Sound of a great violin under the ear

[Carl Stross]

2 hours ago, dpappas said:

1. When I hear tales of instruments that are quiet under the ear and yet fill a hall, I wonder how many measurements have been made of this phenomenon.  It is always a perception, and anecdote, and not hard data.  

2. Sound pressure decreases to the square of the distance.  Now, building acoustics play a role and perhaps that is what people are hearing (again, not measuring).  

3. The scientist in me--I'm a chemistry professor--has studied violin construction, varnish, etc., and my hypothesis is that ultimately its wood and arching, craftsmanship, that truly matters. 

4. The studies that new, high-end instruments hold their own when confirmation bias is removed proves that.  

5. In my own experiments, sound close up correlates with overall volume at a distance.  Violin research is my side hobby, and is currently hampered by lack of access to truly great instruments (Bein and Fushi did let me make a bunch of measurements pre-pandemic, but these days it's hard to travel to experience excellent instruments).  

1. Lots and lots ( and lots  ) of measurements have been made, unfortunately not in a scientifically acceptable way. Also, this is a field where perception matters and I don't think it can be completely eliminated. There is much more about a violin than projection and a couple of Big Names actually indicated that they would sacrifice some projection ( not much ) for certain tonal qualities.

2. I don't think so.  And I don't think it matters. But yes, to some extent people are hearing the acoustics of the building. You are right.

3.  It's a natural conclusion. Unfortunately, there are horrible exceptions. Hideous workmanship, 3rd rate wood cut the wrong way etc. I think it is workmanship which hits certain goalposts and some sort of wood treatment/varnish, whatever. 

4. One needs to look very carefully at those studies. They did show there are excellent new violins being made, perfectly capable of "holding their own". Top violin players do however drift towards Strads and DGs and claim it's because they are better in manifold ways. Nobody cares what you or I think, it matters what Kavakos thinks. In this field perception matters.

5. Not clear how close is "close up" but in general sounds right. It should be like that : sound is not "materialized" at some distance from the violin.

Something to think about : it is possible that because we are mostly hear "normal" violins we exaggerate the abilities of the good ones. 

[David Beard]

19 hours ago, David Burgess said:

Instead of "loudness under the ear", I probably should have said "sound pressure measured with a close microphone".

I can imagine a scenario where a screechy violin might give the impression of being loud under the ear, but not actually measure very loud with a close microphone.

That's a very different thing.  Microphones and ears are NOT equivalent.

[Carl Stross]

2 hours ago, Don Noon said:

Anecdotally, I have played a couple of Strads that sounded quite dead under the ear, but when someone else played them, the sound was quite clear.  Not gutsy powerful, but very clear.  Is that projection or not?  

I wish there would be some agreed definition for "projection".  I remember listening to Zukerman live in Beethoven with the VPO somewhere in the 80s . Absolutely stunning. Powerful, clear and penetrating tone. Not a note one micron out of place. Definitely, him and his violin "projected". Clean and loud and powerful to the end of the hall. But I also heard Menuhin on the Lord Wilton in a worse hall in '79, playing a very relaxed Beethoven and the sound while not loud, carried over a BIG orchestra and to the ends of the hall efortlessly. Monserrat Caballe was famous for her pianissimos which carried over the largest halls.

( she is NOT going to eat the conductor, no worries there )

 

[David Beard]

That content of sound in terms of signal versus noise and the distrubution of energy and frequencies in both matter greatly.

Energy in non signal noise will contribute significantly to perceived up close loudness, but very little to projection.

And, a healthy portion of energy in the higher frequency parts of the signal will contribute to clarity and projection.

[Carl Stross]

2 minutes ago, David Beard said:

That content of sound in terms of signal versus noise and the distrubution of energy and frequencies in both matter greatly.

Energy in non signal noise will contribute significantly to perceived up close loudness, but very little to projection.

And, a healthy portion of energy in the higher frequency parts of the signal will contribute to clarity and projection.

Very true.

[MANFIO]

17 minutes ago, Carl Stross said:

I wish there would be some agreed definition for "projection".  I remember listening to Zukerman live in Beethoven with the VPO somewhere in the 80s . Absolutely stunning. Powerful, clear and penetrating tone. Not a note one micron out of place. Definitely, him and his violin "projected". Clean and loud and powerful to the end of the hall. But I also heard Menuhin on the Lord Wilton in a worse hall in '79, playing a very relaxed Beethoven and the sound while not loud, carried over a BIG orchestra and to the ends of the hall efortlessly. Monserrat Caballe was famous for her pianissimos which carried over the largest halls.

