Effects of “playing in”.

[GeorgeH]

1 hour ago, Victor Roman said:

By "in the same direction" I mean towards an improvement in the tone. The "frame of reference" is my perception.  

That's right, and that is not objectively measurable. It is your frame of reference and yours alone. Nothing wrong with that; we all have our own frames of references for many sensory experiences including pleasant and unpleasant sounds, tastes, smells, sights, and tactile feelings. There is no universal consensus on an objective scale for these so there is no way to gain a consensus on what a tone quality vector (magnitude and direction) is for violin tone.

[David Beard]

2 hours ago, Don Noon said:

More properly, "play-in is not a large real effect in that it can't be proven, and many attempts have been made to find it."  I myself attempted a fairly sensitive play-in test a dozen years ago, as documented on Maestronet here.   At this time, play-in is in the same category as ghosts and religion.  

With all respect, Don, violins ain't rockets.

What might be physically slight difference that are difficult to pin point scientifically still might be significant to players.

From personal and biased observation, I see several different things mascarading as 'play in'.

*) In a relatively quick time, the player subtly adjusts to the instrument and draws tone more successfully, allowing the resonance and higher harmonics to be more open sounding and satisfying.

*) In a less quick time, perhaps days or weeks, imbalances in a recently disrupted instrument can settle, again allowing the resonance and higher harmonics to be more open sounding and satisfying.

*) In a relatively new instrument, things might not be full dry, nor completely settled.  This also can settle with time and playing of a relatively longer stretch, again allowing the resonance and higher harmonics to be more open sounding and satisfying.

*) Instruments have materials that including balsaams and resins in their make up the can move, change, and harden in various ways.  It does sometimes seem as if instruments that have been set aside for long periods of time can aquire extra dampening that was not present when the instrument was active.  And, it does seem that simply playing for period of days or weeks can sometimes chase such dampening away, again allowing the resonance and higher harmonics to be more open sounding and satisfying.

 

 

I'd also like to suggest their is no reason to believe that pushing noise vibrations into the instrument with a mechanical device will have comparable results as actually driving real and dynamic playing through an instrument.

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

That is exactly many people's experience with high end hi-fi amplifiers. They measure identically and sound differently.

The measurements are obviously not complete.  If the electrical signal (in all of its many aspects) to speakers or headphones is identical, the sound must be identical.

1 hour ago, David Beard said:

I'd also like to suggest their is no reason to believe that pushing noise vibrations into the instrument with a mechanical device will have comparable results as actually driving real and dynamic playing through an instrument.

The experiment was never claimed to be comparable... just looking for ANY detectable change in the amplitude or frequency of a violin body's response due to prolonged vibration.  If it was found, then the fundamental physics of play-in would be confirmed.  Since it wasn't, we're still in the category of a religion that can't yet be proven, can never be DISproven... but argued about forever.

[MarkBouquet]

7 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

I'll pick up a violin to play and then think it sounds better (never worse) after playing for 30 minutes. My very adaptable neural network has likely modified my technique for that violin and bow and my ear has become accustomed to the tone. If I pick it up the same violin the next day, it is "deja vu all over again."

No mention so far of the micro climate we place our violins in when playing them. I can place my hair hygrometer on my desk while I'm sitting there, and the RH rises rapidly and significantly. My violin is held much closer to the source of that humidity than the hygrometer on my desk.

[JonnyFW]

Isn't the OP's question actually composed of two sub-questions?

1. Does playing a brand new (or recently-restored) violin cause it to "stabilise" into a different physical state?

2. If so, does this make it sound better?

Question 1 sounds like the answer might very plausibly be "yes" but surely it's also capable of being physically measured in some way?

Question 2 is clearly going to be very subjective, and could produce very different answers for different instruments. 

[Victor Roman]

4 hours ago, Don Noon said:

The measurements are obviously not complete.  If the electrical signal (in all of its many aspects) to speakers or headphones is identical, the sound must be identical.

