Audiophiles are not alone

In the current (May 13th-19th, 2017) edition of the Economist there is a short piece entitled "Violins" that I want to bring to your attention.  It is about new violins and old violins, specifically Cremonese (Guarneri, Stradivari, Amati) vs. Joseph Curtin (modern violin maker in Michigan).  With Dr. Claudia Fritz of the University of Paris, presiding, experiments were held in Paris and New York that proved to the majority of both musicians and listeners (other musicians, critics, composers etc.) that new fiddles out performed old ones.  There were some sort of goggles used so that the players could not tell what instrument they were playing.  The audience was also prevented from seeing the instruments somehow.  All this done without inhibiting sound transmission.  Both solo and orchestrated works were performed.  You can read the whole story in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  And this is only the latest evidence of this apparent reality, as according to the article, similar experiments have reached similar conclusions prior to this.  The article concluded with the observation that these results notwithstanding, world class players are not about to give up their preference for their Cremonese fiddles.

This reminds me very much of some of our dilemmas and debates such as the ever popular: analog vs. digital, tube vs. transistor, and subjective listening vs. measured performance parameters.  If it has taken a couple of hundred years and counting for the debate on fiddles to remain unresolved, what hope have we to ever reach resolutions to some of our most cherished and strongly held preferences?  This is asked while hugging my turntables and tube electronics.