Is the research on violin acoustics a viscious circle?

[Andreas Preuss]

20 minutes ago, GoPractice said:

I asked if you knew of the instruments in the NHK broadcast orchestra awhile ago. I do not know what they are, but have known players in the past in these ensembles. Is it a Strad or DGD?

Neither, nor. One guy if the orchestra dropped out and started a violin business promoting Fagnolas to his ex colleagues so successfully that the market in Europe (Christies and Sothebys in those days) got crazy about it rocketing their prices into the sky. 

But as advanced Japan is in many fields between car manufacturing, Computer and Kaiten-Sushi, the violin market is ultra conservative. (For reasons too long to explain here) 

Financial streams in the research world are naturally bound to the market and accordingly nobody would get the idea to look for ideas somewhere where the risk of finding nothing is high. (But this doesn’t mean there is nothing to find.) And it is always spectacular to find something undiscovered on a multi million dollar object. (I heard that researchers have to sell their stuff too) 
 

I don’t have problems with ‘thinking differently’. 

[GoPractice]

34 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

 ( ... )

At the same time I have to confess, he hopefully will forgive me saying this, that his models go in various aspects beyond certain red lines I set myself. 

Your wonderful expertise sets boundries.

Too polite. Yes, yes, you are.

Amazing testicular fortitude. Yes, I too realized this.

But you also present this world with gifts.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

On 5/26/2023 at 1:24 PM, Don Noon said:

I think it's the buyers who indirectly block development of new ideas that are too different from traditional violins. 

>

Dealers also block development of new ideas.  Many of these dealers have an expensive inventory of lots of traditional  violins they are trying to sell.  If you had something new that was better than all of them you would not be warmly received.

Fellow makers of traditional violins are similarly dismissive.

[Michael Darnton]

3 hours ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

One area of violin research I'd like to see is an investigation of why only some of Strad's or GD's or other old Italian violins were great and others made by the same maker were not so great.

Another area of research would be to study why players can't agree on what "great" and "not so great means".

This isn't exactly a "why" but we have to admit that all players don't want the same thing. Pick a violin and some people will love it, some will hate it. Their reasons will be different and not always purely tonal. Plus, not every player can make every violin work for them. Some players are completely uninterested in what I like, and the other way around. That's OK. "Great" for one might mean "ability to take on a trumpet and win". For someone else it might be some certain quality rather than volume. Some take pride in finding the cheapest thing they can find that offends them the least. Whatever.

[Michael Darnton]

26 minutes ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

Dealers also block development of new ideas.  Many of these dealers have an expensive inventory of lots of traditional  violins they are trying to sell.  If you had something new that was better than all of them you would not be warmly received.

Fellow makers of traditional violins are similarly dismissive.

That might be true of the ten or so dealers in the world who habitually deal in multi-hundred-thousand dollar violins, but I doubt it applies to dealers selling $10,000 violins who just want to choose a consistent product that sells quickly, and for them the ability to get a constant reliable supply is of great value. In this price range I blame makers who don't recognize that making the violin is only half the work, selling it is the rest, and aren't willing to compensate dealers accordingly. 

[Michael Appleman]

6 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

making the violin is only half the work, selling it is the rest

This is a very meaningful comment, and resonates well beyond the field of making. 

[Dr. Ludwig]

20 hours ago, Don Noon said:

.

I have a pretty good idea what the sound of great old violins is like... but newly built violins don't seem to quite get there, for some unknown reason.

 

Couple this observation with the observation that some Strads and some DG don't quite sound as great and I ask this question: What would a research agenda look like to determine why or even quantify, where possible, the differences?

[Dr. Mark]

"...I have got possession of a sweet Stradivari, which I play upon with much more pleasure than my Stainer, partly because the tone is sweeter, mellower, rounder,... the [Stainer] tone is as bright, piercing, and full as that of any Stainer I have ever heard.  Yet, when I take it up after the Stradivari, it sets my teeth on edge.  The tone comes out plump all at once; there is a comfortable reserve of tone in the Stradivari, and it bears pressure, and you may draw upon it for almost as much tone as you please...it is a battered, shattered, cracky, resinous old blackguard, but if every bow that ever crossed its strings from its birth had been sugared instead of resined, more sweetness could not come out of its belly." attr. to Rev. Thom. Twining, May 4, 1791; Antonio Stradivari, W. H. Hill et al., Dover, (1963), pp. 257-8.

