Some differences can't be settled.
Years ago, I bought a centre channel, thinking it would improve my movie watching.
I felt the drop-off in sound quality compared to my left/right pair was not worth any gain of having the dialogue discreetly locked in centre. So I turned it off.
My girlfriend came over, during a show, and exclaimed, "I told you so! See how much better it sounds with a centre speaker?".
She came back with my favourite retort ever, after I told her that speaker wasn't even on.
"Don't obfuscate the issue with facts!"%
90% of musicians dont care they do it for money. that 10% will say that something is not right with "sound" ,tone guy will turn few knobs on unused chanel and they will thank him for adjusting for their needs.
violinist will maybe hear difference ,but i bet given large enough sample of musicians that instruments will be picked 50:50 , assuming that cheap instrument is working as intended and not faulty.
violinist will maybe hear difference ,but i bet given large enough sample of musicians that instruments will be picked 50:50 , assuming that cheap instrument is working as intended and not faulty.
Yes that has been held up, difference yes, preference no. As I said earlier this week search the web resistor, op-amp, capacitor preference a random scatter shot once you eliminate the truly pathological cases (which of course are always trotted out to prove the point).
Sample size doesn't have to be very large. If you clicked the link you would see that.
Well sony its the company that wants to sell audiophiles "audiophile" sd cards.
Sony wants to sell you an overpriced memory card 'for premium sound' | The Verge
Sony wants to sell you an overpriced memory card 'for premium sound' | The Verge
In this case sighted is perfectly fine, the control is I do not give any hints except to say that sound will change.
The result/correlation is that all subjects describe the changes in the same words.
When the tweak also positively changes the physical feel of music, there is no future argument.
So that's just one possibly flawed test that needs repeating.
One negative does not disprove all of the positives when it comes to audio.
Dan.
It was repeated. Does no one click on links and read in case it challenges their dearly held beliefs?
BTW you are inferring that all of the wife in the kitchen and Axel on stage stories mean that you can forever dismiss any controlled studies. Did you really mean that?
There are studies relating to people failing to hearing differences between Strads and high quality professional grade instruments. And as expensive as Strads are, they make even high quality professional grade instruments seem pretty cheap.
But, I don't think that this can be interpreted to say that professional musicians as a rule can't hear the difference between an entry level POS and a Strad.
AFAIK even Bose is too professional to lead people down the magic solder path.
The actual instruments that were compared to were "...six by 18th-century Italian luthiers and six by contemporary makers."
A professional grade violin by a well known contemporary maker can easily run into high five or six figures. That's still pretty cheap compared to the Strad that was sold in 2013 for £1.2 million, but this is not a cheap violin by any means:
Stolen and found Stradivarius is sold at auction for £1.38m | UK news | The Guardian
At best that makes the test single blind which is to say highly suspect since the days of Clever Hans.
An interesting critique on the violin test from a reddit discussion thread. Please note that this has been posted for discussion purposes and that I do not necessarily endorse the views expressed.
[–]Vonmule 10 points 1 year ago
I'm finally relevant. Violin maker and restoration expert here. I have participated in several informal yet well structured experiments of this kind, and I will tell you that these experiments are crap for several reasons. Firstly they seem to be conceptualized with the goal of devaluing the great instruments. The problem with this is that the value of The Great Instruments does not lie solely in their sound. With regards to monetary value, They are above all, art objects. The lady blunt strad isn't worth 15.7 million usd because it sounds fantastic. It's the violin makers equivalent to finding a new great pyramid completely preserved in a bog. The lady blunt and messiah, are effectively unplayed and therefor, unworn. The corners aren't rounded, the varnish has no dirt and oil embedded into it from centuries of handling. The necks haven't been grafted ( the standard neck length changed in the 1800s, so nearly every violin had the neck cut off and the scroll grafted to a new longer neck). These instruments are our window into the old masters workshop.
The other reason theses tests are crap is that our capacity to remember minute changes in tone quality sucks. I mean REALLY SUCKS. It is possible to train a little bit. I have heard and played many old Cremonese instruments and I can't remember a damn thing about how they sound. Anybody who tells you they can is full of ****. In addition, string players are for the most part no better at this than the average joe. Almost every musician plays the same instrument for years and years without ever comparing it to another until they decide to buy another. Some instrumentalists come into our shops and play dozens of instruments all the time, but they are the exception. The point being that if you are looking for accomplished judges of tone, you better look for someone other than the players cause they suck at it. If they were to repeat this experiment 5 minutes later, you would get totally different results. Hell, if you had 2 violins and played one for the listener. waited 5 minutes and then picked either the one you already played or the other violin and asked the listener if it was the same instrument or different, I bet it would be a perfect 50/50 split.
Anyway end of rant TL
R. These experiments are fundamentally flawed.
[–]Vonmule 10 points 1 year ago
I'm finally relevant. Violin maker and restoration expert here. I have participated in several informal yet well structured experiments of this kind, and I will tell you that these experiments are crap for several reasons. Firstly they seem to be conceptualized with the goal of devaluing the great instruments. The problem with this is that the value of The Great Instruments does not lie solely in their sound. With regards to monetary value, They are above all, art objects. The lady blunt strad isn't worth 15.7 million usd because it sounds fantastic. It's the violin makers equivalent to finding a new great pyramid completely preserved in a bog. The lady blunt and messiah, are effectively unplayed and therefor, unworn. The corners aren't rounded, the varnish has no dirt and oil embedded into it from centuries of handling. The necks haven't been grafted ( the standard neck length changed in the 1800s, so nearly every violin had the neck cut off and the scroll grafted to a new longer neck). These instruments are our window into the old masters workshop.
The other reason theses tests are crap is that our capacity to remember minute changes in tone quality sucks. I mean REALLY SUCKS. It is possible to train a little bit. I have heard and played many old Cremonese instruments and I can't remember a damn thing about how they sound. Anybody who tells you they can is full of ****. In addition, string players are for the most part no better at this than the average joe. Almost every musician plays the same instrument for years and years without ever comparing it to another until they decide to buy another. Some instrumentalists come into our shops and play dozens of instruments all the time, but they are the exception. The point being that if you are looking for accomplished judges of tone, you better look for someone other than the players cause they suck at it. If they were to repeat this experiment 5 minutes later, you would get totally different results. Hell, if you had 2 violins and played one for the listener. waited 5 minutes and then picked either the one you already played or the other violin and asked the listener if it was the same instrument or different, I bet it would be a perfect 50/50 split.
Anyway end of rant TL
R. These experiments are fundamentally flawed.
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The deflection here is obvious, because the fraud related to the sonic claims, not the details of their construction.
Re: Vonmule: So he seems to be saying that musicians and listeners cannot distinguish "grand" instruments by sound, the value of the "grand" instruments is not related to their sound, and they've all been hacked anyway. But the experiments that confirm his beliefs are crap. Is that about right?
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