I assure you they are "complete". The design and testing of high end amplifiers is in the hands of properly competent professionals who know what a transfer function is. 

[Victor Roman]

10 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

Yes, the very adaptable neural network. It happens to me many times. I'll pick up a violin to play and then think it sounds better (never worse) after playing for 30 minutes. My very adaptable neural network has likely modified my technique for that violin and bow and my ear has become accustomed to the tone.

Might surprise you that many players, myself included, had the opposite experience, too. After 30 minutes the violin sounds worse. Quite common. 

[martin swan]

It seems we are discussing two different phenomena ...

1. the idea of a violin "waking up" over a period of weeks or months after long dormancy or when new and

2. the sense that a violin gets better after 30 minutes or so of playing

The first phenomenon isn't something I've ever experienced or would take to the bank. If people perceive this then I wouldn't argue with their preception.

With the second, I have experienced this regularly, but the "warming up" process is one that we easily recognize everywhere in musical performance. I would be reluctant to attribute this to changes in the violin - just as likely it's to do with the input, either relaxation of the bowing arm or the player getting to the point where they relax mentally. I think some instruments are much more susceptible to how they are being played than others.

Sometimes it takes 30 minutes to stop listening to the sound and to start playing music. Music isn't sound.

[outofnames]

The brain adjusting to what it’s hearing sure seems plausible.  Additionally, the player making unconscious adjustments to what they are hearing in real time in order to make it better also seems highly likely to me.

If I’m on vacation and then come back to playing, the violin sounds loud and ‘off’ for the first half hour or so.  Then, better.

My gut tells me it’s micro adjustments I’m making as well as just getting used to hearing what I’m hearing.  Not as romantic as the violin waking up from time not played but probably most likely.

[GeorgeH]

2 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

Might surprise you that many players, myself included, had the opposite experience, too. After 30 minutes the violin sounds worse. Quite common. 

I have started playing a violin that sounds "off" when I start and doesn't sound better after 30 minutes or so. It just sounds the the same "off" way it did when I started. Often, I treat this as a sign that it needs new strings, and that is often correct.

The experience that you describe I can believe is quite common, and I would suggest it is also likely due to the same psychology as the violin sounding "better" after playing. 

That I can recall, I have personally never experienced a violin sounding worse than when I started after playing it a while. I have experienced my playing deteriorate and frustration rise after 30 minutes, though. 

[Dr. Mark]

9 hours ago, Don Noon said:

12 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

That is exactly many people's experience with high end hi-fi amplifiers. They measure identically and sound differently.

The measurements are obviously not complete.  If the electrical signal (in all of its many aspects) to speakers or headphones is identical, the sound must be identical.

5 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

assure you they are "complete". The design and testing of high end amplifiers is in the hands of properly competent professionals who know what a transfer function is. 

Mr. Noon, can you explain what you mean by 'complete', and why identical sound - which I presume is output, must follow from identical input (the signal 'to' speakers or headphones)?  Given what you've posted previously I know that you have a good engineering background and there's a fair chance that I'm misunderstanding your point.  Frankly, I'm not even sure what 'measurements' and some other terms mean in this context, and I lean towards Mr. Roman's conclusion.  My rather wordy justification, mostly for my own sake, follows:

Most primary physical dimensions important to the performance of electronic and mechanical components of audio devices, digital or otherwise, have a tolerance.  Within any of these tolerances the precise value is both random and unknown.  A good resistor may be +/- 5% of it's listed value 97.5% of the time, and even a digital chip has an error rate due to a number of factors.  We're not going to find 'identical' anything outside of a textbook.  At best we can look for output measurements that look sufficiently similar in some way, e.g. when using a standardized input to ostensibly identical devices.

But human ears are not identical, and will likely be sensitive to effects that are obscured by the measuring device.  A well know example is the difference between the time-dependent amplitude of a pressure wave and the usual frequency-dependent amplitudes shown in the typical magnitude or psd plot - which ignore or obscure phase information.  We can hear frequencies that aren't present in the spectrum because they exist in the pressure wave envelop.  Even without that hearing changes with age and other factrs, and no two of us are likely to have started at the same level across the audible spectrum in any case.