Today many things are different.

[Michael Darnton]

@Dr. Mark I donno, I understand completely what he's saying, and have had the experience from a listener's point of view. Players talk about "bloom" and the Steiner model just doesn't have any, in any of the various iterations that I've heard. But for a little bit on its own it has a really nice sound.

[Michael Darnton]

56 minutes ago, Dr. Ludwig said:

Couple this observation with the observation that some Strads and some DG don't quite sound as great and I ask this question: What would a research agenda look like to determine why or even quantify, where possible, the differences?

That's a fair question.

First I think you'd have to get people on the same page that there is a difference, and that some Strads are indeed special. So we can drop about 95% of violin makers and almost as many players right there (referencing Joe Curtin's experiments and the widespread support they get). That's a big hurdle to get over.

Then you need to quantify what you heard and agree on it. Then you'd have to figure out what in the violin is causing that. The people available would drop quite a bit in number at each step. 

I haven't found too many makers who are willing to step off the cliff and do something different from what they have derived to doing after some years of work. Joe C might be one, but then again he doesn't believe there's a difference and has spent a lot of time trying to convince the rest of us of that. Who else is there?

 

[David Burgess]

2 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

First I think you'd have to get people on the same page that there is a difference, and that some Strads are indeed special. So we can drop about 95% of violin makers and almost as many players right there (referencing Joe Curtin's experiments and the widespread support they get).

Sounds to me like you are needing to rely a lot more on "copium", than on science, to support your position.

As far as a maker taking a 30-to-50% reduction in income goes, to sell through a dealer:
Why would makers like Zymutowicz, Joe Grubaugh and Sigrun Seifert, Feng Jiang, Jeff Pillips, Antoine Nedelec, or Burgess have either the need or the slightest interest in selling through dealers?
When was the last time you saw a freshly-minted instrument from any of these makers being sold though a dealer?

However, I do need to acknowledge your dealership for having recently re-sold one of my used cellos for a higher price than the original purchaser paid.

[jacobsaunders]

17 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

 

However, I do need to acknowledge your dealership for having recently re-sold one of my used cellos for a higher price than the original purchaser paid. 

Perhaps you need his dealership after all

[David Burgess]

On 5/28/2023 at 3:40 PM, jacobsaunders said:

Perhaps you need his dealership after all

[Christian Pedersen]

49 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

As far as a maker taking a 30-to-50% reduction in income goes, to sell through a dealer:
Why would makers like Zymutowicz, Joe Grubaugh and Sigrun Seifert, Feng Jiang, Jeff Pillips, Antoine Nedelec, or Burgess have either the need or the slightest interest in selling through dealers?
When was the last time you saw a freshly-minted instrument from any of these makers being sold though a dealer?

Some buyers want the experience of buying directly from a maker, others want the experience of purchasing after comparing many instruments in one place. (and having a trade in policy) Most of the listed makers sold through dealers earlier in their career. 

[Michael Darnton]

@David Burgess Good for you. I have no problem with makers dealing their own instruments. But they have costs in doing that. They willingly swallow that cost for the experience. Dealers can't afford to. And I can assure you that the few makers you name, good for them, but there are plenty of other makers out there who can't sell what they make because they don't have the personality, or access, or time to do so but they won't pay someone else to do the job, either.

[David Burgess]

7 minutes ago, Christian Pedersen said:

Some buyers want the experience of buying directly from a maker, others want the experience of purchasing after comparing many instruments in one place. (and having a trade in policy) Most of the listed makers sold through dealers earlier in their career. 

