Antonio Stradivari (1737) and Joseph Guarneri del Gesu (1745), and it’s (sic) has never recovered. I figure that if I could ever merely replicate the work of Stradivari, I’d be the second or third best violinmaker that has ever lived.
Is this a commonly accepted viewpoint in the violin world? It just seems so surreal to think that it would take ~275 years just to match the craftsmanship and talent, let alone exceed it.
That being said, Stradivari and Guarneri were not so highly-rated in their own lifetimes; the Amati family and Jacob Stainer fit the ideal of tone and power of that time. It was only as violin technique and string and bow technology improved, and older instruments were modified with stronger bass bars and back-tilted necks mortised into top blocks, that the Stradivari and Guarneri instruments became so highly-prized. It's almost as though they only really worked properly when technique and technology advanced to be able to fulfill the tonal goals the makers had for their instruments.
> In fact, a 2012 double-blind study of 21 experienced violinists found that most of the subjects preferred playing the newer instruments; the Stradivarius ranked last in their preferences. Most of them couldn't tell the difference between the old and new instruments, with no significant correlation between an instrument's age and its monetary value.
FTA
In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8q3zrCYMRw, they managed to differentiate most high end violins (4/5 tests - 10 Violins).
Incidentally, the only mistake was with one of the two Stradivari examples.
All the new violins in that study were high-end instruments by trained artisans, which can easily be $100,000 or more. So really the takeaway is: modern players like violins from today's masters of violinmaking as much as or more than those by Stradivarius.
If they were being made today they would be considered very good quality violins and fetch in the $10,000+ range or more most likely, especially considering the location they are made in, the materials, and the methods employed to build them.
Classic literature is the same way. It's classic because of its influence, not just quality.
8 players chose a Strad as their favorite, so it's not as clear-cut as "new violins are better." It's more like, Strads are in a similar league, but do not outclass, new violins, despite costing an order of magnitude+ more. But then again, they are pieces of rare collectible art that are hundreds of year old–it's kind of amazing that you can play them at all!
So it's more like: imagine if there were a handful of surviving vintage audio cables from the 1600s (okay, the 1800s?) that performed almost as well as modern ones. I imagine they'd cost more money. And that wouldn't be so crazy, given their history.
Here's the original study & NYT coverage for reference:
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1619443114
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science/in-play-off-betwe...
A key point that's omitted in most of the reporting is that the Strads were loaned to the organisers on the condition that they not alter their setup in any way, whereas all the modern violins were adjusted and given new strings immediately before the test. It's also not true that the testers couldn't tell the difference between the new and old violins; they weren't asked whether they could tell, they were only asked which they preferred.
The big difference between violin and say piano is that with a piano if you hit a key with a certain velocity it will make a certain sound. Over and over again. On the violin it isn't nearly that simple and just forming the tone will take a long time (in a way you never stop getting better at that).
http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3139/can-a...
Each round one of the violinists plays a simple melody for one non-violinist member of the other team. Then that person takes the violin and tries to play it for another non-violinist member of their team and so until the last non-violinist plays it for the violinist on their team. If the violinist can identify the piece their team gets a point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJYaYHmCmAE
It also makes me wonder if I would be able to get any sound out of a violin today.
(Orchestra supporter and string player dad over here, so genuinely curious)
As quoted, this isn't a test for superior sound, but rather whether a violinist preferred playing a certain instrument.
The paper doesn't claim it's the varnish, it claims it's the wood treatment and its effect on density. That would make some sense.
The varnish is the finishing layer that is on top. That layer is also, fwiw, about 3-5 mils most of the time (IE 0.003-0.005 inches). Depends obviously on what and why (IE marine finishes are thicker, etc). It's affect on sound is almost certainly near nil.
If you could produce serious damping effects with 0.003-0.005 of a coating, we'd use it on walls, etc.
In reality, mass is much more important, which is why the treatment affecting the moisture content and density of wood would make more sense.
Wouldn't the older wood just be lighter, dryer and less dense?
I recall seeing instrument making videos where they mentioned the importance of using wood that had aged long enough to stabilize so that dimensions would not change after it was on the instrument. Some instruments have parts whose dimensions are critical.
