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
128x128pbnaudio
No, it was Sun Ra that was from Mars.
I had lunch with him once and he told me so.(no joke)
I am not convinced of the validity of the methodology so have some difficulty with the conclusions drawn from the test.

That being said, I also have difficulty with the assumption that all Stradivarius instruments are superb and therefore worth vast fortunes. The man had to have some duds, he couldn't have done his best work all the time and right out of the starting blocks.

Another assumption that bothers me is that all modern instruments are inferior in some way.

Plus one or two minutes on an instrument even if the test was valid would only give results for first impressions. Could those opinions change if an artist played each instrument for say a month or in a concert hall?

For me "The Battle of the Fiddles" leaves more questions than answers.