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ANother violin testt
- Thread starter Gregadd
- Start date
I have to say, I'm NOT surprised by the results.
Be it violins or stereo components, people can tell what they prefer and you'll get an honest response as long as they cannot see what they are using.
Be it violins or stereo components, people can tell what they prefer and you'll get an honest response as long as they cannot see what they are using.
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I might just chime in here because I have a background as an audiophile since the early 1970s and having played the violin to A. Mus. A (diploma) level from the early 1980s. Firstly, most professional musicians are not audiophiles. Most of the ones I knew had very basic audio systems. Their focus is a different one to actual sound in terms of pure technical analysis per se. With a professional musician it is all about sound production - that is, employing a technique to get the best out of the instrument you have and the music you are playing. It is a bit hard to explain but with many pro violinists it almost works like a switch. They are happy with a $100 sound system but then they will go to an obsessive degree to get every nuance out of an instrument, fanatically experimenting with bowings and fingerings to get a tiny phrase right. I well remember some lessons where 9/10ths of the movement for that week was despatched in 10 minutes and the final 50 minutes was spent on two bars...
Anyway, I just have to say that at the outset, not everyone has the same level of ability when it comes to distinguishing differences as alluded to by the experiments here. For my own part, I've never had trouble identifying expensive antique instruments from reasonably priced modern ones, though it is true it does not follow the former are better than the latter. Back in the early 1980s I took part in a test - over the radio using a Sony desktop mono FM receiver - where the listeners had to pick between a Strad, Del Gesu, Vuillaume and a modern instrument. I picked all four of them with ease, even with the massive handicap of listening over FM radio using a battery powered Sony radio. I also just did that test at the Daily Telegraph link above and got three out of three for that as well - on my laptop via $50 earbuds. Mind you, the violin playing was abysmal in that link - absolutely horrid, so it is not a good test.
Another critical thing to understand too is that a lot of what makes an instrument feel "good" and "expensive" has absolutely zero to do with the instrument itself. It is instead all about the quality of the bow and the setup of the instrument. By setup, I mean bridge size, bridge curvature, distance between the strings, neck angle, the nut (the piece of ebony at the pegbox end of the fingerboard that supports the strong tension), distance between the strings and the fingerboard, the fingerboard curvature, fingerboard wear, ease of string tuning, peg fit, peg movement, sound post tension and sound post position, string type and string gauge. Well those are the main things I look for anyway.
Suffice to say I would rather play a well setup $500 violin with a $5,000 bow than I would a $4 million Del Gesu poorly setup with a $500 bow. And I'd make a better sound with the cheap violin too.
And the final thing. It is acknowledged amongst top professional string players that the player is largely responsible for the actual quality and aesthetic appeal of the sound anyway. My teacher always used to say that David Oistrakh would sound good regardless of what violin he played. Well, the analogy here is with audio equipment versus records / CD, what have you. Most of us agree that the quality of the actual recordings are at least as important - if not more so - than anything else so long as you are already at a decent quality level equipment and setup-wise, and it is the same here. So long as you have a half-decent violin, it is you the player, the bow and the setup that are more important than the instrument, even though the instrument obviously has importance too. But it is not as important as the player in terms of what is required to make a good sound (by that I mean giving an illusion that the violin is great whereas it infact might be modest but the player is excellent). And that is a fact.
I have played a number of expensive Italian violins and yes, they are great but often you can actually get a more pleasing sound from a $10,000 old German violin that is the violin equivalent of a vinyl setup running with single-ended triode amplification. Or you can get a great modern violin that is the equivalent of an incisive and precise NAIM setup. We pick our hifi poison and picking our favourite violins is no different.