Any buyer who has ever been interested in purchasing directly from me has always been welcome to show up with as many comparison instruments as they wish. Sometimes, I even arranged for them to access comparison instruments they  had special interest in, and arranged for them to test them all in a hall.

 

[David Burgess]

16 minutes ago, Michael Darnton said:

I have no problem with makers dealing their own instruments. But they have costs in doing that. They willingly swallow that cost for the experience. Dealers can't afford to.

What's wrong with that picture? Purportedly, makers swallow the costs associated with acquiring their experience, but dealers will not? Or did I misread that somehow?

I am by no means anti-dealer. However, I am of the opinion that some dealers operate at much higher levels of integrity than others.

[Christian Pedersen]

23 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

Any buyer who has ever been interested in purchasing directly from me has always been welcome to show up with as many comparison instruments as they wish. Sometimes, I even arranged for them to access comparison instruments they  had special interest in, and arranged for them to test them all in a hall.

 

Different group of customers with a small crossover.

[Christian Pedersen]

On 5/26/2023 at 10:39 AM, Andreas Preuss said:

The question is, does research on violin acoustics taking Cremonese instruments as a reference create a loop which feeds itself? 

And if so, this would also mean that makers who try to use the gained knowledge have no other choice than working with the traditional models?

Paraphrasing Sam Zygmuntowicz in a recent online acoustics talk, "The dirty secret of acoustics research, it's like planting acres of seed and one weed sprouts up." I find this quite telling!

[David Burgess]

43 minutes ago, Christian Pedersen said:

Have you ever sold through a dealer? 

Kinda sorta, back when I was working on the premises of "The Firm". But I wouldn't describe "The Firm" (both then and now) as primarily an instrument dealer, but more like the company which made the first major inroads into mail order sales of strings and such.

To the best of my knowledge, no other of my newly-minted instruments has ever been sold through a dealer, unless the dealer was acting as a "buyers agent", at no cost to me.

Edit: Oops, I think the very first violin I made was purchased from me by Hans Weisshaar  (or the Hans Weisshaar shop) when I was employed there, and then sold by them.

[Michael Darnton]

6 minutes ago, Christian Pedersen said:

Paraphrasing Sam Zigmontovich in a recent online acoustics talk, "The dirty secret of acoustics research, it's like planting acres of seed and one weed sprouts up." 

Solid gold! Thanks.

[David Burgess]

8 minutes ago, Christian Pedersen said:

Paraphrasing Sam Zigmontovich...

I do acknowledge that the name is challenging to spell correctly. Thanks for trying.

[GoPractice]

To step back a bit, if research yields data, then the analysis of that data might yield something. Or not.

A recording is audio data. I listen and analyze carefully to see of the recording, or the recorded work, can be "improved." 

I am all for research. Too much data is overwhelming, but putting experience to numbers and then numbers to experience might yield something. Kids these days get excellent equipment for a rather low cost. The last 40 years have been amazing. But lessons no longer cost a quarter.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

22 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

That might be true of the ten or so dealers in the world who habitually deal in multi-hundred-thousand dollar violins, but I doubt it applies to dealers selling $10,000 violins who just want to choose a consistent product that sells quickly, and for them the ability to get a constant reliable supply is of great value. In this price range I blame makers who don't recognize that making the violin is only half the work, selling it is the rest, and aren't willing to compensate dealers accordingly. 

With a 30% commission a dealer would rather sell a $1,000,000 old Italian violin than a $10,000 modern maker's violin even though they both might sound and play equally as pleasing. But the dealer will say the old Italian one is better. 

 

[jezzupe]

I don't know about a vicious circle, but I think a fools errand might be more like it.

One of the things that I ponder about this is that if we compare various different instruments, piano,guitar,saxophone as examples, one of the main things that stands out to me is how, from average to more sophisticated listeners, it seems that with any of those other instruments it's "easy" to hear the differences between good and bad ones, and that even novice listeners can markedly note the differences and pick "the better sounding one" , whereas the violin is much more subtle to "average" listeners and seems to require a developed level of sophistication to "tell" the differences and to be able to try to describe them.