Interesting bilind testing of Stradivarius Violin


Heard this the other day on NPR and found it quite interesting.

Stradivarius Violin Blind Testing

This of course relates to high end Audio too, when listening to your music System, how much do you use your eyes and how much do you use your ears.

Good Listening

Peter
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It is interesting and significant that this study involves players and not just listeners. I had always read "well, the players can tell the difference and prefer the work of the old Italian masters."

What needs to be stressed is that these instruments are the cream of the crop. They all sound great. The makers and examples, old and new, are carefully chosen for their ability to compete (unless I missed something). There are no clunkers here.
Seriously, now I am very glad I am not the only audio kook out there apparently whose hearing is not fine tuned enough to be able to clearly determine that a Stradivarius sounds best.

My daughter plays violin using a nice but non distinguished modern violin, and it sounds pretty good to me, but of course I am biased in this case. :^)
It's a bit of a Strawman argument, this whole thing with the Stradavarius, you know assuming from the get go that musicians have infallible ears. You know, I wouldn't be surprised at all if most of them were deaf, quite frankly.