Let's try that...

[JavierPortero]

In my estimation it's all mental, it's just the player getting used to the given instrument. Depending our capabilities and faults an instrument is easier or more difficult to play since every instrument behave different to different player. 

Being said that I love to believe that my instruments sound better as time passes by... but I know they sounded better when fresh from the maker's hand.

[Don Noon]

33 minutes ago, Dr. Mark said:

Mr. Noon, can you explain what you mean by 'complete', and why identical sound - which I presume is output, must follow from identical input (the signal 'to' speakers or headphones)?

What I mean by "complete" measurements, the open-circuit voltage trace of the amp isn't enough.  The source impedance matters, and probably a long list of other dynamic and frequency related stuff in which I'm not an expert.

The bottom line, though, is that if you have the speaker in the circuit, and measure identical voltage traces at the speaker, then the sound output must be identical, just from the laws of physics and how a speaker works.  Seemingly identically spec amps might interact in a different way with the specific speaker impedance, inductance, etc. and therefore produce different voltage traces at the speaker.

[Will Turner]

Speaking of amplification, I remember a Dynakit 70 stereo tube amplifier (analog versus today’s typical digital).  Perhaps the tubes were new out of the box, but it would improve in performance after running it for a while.  Then it would be good all the rest of the time used.

An electrical example of playing in for improved sound. 
Every couple of years or so, I would have to make slight adjustments as bias voltage would slowly drift with tube age.

Still believe a quality well adjusted analog amplifier is superior to the digital ones currently on the market.

[cellopera]

1 hour ago, JavierPortero said:

In my estimation it's all mental, it's just the player getting used to the given instrument. Depending our capabilities and faults an instrument is easier or more difficult to play since every instrument behave different to different player. 

Being said that I love to believe that my instruments sound better as time passes by... but I know they sounded better when fresh from the maker's hand.

Not true. There are some obvious objective ways to analyze some of the qualities of an instrument. Five different professionals could agree in a blind test if an instrument is responsive (easier to play) or unresponsive, regardless of their style of playing. That can be measured. Another one might be balance, e.g. how smooth the transition is from one string to another, or even character of sound (dark sound, brilliant sound).

[Bodacious Cowboy]

57 minutes ago, Will Turner said:

Speaking of amplification, I remember a Dynakit 70 stereo tube amplifier (analog versus today’s typical digital).  Perhaps the tubes were new out of the box, but it would improve in performance after running it for a while.  Then it would be good all the rest of the time used.

An electrical example of playing in for improved sound. 
Every couple of years or so, I would have to make slight adjustments as bias voltage would slowly drift with tube age.

Still believe a quality well adjusted analog amplifier is superior to the digital ones currently on the market.

Many audiophiles believe that the sound of speaker and interconnect cables improves with running in. Some dealers even offer a paid "burning in" service. Aural perception is very prone to expectation/confirmation biases.

[David Burgess]

22 hours ago, martin swan said:

As for the difficulty in measuring - if there is a change, it's likely in the higher frequencies (which no-one ever bothers to measure)

People have measured the high frequencies a lot. The difficulty isn't in measuring, but in interpretation.

[martin swan]

1 hour ago, David Burgess said:

People have measured the high frequencies a lot. The difficulty isn't in measuring, but in interpretation.

OK - personally I've never seen information above about 7 kHz on any spectrum analysis.

Of course this used to be a lot more relevant to me even a decade ago ....!

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, martin swan said:

OK - personally I've never seen information above about 7 kHz on any spectrum analysis.

Of course this used to be a lot more relevant to me even a decade ago ....!

Oh... I thought by "higher frequencies" you meant 2-5 kHz.  Above 7 kHz I think is irrelevant for violins, unless somehow there's a lot of output, then it's probably bad.  Most good violins drop off sharply after 4 or 5 kHz.