I have played a $120,000 violin that I thought sounded like crap. I have played a $5,000 violin that I could happily play the rest of my life and never want anything more. One thing I do agree with - the best Strads and Del Gesus are not worth remotely the money they fetch based on sound alone. It is the craftsmanship (at least for Strads!), the fact that they are antique, the provenance, the materials and the aesthetic visual appeal that really fetches the money. You give your $2 million violin to a professional appraiser to value and they don't actually have to play it. They look at it. That is all they need to do. Any playing is only out of interest and to see if there are setup issues (which might cost a few thousand to fix - a miniscule fraction of the value of the instrument).
Final thing: You could carry out a hundred tests where every participant - expert or layman - gets every instrument wrong. It isn't going to make the values of the big name antique Italian instruments budge by as much as one cent. They will just keep going up and up in value regardless. And that is that. End of story.
PS: I made a couple of home recordings myself using a $12,000 violin and a $600 one. If anyone is interested I could load them up and see if people can work out which is which. The bow was the same for each - around $2,000 value at the time.
Anyway, I just have to say that at the outset, not everyone has the same level of ability when it comes to distinguishing differences as alluded to by the experiments here. For my own part, I've never had trouble identifying expensive antique instruments from reasonably priced modern ones, though it is true it does not follow the former are better than the latter. Back in the early 1980s I took part in a test - over the radio using a Sony desktop mono FM receiver - where the listeners had to pick between a Strad, Del Gesu, Vuillaume and a modern instrument. I picked all four of them with ease, even with the massive handicap of listening over FM radio using a battery powered Sony radio. I also just did that test at the Daily Telegraph link above and got three out of three for that as well - on my laptop via $50 earbuds. Mind you, the violin playing was abysmal in that link - absolutely horrid, so it is not a good test.
Another critical thing to understand too is that a lot of what makes an instrument feel "good" and "expensive" has absolutely zero to do with the instrument itself. It is instead all about the quality of the bow and the setup of the instrument. By setup, I mean bridge size, bridge curvature, distance between the strings, neck angle, the nut (the piece of ebony at the pegbox end of the fingerboard that supports the strong tension), distance between the strings and the fingerboard, the fingerboard curvature, fingerboard wear, ease of string tuning, peg fit, peg movement, sound post tension and sound post position, string type and string gauge. Well those are the main things I look for anyway.
Suffice to say I would rather play a well setup $500 violin with a $5,000 bow than I would a $4 million Del Gesu poorly setup with a $500 bow. And I'd make a better sound with the cheap violin too.
And the final thing. It is acknowledged amongst top professional string players that the player is largely responsible for the actual quality and aesthetic appeal of the sound anyway. My teacher always used to say that David Oistrakh would sound good regardless of what violin he played. Well, the analogy here is with audio equipment versus records / CD, what have you. Most of us agree that the quality of the actual recordings are at least as important - if not more so - than anything else so long as you are already at a decent quality level equipment and setup-wise, and it is the same here. So long as you have a half-decent violin, it is you the player, the bow and the setup that are more important than the instrument, even though the instrument obviously has importance too. But it is not as important as the player in terms of what is required to make a good sound (by that I mean giving an illusion that the violin is great whereas it infact might be modest but the player is excellent). And that is a fact.
I have played a number of expensive Italian violins and yes, they are great but often you can actually get a more pleasing sound from a $10,000 old German violin that is the violin equivalent of a vinyl setup running with single-ended triode amplification. Or you can get a great modern violin that is the equivalent of an incisive and precise NAIM setup. We pick our hifi poison and picking our favourite violins is no different.
I have played a $120,000 violin that I thought sounded like crap. I have played a $5,000 violin that I could happily play the rest of my life and never want anything more. One thing I do agree with - the best Strads and Del Gesus are not worth remotely the money they fetch based on sound alone. It is the craftsmanship (at least for Strads!), the fact that they are antique, the provenance, the materials and the aesthetic visual appeal that really fetches the money. You give your $2 million violin to a professional appraiser to value and they don't actually have to play it. They look at it. That is all they need to do. Any playing is only out of interest and to see if there are setup issues (which might cost a few thousand to fix - a miniscule fraction of the value of the instrument).
