The Brilliance of a Stradivari Violin Might Rest Within Its Wood
Does anyone know if the researchers have made an effort to quantify the acoustics they are trying to recreate or explain?<p>The NYTimes article summarizes it this way: &quot;For hundreds of years, the best violin players have almost unanimously said they prefer a Stradivari or a Guarneri instrument... Why nobody has been able to replicate that sound remains one of the most enduring mysteries of instrument building.<p>Here&#x27;s the thing, is there actually a notably different sound?  I have read the study that shows professional musicians don&#x27;t necessarily prefer the sound of a stradivarius over a high quality new instrument, that doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean they don&#x27;t sound different.  How good are they at telling the difference between these instruments, is it something a non-musician could notice or be trained to notice relatively easily.<p>Ideally, a researcher would be able to quantify the tone that is elusive.  Alternatively, a team of listeners who can clearly distinguish between the two, reliable, would be useful.  Because it sounds like the goal here isn&#x27;t so much to get a really nice sound, it&#x27;s to figure out why these instruments sound <i>different</i> (if indeed they do!)<p>I read the abstract, and it sounds like they&#x27;ve analyzed the composition of the violins and have found some notable chemical differences in the wood.  It&#x27;s not an uninteresting result, but I still have to wonder if we&#x27;re a few steps ahead of ourselves here.  First things first, do Stradivarius instruments, as a group, have an identifiably different tone or acoustic quality that makes it possible, either through acoustic measurements or trained human evaluation, to reliably classify them apart from other instruments.