Stradivarius sound quality.... is like oxygen-free, copper speaker cables then?!
Man uses CAT scanner to copy Stradivarius
Attempts to recreate the renowned Stradivarius violin continued this week with boffins proposing an all-new approach using CAT scans and CAD software. After studying the anatomy of several instruments using a computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanner, Mora, Minnesota-based radiologist Steven Sirr managed to get hold of a …
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Wednesday 30th November 2011 18:32 GMT Cazzo Enorme
Yep. It's a load of bollocks to inflate the worth of a few old violins, many of doubtful provenance, that have been repaired numerous times with new parts. In the guitar world, companies like Gretsch are going to similar lengths (including CAT scans) to replicate the beaten up guitars once owned by the likes of George Harrison. Meanwhile, people are waiting months to have CAT scans done on the NHS ... not that the hundreds of scans being done on these instruments has anything to do with the waiting lists, but it does put this pointless exercise into perspective.
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Wednesday 30th November 2011 18:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not so much
Many classical musicians can tell a Strad or Guarneri just from hearing the sound. That said, a great player can make a mediocre fiddle sound pretty good, and a bad player can make a Strad sound like a Chinese student violin. So, interesting study, but until we have the verdict of some real violin experts, rather than the violin's makers and a bunch of radiographers, the case remains unproven. After all, part of the Strad recipe may well be, 'make great violin, then play it daily for 300 years'. Thankfully, Strads do tend to end up with players rather than locked in Russian billionaires' vaults.
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Thursday 1st December 2011 12:18 GMT Cazzo Enorme
@FatsBrannigan: "Many classical musicians can tell a Strad or Guarneri just from hearing the sound."
Only because they already either know it's a Strad or Guarneri beforehand, or that the player they are listening to regularly plays such an instrument (most often on loan from the owner who bought it as an investment or status symbol). In tests, the tones of several Stradivarius have been proven to be pretty variable - as you'd expect from hand made violins from the pre-industrial era - giving the lie to the idea of a distinct "Stradivarius" tone.
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Thursday 1st December 2011 10:43 GMT Cazzo Enorme
For a fuller tone try listening to a competent player using an electric violin - for example, there's a guy called Ed Alleyne Johnson who is well worth checking out. I played my first gig, way back in 1991, supporting a band he was playing in. At the end of the set, the rest of the band walked off and Ed carried on playing, adding layers of sound with various guitar pedals. Absolutely amazing music, and not the sound of a violin that most people would expect.
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Wednesday 30th November 2011 20:20 GMT Hollerith 1
Mystique
Yo-Yo Ma was given a rare Stad cello and, although officially revering it, he doesn't play it, because the sound is not that good. Everything decays. Some Strads are like the old story of the knife: same knife I had when I was a boy. Of course, the handle's been replaced a couple of time, ditto the blade...
Some modern virtuosi are shrugging off the cult fo the Strad. Christian Tetzlaff, for instance, did his own sound test (listened to some) and put aside his Strad for a modern violin.
It takes craft, knowledge of sound and materials, and experience to make a good violin, and I am sorry that modrn luthiers are so overshadowed by instruments that were brilliant in the 19th century, but are now either dying or composites so far from the original that they are almost fakes.
To my fellow posters who hate the sound of a violin: have you ever heard a top violinist playing one of the great violin concertos live? If not, then you have missed one of life's greatest treasures.
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Wednesday 30th November 2011 20:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Or the fiddle?
In fact there is a huge range of sounds and music played on instruments that are all, essentially, violins. We take for granted the violin and its siblings as the backbone of the western orchestral sound. As so solo instrument, western classical is very far from its only character. Irish or European folk are two examples, an even more different one is the violin of South Indian classical music.
Give the violin a chance: they do not all sound the same!
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Thursday 1st December 2011 09:38 GMT Wombling_Free
What's the difference between a violin and a trampoline?
You have to take off your shoes before you jump on the trampoline.
But seriously, I would think a true audiophile would not only be able to tell the difference between a Stradivarius & a Yamaha, he (they always are 'he') would also be able to tell you what side the player parted their hair that morning - as long as he heard it over oxygen-free copper suspended by monopolar magnetic fields generated by raw ironstone dug by monks from the the Himilayas, through speakers of pure chinese silk spun by virgins, in platinum-plated osmium enclosures. You can hear the difference, you know!
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