Final thing: You could carry out a hundred tests where every participant - expert or layman - gets every instrument wrong. It isn't going to make the values of the big name antique Italian instruments budge by as much as one cent. They will just keep going up and up in value regardless. And that is that. End of story.
PS: I made a couple of home recordings myself using a $12,000 violin and a $600 one. If anyone is interested I could load them up and see if people can work out which is which. The bow was the same for each - around $2,000 value at the time.
Fiddle Faddle, this was a previous related post of yours, on the Oistrakh point http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...violin-I-heard&p=333877&viewfull=1#post333877
+ 1
And it willnot only be honest but accurate too.. Our mind is made up once we know ... Removing the knowledge ...
You know, even assuming the instruments are all set up beautifully and they're all being played with the same bow, the selection of a musical instrument, while it is about sound, is largely about the sound of the instrument in the specific musician's hands. That, I think, renders these tests a pretty moot point.
Tim
Tim
Fascinating post, EVERY musician I've known had little interest w/audiophilia, and I've always wondered why?
And to honest, I completely fail to understand it myself too. To me it is one of the greatest contradictions. I was fortunate enough to learn from one of the best (though admittedly my modest talents did not justify it) and sometimes the obsession with sound could drive me to near insanity or at the very least extreme levels of frustration. Think the equivalent of spending a week moving your Tannoy Westminster speakers a couple of cm here and there and for some inexplicable reason still not being happy...that is the sort of frustrating obsession with sound that my teacher (and others of similar ability) were like. Spending an entire lesson just on a few bars and sometimes I myself - despite being an audiophile - could not hear the slightest difference but apparently the teacher is sometimes happy with how I sound and sometimes not. Mind you, a caveat here is there is an analogy with cornering a fighter. The fighter might have all the techniques down pat but they need an external observer to process the fight with an eye to details their fighter cannot process during the moment as an active participant.
Yet my teacher, with all this obsession for actual sound, then happily puts on a dirty LP borrowed from the local library of Yehudi Menuhin playing a Bartok Romanian Dance and it sits on a turntable that in this day and age would be the bastard love child of a Crossley and a base model Project! At least she had an open reel deck! But that was her husband's (who was also a pro musician and probably a bit more audiophile-ish relatively speaking).
That said, there are a couple of current well-known violinists who are audiophiles. Rafael Todes is probably the best known and he writes eloquently for UK publications. I always avidly read his reviews because I have always found - on hearing the equipment he reviews - that we always see eye to eye (or should that be hear ear to ear) and that he is always looking for the same qualities in equipment that I am.
http://www.allegriquartet.org.uk/rafael.html
Ilya Gringolts is another. I am sure I read at some time (possibly not on the net) that he had a top-notch NAIM system, specifically choosing it because like us, he knows good sound when he hears it.
I agree - and there is also another aspect of physical comfort that does not relate specifically to setup. For example, a genuine untouched Del Gesu actually has quite deep ribs. See here - a rare one that is ostensibly "untouched" - note the deep ribs compared to other instruments:
http://tarisio.com/cozio-archive/cozio-carteggio/the-paganini-cannon-violin/
Sadly many have been cut down over the years or rib heights have diminished as a result of years of repairs and maintenance, but some find this to be uncomfortable, especially people with smaller hands. And it is actually often quite difficult to even pull the sound out of those instruments in relative terms especially as they often had remarkably thick plates. They have incredible projection capabilities and sound exquisite in the concert hall but sometimes they require effort. Compare that to an early model Strad, Amati, Ruggeri, etc where the sound production is effortless and the small instruments fall comfortably under almost any hands and it is like walking down the street in a nice expensive pair of joggers versus running round the athletic stadium in spikes. There was also a period in Stradivari's life (around the 1690s) where he produced "long" instruments. Exactly as the term might sound, they were longer than the standard pattern. Gil Shaham owns one. I've played copies of this model and you'd think an extra 8mm or so might not be a big deal but I found them really uncomfortable. The instrument I ended up with was a modern Del Gesu copy (rib height no taller than anything else and body length only around 354 mm) - really comfortable and easy to pull the sound out of.
