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by edbaskerville
1486 days ago
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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: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1619443114 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science/in-play-off-betwe... |
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