( she is NOT going to eat the conductor, no worries there )

 

Zukerman sounds very powerfull when you are very near him, I had this experience sometimes, so he sounds very powerfull "under the ear" too, I think.

 

[Carl Stross]

16 minutes ago, MANFIO said:

Zukerman sounds very powerfull when you are very near him, I had this experience sometimes, so he sounds very powerfull "under the ear" too, I think.

 

I never heard him close but there was on YT a closed miked recital and I believe you are right.  He seems to push for an edgy kind of tone which will sound "powerful" both close and far. The super interesting test would have been to hear him in Bach's D/cto against a "softy" like Menuhin or Szeryng. 

[David Burgess]

2 hours ago, David Beard said:

That's a very different thing.  Microphones and ears are NOT equivalent.

Of course not! Human hearing is processed through human brains, which are highly susceptible to social and "prevailing belief" programming and indoctrination.

2 hours ago, Carl Stross said:

I wish there would be some agreed definition for "projection".

 

 

Fritz et al have been working on that for a long time now. How 'bout you? Got any peer-reviewed research papers to offer?

Why is it that when their observations differ from your beliefs, you seem to be more inclined to trash them, than to question yourself?

[Carl Stross]

5 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

1. Of course not! Human hearing is processed through human brains, which are highly susceptible to social and "prevailing belief" programming and indoctrination.

2. Fritz et al have been working on that for a long time now. How 'bout you? Got any peer-reviewed research papers to offer?

3. Why is it that when their observations differ from your beliefs, you seem to be more inclined to trash them, than to question yourself?

1. Ears themselves work different from microphones in a couple of pretty fundamental ways. Then of course, the brain colors that. 

2. / 3. These are generalities. If you ask something specific and I can answer, I will. I did not mention Fritz et all - how did you come up with that ? I have no interest in their work and after the last run I would not read or discuss anything related to their work. I simply do not care if a new violin sounds the same or better than a grand old one. I hope it does. Pretty sure some do. My only interest is the mechanisms of the why.  

I wish them the best and that's all. 

[dpappas]

35 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

Of course not! Human hearing is processed through human brains, which are highly susceptible to social and "prevailing belief" programming and indoctrination.

That’s the biggest factor I think.   I have played a lot of instruments blind and I find that the sound and label do not always correlate.   
 

I intend to measure the SPL of high-end instruments up close and at a distance when I am again able to travel (and when I have enough time...).  

[David Burgess]

6 minutes ago, Carl Stross said:

 I did not mention Fritz et all -

Not in this particular thread. But you do have a posting history, ya know.

[David Beard]

Yes. Of course human hearing also introduces biases and cultural factors. Very messy.

But for me, the big difference is that the ear and the brain are working to extract information from sound.  That's completely absent in the microphone.  The difference between signal and noise is important to human hearing.  But for the microphone it's all just sound pressure.

Lastly, we make instruments for people to make and experience music. It's a hugely subjective human thing.  So I try to remember that whatever a microphone might tell me is removed some distance from the human consumption that ultimately matters most.

[Carl Stross]

11 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

Not in this particular thread. But you do have a posting history, ya know.

I do know. And I appreciate you reminding me. 

[La Folia]

7 hours ago, Don Noon said:

Where matters and what frequency matters.  Some frequencies are predominantly generated in the upper bout, and will be farther away from the player's ears than middle frequencies that are generated predominantly in the lower bout.  In my measurements, the high frequencies mostly come from the upper bout, so an instrument that is strong in that range but relatively weaker in the other frequencies (a characteristic of the "Old Italian Sound") will not sound very loud to the player but quite clear.

Anecdotally, I have played a couple of Strads that sounded quite dead under the ear, but when someone else played them, the sound was quite clear.  Not gutsy powerful, but very clear.  Is that projection or not?  On the other hand, I have found that violins with very strong output in the 800-1200 Hz range (often strongly radiating from the lower bout) have been painfully loud under the ear, but don't sound like much farther away.

 

 

Thank you, Don.  I don't know whether this is right, but I believe it's the only explanation I've ever heard that makes any sense.

[Cathode Ray]

On 9/8/2020 at 5:15 AM, David Burgess said:

If this is "simple physics", you'll be able to explain it, right?