Some will say that picking the right instrument is like a marriage. What they mean is that what you may be attracted to won't be what others are and you have to be compatible. This is one of the principal reasons why violins are never valued in monetary terms on their actual sound. Just like if you rate someone as an 8 out of 10 "looker", doesn't mean everyone else will! Someone else's 4 out of 10 might be a 9 out of 10 to me. Believe it or not, the differences I've heard amongst violins is even greater than I've heard amongst speakers (assuming we are talking quality to begin with). It is impossible to imagine a world of hifi where we are all satisfied with one speaker only and it's the same with violins.
Fiddle Faddle, thank you for your inciteful comments and sharing your experience with us. One comment on the actual article. It appears to me that the major conclusion I would reach is that the consensus of the players was that N2 was the best. I would want to know who made N2 and what was the price of that violin. We have friends who play in a professional string quartet (the Alexander String Quartet) and they often play a matched set of instruments made by a well known local luthier, Francis Kuttner. They think the sound of the instruments is quite special. I would agree, having heard them many times.
Your comment about the Del Gesu copy was very interesting. Over 20 years ago, when our daughter was in her early teens, having studied violin for close to ten years, we thought it was time to look for a better instrument for her. She had started with Suzuki violin before her fifth birthday and by that time had advanced to be playing some reasonably advanced pieces (the Bruch 1st Concerto, Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, etc). We were looking for a modern instrument, since we didn't have the money for something old. However, while travelling to the east coast we stopped at the Johnson Violin shop outside Boston to try out some of their instruments. They owned a Del Gesu and let Jennifer play it for a little while. She didn't know what a Del Gesu was, but said it was the easiest violin that she had ever played. Anyway, we ended up buying her a violin made by a Polish luthier who worked in Chicago!
I don't know exactly when the prices of the great Cremonese violins started to soar - maybe related to the dot com bubble, but reading concert programs, it appears that quite a few violinists of a certain age own Strads or other valuable violins (including members of orchestras or chamber groups and not just the top soloists), while today the great young violinists almost always are playing instruments that have been lent to them, sometimes on a long term basis by very wealthy individuals or organizations.
Larry
Your comment about the Del Gesu copy was very interesting. Over 20 years ago, when our daughter was in her early teens, having studied violin for close to ten years, we thought it was time to look for a better instrument for her. She had started with Suzuki violin before her fifth birthday and by that time had advanced to be playing some reasonably advanced pieces (the Bruch 1st Concerto, Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, etc). We were looking for a modern instrument, since we didn't have the money for something old. However, while travelling to the east coast we stopped at the Johnson Violin shop outside Boston to try out some of their instruments. They owned a Del Gesu and let Jennifer play it for a little while. She didn't know what a Del Gesu was, but said it was the easiest violin that she had ever played. Anyway, we ended up buying her a violin made by a Polish luthier who worked in Chicago!
I don't know exactly when the prices of the great Cremonese violins started to soar - maybe related to the dot com bubble, but reading concert programs, it appears that quite a few violinists of a certain age own Strads or other valuable violins (including members of orchestras or chamber groups and not just the top soloists), while today the great young violinists almost always are playing instruments that have been lent to them, sometimes on a long term basis by very wealthy individuals or organizations.
Larry
The prices have always been high - I have a very old book called The Encyclopaedia of the Violin. Old enough that the contemporary profile of Jascha Heifetz shows him as a young man. Back then the best old Italians had already worked themselves into the 6 figure bracket. But you are right - probably over the last 30 years they have gone completely nuts. I also have the Nigel Kennedy book "Always Playing" and there is an entire chapter about acquiring his Del Gesu. His "hit record" (Four Seasons) was instrumental in his ability to purchase it.