The only exception is if the wood is transformed in a way that does not enable it to absorb water (or as much of it), such as petrification, etc.
It's pretty unusual to use green/undried wood for anything, although I've heard of using it for log-cabin type things.
I wonder if this is green wood
https://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/a-home-that-heats...
Are you saying the varnish is that thick, or the layer the varnish is on is that thick?
Painting on a 3-5mm thick layer of varnish sounds like a lot of coats.
The below link is from someone who makes violins and they make the top 2.7-2.8mm total thickness.
https://www.violincellomaker.com/2021/03/17/how-the-thicknes...
Edit: rereading your comment makes me think that you’re saying the total top thickness is usually 3-5mm.
New wood stringed instruments do not sound as good as old, well-played instruments. I think the reason Stradivari violins sound so good is that they are so old and have been played for centuries.
Over time, vibrating wood with oscillating strings, it changes the wood, the atoms in the wood will literally eventually align in such a way that the wooden pieces themselves become tuned to specific complimentary frequencies, increasing sustain and improving timbre.
Awesome hypothesis. Should be testable. E.g. exposing the wood to extended high amplitude sounds?
Just so we are clear, to my understanding, I believe your claim is equivalent to:
Take 2 (2 * n in order to account for variations in individual instruments) instruments as close to identical as possible. Tune both instruments. Digitally record the sound profile of each one. Place one in a silent chamber. Place the other in a chamber with a music source. Ensures all other parameters of the chambers are equal (temperature, humidity, sunlight, etc.). After x amount of time, take the instruments from the chambers. Digitally record the sound profile of each one a second time. The outcome you claim is that the delta for the instrument in the music chamber is noticeably different to the delta of the instrument in the quiet chamber.
Furthermore you claim that this effect is known among guitar players.
I suggest that in addition to the effect being highly improbable, no person exists with actual knowledge of such a phenomenon, only with belief about it and anecdotal evidence that does not account for other parameters. I suggest that all anecdotal evidence can be explained by a combination of:
- survivorship bias (good sounding instruments are taken care of and survive longer)
- differences in maintenance, environmental conditions, source materials, construction technique
- differences in use (being constantly properly tensioned and calibrated compared to wood working unconstrained)
- observer bias (a beloved or famed instrument will be favoured)
I suggest that good sounding instruments are not left unplayed yet properly cared for and therefore no one has ever observed such a phenomenon. Chances are, any cared for instrument will also be played, therefore what people have observed is the difference between pampered instruments and neglected instruments.
If you actually have any evidence, please back up your claim.
But this:
> Over time, vibrating wood with oscillating strings, it changes the wood, the atoms in the wood will literally eventually align in such a way that the wooden pieces themselves become tuned to specific complimentary frequencies,
This is a textbook case of bullshit. A clasical case of using scientific words to sound more convincing.
What you are claiming is literally that wood cristalises. Unless you actually have research with electron-microscope pictures to demonstrate such a claim, you are talking crap and spewing it with confidence.
"atoms in the wood will literally eventually align" is analogous to to homeopathy. Compare "The water molecules in the glass of water vibrate according the energy level of the information of the message you shout at it."
Now maybe op didn't word the physics and material science precisely, but what they describe is real. Perhaps you have a better explanation for a commonly observed phenomena.
Has anyone tried to quantify this phenomenon?
I'm not an acoustical physicist nor a luthier. Perhaps I've used the wrong terms. But I think maybe you can't see the forest for a tree blocking your view, which you've gotten hung up on.
Here is a bad citation.[1] Your searchfu is probably better than mine. Feel free to find a better citation.
[1] https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/4661/manufacturer-...
I say that words have meanings, and that extraordinary claims need evidence.
A material in which atoms (or molecules) are aligned is called a crystal. The process by which atoms align is called crystallisation. If we expand the concept of alignment we may consider atoms that are part of a polymer molecule to be "aligned". A material in which larger structures are aligned is a metamaterial. Beyond this level, referring to the alignment of atoms does not make sense.
Sound can affect the process of crystallisation of a liquid because the formation of crystals is influenced by pressure. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao2Jfm35XeE
But claiming that there is any crystallisation happening in a finished wooden stringed instrument requires evidence because it is implausible.