In the case of guitars/mandolins I think it has a lot to do with body vibrations. Side and back radiate to the player more than top which projects outward to the audience. So "loud" to the player is "wasted" energy(not directed to audience).
With a violin, it's in your ear any way you look(listen) at it. Direct sound transmission through jaw is also a big factor so it's hard to discern where sound is from or going.

Edited September 13, 2020 by Cathode Ray
spell check

[Jeffrey Holmes]

Maybe perception is all the Fletcher-Munson curve's fault.

[A432]

On 9/7/2020 at 7:04 PM, MANFIO said:

I will quote David Burgess:

"From my conversations with Curtin and Tao, one of the things which stands out to me is that during their various tests, they haven't run across any instruments conforming to the legend of sounding soft under the ear, yet projecting well in a hall. Instead, loudness under the ear, and perceived projection in a hall seem to be highly correlated." (David Burgess).

I more than suspect that they are refering to violins made after the Cremonese finishing procedure (especially the ground used) was abandoned. Believing the Curtin/Tao generalization to be valid with Cremonese instruments is, IMO, trying to evaluate apples using oranges criteria.

And the same is true in spades of the myriad of tests and frequency evaluations which, however valuable in the oranges world, are measuring what can be measured using electronic gadgets and quantified using numbers -- not coming to grips with the enigma of Cremonese sound.

If your ambition is to understand, and not just strike poses, the simple, real world analog everyone's familiar with (i.e., that no glibster can deny outright or argue away) is the common cricket. Not only is it just as loud 100 feet away as it is up close, it is even louder (more "telling" and distinct) when its sound has had enough distance to "set up." Exactly the way a fine Strad is.

Further: the sound loses nothing in the sonic spectrum over distance -- like a good Cremonese fiiddle. A post-Cremonese one does, starting to lose overtone components at the edge of the stage.

From these two phenomena, a third emerges: just as you cannot, for the life of you, tell where a cricket is (especially at 3:00 A.M. when one is keeping you awake), the sound of a good Cremonese instrument in a hall seems to come from everywhere -- not one defined location.

The Cremonese/cricket sound phenomenon (being vivid, distinct/coherent and "present" despite [probably] not actually being especially loud) puts the phenomena involved into the twilight zone beyond the reach of current materialist approach -- just as telepathy and other psi phenomena are. And both because the idea of the observer being seperate from the experment simply does not work in actual practice.

P.S.: Being insusceptible to explanation using models that work with oranges but not with apples does not invalidate the reality of the foregoing observations, or their scientific value, since anyone with access to the right concert can confirm them (I.e., observations are independently replicable). 

To allege othrerwise is to claim, by implication, that the unanimous opinion of the the most competent observers, with the keenest senses and longest direct exoerience (from Tartini and Viotti on) has been the collective hallucination of incompetents deluded by mass suggestion while the "debunker" is wisdom incarnate. 

FWIW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[A432]

On 9/7/2020 at 7:04 PM, MANFIO said:

 

Inadvertent double post. Sorry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[violins88]

On 9/8/2020 at 11:33 PM, Carl Stross said:

You may but these are the kind of things I keep for myself. 

 

Carl, I don’t find that helpful.

[martin swan]

6 hours ago, A432 said:

 

If your ambition is to understand, and not just strike poses, the simple, real world analog everyone's familiar with (i.e., that no glibster can deny outright or argue away) is the common cricket. Not only is it just as loud 100 feet away as it is up close, it is even louder (more "telling" and distinct) when its sound has had enough distance to "set up." Exactly the way a fine Strad is.

Further: the sound loses nothing in the sonic spectrum over distance -- like a good Cremonese fiiddle. A post-Cremonese one does, starting to lose overtone components at the edge of the stage.

Call me a glibster but this analogy really doesn't stand up 

Of course the sound of a cricket is quieter 100 feet away. In the first instance this is an immutable law of physics, in the second crickets themselves have been shown not to be able to hear the sound of their neighbours at anything over a mean distance of 9.2 metres.

Personally I have no real trouble identifying where the sound of a single cricket is coming from - indeed the higher frequencies are what we all use for spatial information about sound sources.

The problem with locating crickets is twofold. Firstly, there tend to be a lot of similar crickets chirping at once, which is understandably distracting. Secondly, as soon as you get close to them they go all quiet, and they can be very hard to see.

Generally we are much better at identifying the location of sound sources that we can see ...!

I don't know if you would include cicadas in your tapestry of analogy, but when cicadas are hatching you can get close to them without shutting them up. The noise is terrifying, and it feels like an elf is using a jackhammer on your eardrum.