When I was sufficiently advanced, my student violin was a Stephano Scarampella (built 1889). We paid about $5K for it in 1981. One of those in good condition today might be getting $70 or $80K, however if you were to value mine with respect to it's condition (it had some problems that effected the value and the reality was that it needed money spent on fixing the setup) it probably wouldn't have done any better than the share market (maybe $40K today).
Still, as the old violins soar as you say to ridiculous prices, the more modern ones begin to take their places at the top end of (relatively) affordable. So mid to late 19th century instruments (e.g. Vuillaume, Pressenda) are now taking the place occupied by the elitist market perhaps 50 plus years ago.
To me it makes sense to do what you did and buy a modern one. There are enough great makers around these days such that most people's desire for a good-performing instrument (as opposed to a work of art) is satisfied at around the same cost as a new family car. Much better than the cost of a house (or mansion).
FF, I've had Raphael at my place, he actually quite liked my sound. I told him his effusive review of a Direct Drive tt led, ahem, directly, to me going DD (in effect).
I then REALLY impressed him by clipping my air bearing linear tracking arm, sending it carrering across the platter, and demolishing my stylus in the process.
He was HIGHLY impressed, and never returned LOL.
He later told me he was so sorry to see me do this, but just too busy playing to pop back.
Re professional musicians being obsessive about their setup and technique, and us about gear and set up, I really believe it's the production of the sound that matters to musicians, and putting into physical form what they hear in their heads. The "aesthetics" of the creation process is almost secondary to the quality of the sound finally put down onto tape.
Take Adele. I'm sure she is an amazing artist, w/the greatest artistic intentions. Probably practices voice exercises, gargles w/exotic concoctions, practices yoga, follows any number of OCD personal habits, and has all the inner fire needed for an artistic career. This she takes intensively seriously, as we do w/our gear.
Then she puts he artistry down on tape, and then probably has no opinion as to how it sounds, and leaves the criticism to us.
Then our OCD as a'philes takes over.
I was always amazed to read an interview a few yrs ago w/Geddy Lee of Rush, who in the 80s in the early days of digital, used to run Apogees and Krells. And fed info to them via the cheapest of cheap Phillips cdp. I don't know what that says.
In the drumming world which I'm reasonably familiar with, I run a set of genuine 60's Gretsch Roundbadge drums, the very line that the jazz greats, Ringo (sorry!) etc, played back in the day.
If you ask me, they have so much more tone and projection than the Mega $'s new kits of today. But I could be wrong, and double blind trials amongst drummers/public would come out v. differently.
For me, the craftsmanship, feel and history is AS IMPORTANT as the overall bottom line SQ.
Similarly, original K Zildjians made in Turkey from the 50s-70s are achieving massive prices, in excess of $1k a cymbal. They sound FANTASTIC, but are they really any better than modern day assembly line K Zildjians made in the US? I think they do, but again the sound of drummers on disc is so evocative from the Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Max Roach days, that it all adds to the mystery.
What IS fantastic is that smaller bespoke cymbal manufacturers have really studied the dna and metallurgy of those 60s K's, and are producing modern day analogues that are right up there in comparison, and in greater supply/more consistent batch to batch/more affordable.
If you ask me, they have so much more tone and projection than the Mega $'s new kits of today. But I could be wrong, and double blind trials amongst drummers/public would come out v. differently.
For me, the craftsmanship, feel and history is AS IMPORTANT as the overall bottom line SQ.
Similarly, original K Zildjians made in Turkey from the 50s-70s are achieving massive prices, in excess of $1k a cymbal. They sound FANTASTIC, but are they really any better than modern day assembly line K Zildjians made in the US? I think they do, but again the sound of drummers on disc is so evocative from the Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Max Roach days, that it all adds to the mystery.
What IS fantastic is that smaller bespoke cymbal manufacturers have really studied the dna and metallurgy of those 60s K's, and are producing modern day analogues that are right up there in comparison, and in greater supply/more consistent batch to batch/more affordable.
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