If we refer to polymers, wood and glue and lacquer all contain polymers. But claiming that those polymers are in any way affected by sound also requires evidence.
Also claiming that wooden instruments contain metamaterials and that the structure of those metamaterials can be altered by sound, similarly requires evidence.
What I am saying is that you not only claimed the existence of an unlikely phenomenon, but you also confidently asserted that it can be explained by physics that contradicts current knowledge. I am claiming that this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. I have read the page you link and find it unconvincing.
In my comment to Perenti ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31594035 ) I have proposed an experiment to measure such a phenomenon and proposed alternative explanations for the anecdata.
Yes, that is right. That is exactly right. You are hanging on words I used, in order to introduce new words and ideas in your first post, so that you can say I am wrong, and even after I explained further, you are then repeating yourself and still arguing against my first post. You are indeed staring closely and intently at a single tree, when everyone else is talking about the forest. Here, I'll quote the citation I used:
> As you play a new guitar (or other wooden instrument), the fibers in the wood settle somewhat due to the vibration, and over time this causes the wood to become stiffer, more stable, and more resonant, which in turn improves the sound.
Different woods experience this phenomenon differently; for example, spruce takes about a year of playing to break in, and a guitar with a spruce top will sound better after a year of playing than it did right out of the box. After that, the aging process is slower and the marginal improvements smaller. Cedar, on the other hand, breaks in both sooner and more steadily---you may notice a slight improvement in resonance earlier than you would with a spruce top, but the overall improvement after a year may not be as much as with spruce.
When I shake a box of sand, the grains will realign, with the larger grains sifting to the top. I suppose you now think I am making crystals with a box of sand? Your employment of "crystals" is a straw man.
From wikipedia: "In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (flows) under an applied shear stress, or external force"
Sawdust may be a fluid but wood is definitely not a fluid. And in any fluid, the particles are not in any meaningful way "aligned". What you are describing with different grain sizes is similar to the behaviour of different density liquids like oil and water. They are still in no meaningful way aligned.
So unless you want to claim that a guitar is a fluid, even this interpretation does not apply.
What I am saying is precisely that "the fibers in the wood settle somewhat due to the vibration" is a bullshit claim spouted with utter confidence and lacking any king of evidence.
I am NOT claiming that instruments do not "break in".
I am asserting that this does not happen due to exposure to sound or music. I am asserting that if you do the experiment I describe, there will be no measurable difference beyond individual variation (that is why I proposed repeating the experiment on 2 * n instruments). And I assert that playing the instruments from the same experiment in a double blind listener test no one will be able to observe a difference between the 2 sets of instruments beyond just guessing.
I am claiming that this whole idea is the acoustic equivalent of audiophile grade ethernet cables.
Somebody also discovers a different "secret of the Stradivari" every decade or so. Thirty years ago people were going to make carbon-fiber composite violins that imitated the mechanical properties of the wood used in them, for example.
Here's an episode of NOVA (PBS, WGBH) from 1982 all about it
https://archive.org/details/GreatViolinMystery
There was a time where Baroque violins would get their neck removed and re-glued at a larger angle, along with a bridge replacement. This happened to every single Stradivarius ever made.
And then, there's the shift to modern steel strings.
And most of them have been opened multiple times to seal cracks in the wood.
Bosendorfer [1] is trying (IMHO, without total success) to displace Steinway as the premier piano for concerts.
A couple items in the Wikipedia article made me LOL:
> In his memoirs, Arthur Rubinstein recounts having insisted on a Bechstein instead of the hall's Bösendorfer before a recital in Austria.
When my teacher moved away, she gave me her Bechstein on indefinite loan. It had a cracked soundboard, but she felt that it should nonetheless be worth $20,000 or so. A piano tech looked at it and said, "Maybe $2,000."
> Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett performed the solo improvisations (his Köln Concert) at the Cologne Opera House in Cologne, Germany on 24 January 1975 on a Bösendorfer and became a Steinway & Sons artist in 1981.
[1] https://www.boesendorfer.com/en/pianos/pianos
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/stradivar...