Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

violinist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 94 posts

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#21

Post by fleitz »

devindotcom wrote: post #19
fleitz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'I have no reason to doubt her; she's a professional violinist.' You know that claiming to be a professional violinist is an appeal to authority rather than a logical argument, right? That said the study does seem to be massively misreported.

It may not logically follow, but in the real world it is not a strange thing to trust an actual expert on these topics over, say, a writer at the Daily Mail. Why object?

It's even better to examine their argument sans credentials.

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#22

Post by Alterlife »

andybak wrote: post #15
GhotiFish wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

read again.

He did a rather poor job of expressing himself in a sensible manner but I must admit I had the same takeaway from the article.

The point of the article is: the study was "Pick the one you like", not "pick Strad". According to the article, they were never asked to identify.

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#23

Post by sukuriant »

ricardobeat wrote: post #17
russelluresti wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't even say the study proved that point. The fact that the older fiddles couldn't be adjusted for sound optimizations while the new ones could makes a huge impact on the study - it invariably unlevels the playing field.

I believe rare instruments like those are always kept in pristine conditions, and nowhere it is mentioned that the new ones had adjustments done, you can assume they all were received in 'normal playing condition' from their owners.

It's a reasonable assumption to make that the new ones had adjustments done. Even larger was the unchanged strings. I could easily imagine that the older ones, since they're not allowed to be modified in any way, had older strings than the new ones. That alone could produce a huge difference.

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#24

Post by devindotcom »

This post was regarding a test conducted in 2012. I'm not saying it isn't relevant or that the reporting around the new one is good, but the study she was a part of is a different one from the study making the rounds today:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/03/1323367111.abst...

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#25

Post by pazimzadeh »

Because the violinists were only allowed to try the violins for one minute, this study has the same flaw that the Pepsi Challenge had in 1975:

"In his book, Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell presents evidence that suggests Pepsi's success over Coca-Cola in the "Pepsi Challenge" is a result of the flawed nature of the "sip test" method. His research shows that tasters will generally prefer the sweeter of two beverages based on a single sip, even if they prefer a less sweet beverage over the course of an entire can."

In other words, a saturated sound could initially be more attractive but not as good for an actual concert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Challenge#Criticism

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#26

Post by calinet6 »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #25

Because the violinists were only allowed to try the violins for one minute, this study has the same flaw that the Pepsi Challenge had in 1975: "In his book, Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell presents evidence that suggests Pepsi's success over Coca-Cola in the "Pepsi Challenge" is a result of the flawed nature of the "sip test" method. His research shows that tasters will generally prefer the sweeter of two beverages ba…

I've had this same criticism of audio A/B tests: 30 second clips are just not decent to get a sense of the feeling a particular setup or recording imbues; only its quantitative momentarily detectable constructs. And only the ones the puny human brain and ear can discretely identify and remember, at that.

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#27

Post by calinet6 »

fleitz wrote: post #21
devindotcom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not logically follow, but in the real world it is not a strange thing to trust an actual expert on these topics over, say, a writer at the Daily Mail. Why object?

It's even better to examine their argument sans credentials.

It's even better to do both, and embrace a complete and holistic argument.

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#28

Post by eric_h »

na85 wrote: post #13

tl;dr: Study seeks to determine if Old Master violins actually sound "better", media reports misleading headlines (shocker), musicians are angryface. I remember when this study was first concluded and reported on. The CBC had a woman who participated in the study (maybe this very woman) on the program and it was so extremely obvious that her professional pride was wounded, and she really wanted to make herself feel b…

> actually very effective at showing that masterwork violins do not necessarily sound better than modern violins

Really, it's only effective at showing that an unadjusted violin with strings of an unknown age doesn't necessarily sound better than a younger violin with younger strings, that has been recently adjusted...

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#29

Post by abalone »

Wait a minute. She claims:

"Now a lot of you found it easy to pick the Strad... But it wasn't actually our task to pick the Italian in this study -- it was to pick our preference."

But NPR directly quotes the guy who ran the study:

"JOYCE: Curtin says of the 17 players who were asked to choose which were the old Italians...

CURTIN: Seven said they couldn't. Seven got it wrong, and only three got it right." [1]

Maybe she wasn't one of the 17 asked, but it definitely was studied.

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...

Re: What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test

#30

Post by analog31 »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #25

Because the violinists were only allowed to try the violins for one minute, this study has the same flaw that the Pepsi Challenge had in 1975: "In his book, Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell presents evidence that suggests Pepsi's success over Coca-Cola in the "Pepsi Challenge" is a result of the flawed nature of the "sip test" method. His research shows that tasters will generally prefer the sweeter of two beverages ba…

That's a serious issue. I play a stringed instrument, and purchased a "professional" model a few years ago. Among the instruments that I was trying out, some of the physical differences were sufficient that there would have been little expectation of identical sound, so the game was to discover the differences and then make a choice.

There were instruments that I rejected within seconds, but others that took me upwards of 1/2 hour to figure out how to adapt my playing to the characteristics of the instrument. There were issues that might have been unnoticeable to an audience member, but that would have affected my ability to play with good technique over the duration of a performance. Some of the instruments, including the one I ended up buying, changed my opinion of how I wanted to develop my tone and playing style.

Granted, I was always faced with a slight doubt about whether any of it was real, but without any good way of settling that issue. Also, a virtuoso might have been able to make all of the instruments sound the same with much less effort.

Oh, and don't get me started about bows.

Post reply on HN