Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Soundings …

… Elite Violinists Fail to Distinguish Legendary Violins From Modern Fiddles | Science/AAAS | News.  (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The consistency of results from session to session showed that soloists could definitely distinguish one violin from another. However, the soloists seemed to prefer the new violins, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their lists of favorites, new violins outnumber old ones roughly 3-to-2, and the most popular violin by far was a new one, denoted N5. Musicians rated qualities of new instruments higher, too. And when it came to telling old violins from new, the soloists did no better than if they had simply guessed.

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