My measurements DO get up to 7 kHz and more, but there's not any appreciable output to worry about.

[LCF]

7 hours ago, martin swan said:

OK - personally I've never seen information above about 7 kHz on any spectrum analysis.

Of course this used to be a lot more relevant to me even a decade ago ....!

- one of the reasons I suspect, that grumpy old violinists like bright and scratchy instruments. It's the only way they can hear what's going on 

 

Spectral analysis with software and ordinary hardware nowadays routinely resolves 22 to 24kHz. Hardware with sampling rates up to 120kHz will resolve <=60kHz if the transducer is up to it. 

 

(Validation: I am old, sometimes grumpy.)

[martin swan]

6 hours ago, Don Noon said:

Oh... I thought by "higher frequencies" you meant 2-5 kHz.  Above 7 kHz I think is irrelevant for violins, unless somehow there's a lot of output, then it's probably bad.  Most good violins drop off sharply after 4 or 5 kHz.

My measurements DO get up to 7 kHz and more, but there's not any appreciable output to worry about.

There's very little output in most music above 7 kHz in terms of dB that you might map on a graph, but that small output is absolutely crucial in terms of perceiving detail, spatial relations, stereo image etc.

So the fact that the output as seen by a spectrum analyser drops off sharply doesn't mean the information isn't relevant. You need very little of it to make a massive difference in perception.

Back in the day when we were mastering albums it was common practice to add in a sprinkling of 14 kHz or "air" as we called it - it didn't upset the balance of the music but it created clarity and added beauty. It even made. difference whether this was done with a valve eq or a solid state unit.

Nowadays I can't sense much difference above about 10 kHz, but the fact that I can't hear it any more doesn't mean it isn't there.

In particular I believe that the richness or amount of colour in the sound of an instrument has quite a bit to do with the complex interaction of very high harmonics

[Victor Roman]

23 hours ago, Don Noon said:

The bottom line, though, is that if you have the speaker in the circuit, and measure identical voltage traces at the speaker, then the sound output must be identical, just from the laws of physics and how a speaker works.  Seemingly identically spec amps might interact in a different way with the specific speaker impedance, inductance, etc. and therefore produce different voltage traces at the speaker.

I am afraid I do not quite understand the point you are making. MY point was that amplifiers which measure identically sound different. The speaker has nothing to do with it as modern amplifiers control the speaker 100% and are insensitive to back EMF. And btw, the speaker is not a factor in those sort of tests. 

[Don Noon]

Martin, I certainly can't argue about your experience mastering albums, and at this point I can't personally verify much, as my good ear cuts off at ~6 kHz and the other at 4 kHz.  Likely someone with young ears can tell if you clip off the 7k+ frequencies of a given violin recording, and it would be interesting to see if they think it's preferable or not.  I suspect that my cat thinks the whole thing is undesirable, as he bit my arm this week while I was doing some bowed testing.

My general view is that there are truly huge differences between violins in the spectra below 7 kHz that obliterate any differences above that and don't enter in when judging good or bad.  Very good violins tend to have much lower output above 7 kHz than many of the very bad ones, but I think that's just a side effect of the thick construction that makes it bad everywhere else.

 

[Victor Roman]

21 hours ago, Bodacious Cowboy said:

Many audiophiles believe that the sound of speaker and interconnect cables improves with running in. Some dealers even offer a paid "burning in" service. Aural perception is very prone to expectation/confirmation biases.

As a manic audiophile I can confirm that speakers seem to me to get better after being used for a while. I haven't noticed same for cables. And you are right, aural perception is indeed prone to expectation/conformation bias. Sometimes, not all the time.

[Don Noon]

4 minutes ago, Victor Roman said:

I am afraid I do not quite understand the point you are making. MY point was that amplifiers which measure identically sound different. The speaker has nothing to do with it as modern amplifiers control the speaker 100% and are insensitive to back EMF. And btw, the speaker is not a factor in those sort of tests. 

I didn't know that amplifiers have any sound at all.