When we had a house in the Croatian countryside, some nights were so hot that the occasional cricket would hop in through the bedroom window and keep on chirping. Not quite as bad as a cicada but still comically loud compared to a "cricket at a distance". 

 

[scordatura]

6 hours ago, A432 said:

Further: the sound loses nothing in the sonic spectrum over distance -- like a good Cremonese fiiddle. A post-Cremonese one does, starting to lose overtone components at the edge of the stage

Sorry, but this is incorrect from a physics point of view. The sound energy (db) level lessens over distance. There are of course variables that are in play that influence how much energy is lost. You are assuming some magic is occurring in Cremonese instruments and not in others. I think this is a misguided concept.

[Blank face]

In a bedroom a dropping water tap from the bathroom one floor above can be a bad nuissance, too. Maybe we should more concentrate on the sound spectra of projecting water drops.

[David Burgess]

8 hours ago, A432 said:

I more than suspect that they are refering to violins made after the Cremonese finishing procedure (especially the ground used) was abandoned. Believing the Curtin/Tao generalization to be valid with Cremonese instruments is, IMO, trying to evaluate apples using oranges criteria.

Your suspicion is incorrect. They found this on the valuable old Cremonese instruments they tested as well.

[Stephen Fine]

8 hours ago, A432 said:

I more than suspect that they are refering to violins made after the Cremonese finishing procedure (especially the ground used) was abandoned. Believing the Curtin/Tao generalization to be valid with Cremonese instruments is, IMO, trying to evaluate apples using oranges criteria.

And the same is true in spades of the myriad of tests and frequency evaluations which, however valuable in the oranges world, are measuring what can be measured using electronic gadgets and quantified using numbers -- not coming to grips with the enigma of Cremonese sound.

If your ambition is to understand, and not just strike poses, the simple, real world analog everyone's familiar with (i.e., that no glibster can deny outright or argue away) is the common cricket. Not only is it just as loud 100 feet away as it is up close, it is even louder (more "telling" and distinct) when its sound has had enough distance to "set up." Exactly the way a fine Strad is.

Further: the sound loses nothing in the sonic spectrum over distance -- like a good Cremonese fiiddle. A post-Cremonese one does, starting to lose overtone components at the edge of the stage.

From these two phenomena, a third emerges: just as you cannot, for the life of you, tell where a cricket is (especially at 3:00 A.M. when one is keeping you awake), the sound of a good Cremonese instrument in a hall seems to come from everywhere -- not one defined location.

The Cremonese/cricket sound phenomenon (being vivid, distinct/coherent and "present" despite [probably] not actually being especially loud) puts the phenomena involved into the twilight zone beyond the reach of current materialist approach -- just as telepathy and other psi phenomena are. And both because the idea of the observer being seperate from the experment simply does not work in actual practice.

P.S.: Being insusceptible to explanation using models that work with oranges but not with apples does not invalidate the reality of the foregoing observations, or their scientific value, since anyone with access to the right concert can confirm them (I.e., observations are independently replicable). 

To allege othrerwise is to claim, by implication, that the unanimous opinion of the the most competent observers, with the keenest senses and longest direct exoerience (from Tartini and Viotti on) has been the collective hallucination of incompetents deluded by mass suggestion while the "debunker" is wisdom incarnate. 

FWIW

OK, first of all.  Tartini died in 1770 and Viotti in 1824.  Acting like they are clear, reliable sources on this topic is delusional.

Second of all, pretending like "Cremonese" instruments are special shows a lack of experience playing fine instruments. I have never encountered a violin that deserved any particular credit (compared to the skill of the violinist).  Your cricket analogy is very strange since I have located many a singing cricket (I had a hungry pet gecko as a child) and since I have heard many an overpowering violinist who wasn't playing a Cremonese instrument.

The Soil doesn't sound like anything if Perlman isn't there to play it.  And if you've never attended a masterclass where the master plays the student's violin, I guess you don't know that Perlman sounds like Perlman regardless of the violin he's playing.

Great violins exist, but they are incrementally better than everything else. Strad didn't bat 1000, I've played a mediocre one.  Anyway... believing in "the secret of Stradivari" is very silly.

[A432]

Both Tartini and Viotti clearly and reliably owned, preferred and played Strads.

Experience on this end was limited to Stradivari, del Gesu, N. Amati &  V. Ruggieri. It doesn't take that many until the pattern is obvious. Many are not concert instruments, if that's what you're arguing, but all have a magical component that is immediately apparent from tone one with them.