Looks like it was only 3 Strads and 3 new violins, which were selected from a pool of 15 submitted by violinmakers. So only really good violins. (But also a very small sample.)
8 players chose a Strad as their favorite, so it's not as clear-cut as "new violins are better." It's more like, Strads are in a similar league, but do not outclass, new violins, despite costing an order of magnitude+ more. But then again, they are pieces of rare collectible art that are hundreds of year old–it's kind of amazing that you can play them at all!
So it's more like: imagine if there were a handful of surviving vintage audio cables from the 1600s (okay, the 1800s?) that performed almost as well as modern ones. I imagine they'd cost more money. And that wouldn't be so crazy, given their history.
Here's the original study & NYT coverage for reference:
That test compares them to modern violins. Maybe comparing them with their contemporaries would provide more accurate results? I know I prefer the sound of a Guarneri violin, but Strads are reputed to have better piercing power for carrying to the back of a concert hall, which was definitely an advantage in the days before electric amplification and computationally modeled and strategically baffled reverberant chambers for maximum audio enjoyment over the widest possible range of listeners.
8 players chose a Strad as their favorite, so it's not as clear-cut as "new violins are better." It's more like, Strads are in a similar league, but do not outclass, new violins, despite costing an order of magnitude+ more. But then again, they are pieces of rare collectible art that are hundreds of year old–it's kind of amazing that you can play them at all!
So it's more like: imagine if there were a handful of surviving vintage audio cables from the 1600s (okay, the 1800s?) that performed almost as well as modern ones. I imagine they'd cost more money. And that wouldn't be so crazy, given their history.
Here's the original study & NYT coverage for reference:
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1619443114
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science/in-play-off-betwe...