Effects of “playing in”.

[Victor Roman]

22 hours 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.

It was a wonderful amp, I used to own one. I traded it in for a Sansui and am still sorry... But the Mullard EL34 are very hard to come by nowadays, if at all.

[Victor Roman]

5 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

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

Actually, they do. Even solid state ones have a bit of buzzing....

[Bodacious Cowboy]

29 minutes ago, Victor Roman said:

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.

Speakers I can believe, speaker cables, no.

[Will Turner]

2 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

It was a wonderful amp, I used to own one. I traded it in for a Sansui and am still sorry... But the Mullard EL34 are very hard to come by nowadays, if at all.

Exactly the same reason I replaced mine.  Could not source replacement tubes and the ones I had were at the limit for adjustment via the bias voltage.  
In my opinion an example of there is nothing like the old school.   Now we search for high bit digital amps to closely approximate analog (reason the chips involved are called DACs).   Why in my opinion an acoustic violin will always be superior to an electric.   The modeling amplifiers cannot duplicate all the resonance.  Probably why alternative tones are used by those artists that use an electric violin over an acoustic.

[donbarzino]

On 3/4/2025 at 8:36 AM, Don Noon said:

On 3/4/2025 at 8:25 AM, outofnames said:

Is there a view on humidity and it’s affect on a violin?  I always felt the tone on my instrument was better in the summer when humidity levels are high.

It is also known that wood gains moisture and increases in damping when humidity is high, and vice versa, which definitely can be heard as a change in tone.  Some might like the bright/lively effect of dry weather, some might like the more sedate tone when humid.  It also depends on what the violin starts with for tone.

I have noticed  violins of mine and others sounding better in humid weather and I have also

been told by audiophile friends that their speakers sound better in higher humidity conditions.

I can believe that humidity causes changes in the physical structure of a violin but find it less plausible

that loudspeakers are affected that much by humidity.

Could it be that our perceived differences due to humidity are caused by the sound waves traveling faster

and more efficiently in humid air ?

Could the phenomenon  of instruments sounding better after 30 minutes playing be due to our breath

slowly creating a humid zone between the instrument being played and our ears ?

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/507729/why-is-sound-attenuation-greater-in-dry-air-than-humid-air

 

[Don Noon]

16 minutes ago, donbarzino said:

I can believe that humidity causes changes in the physical structure of a violin but find it less plausiblethat loudspeakers are affected that much by humidity.

It seems plausible to me that paper cones, foam or rubber surrounds, and fabric spiders could be affected by humidity and have changes in weight and/or damping.  But I don't know, really.

[LCF]

11 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

Actually, they do. Even solid state ones have a bit of buzzing....

Aside from that most domestic amplifiers are loved or loathed due to the differing types of distortion they produce, odd, even, soft saturation, clipping, and the transient handling, and some gritty sub-atomic stuff. 

It's not organic reality folks. It's a different, more exotic and rarefied type of reality. Might as well make violins instead. Not to mention bows. 

[LCF]

On 3/5/2025 at 2:07 PM, David Beard said:

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.

I agree with much of what you're saying and can personally verify that when I make an instrument and string it up for the first time it often sounds disappointing but with a bit of time, usually comes good and grows into its unique voice. 

 

However when you say things like

"allowing the resonance and higher harmonics to be more open sounding and satisfying."

I must admit that I have no way of understanding what you mean. 

 

 

There is so much fine musculature involved in bowing and fingering violins, and possible changes in the bow, hair and resin themselves that it seems logical to me that you have to warm up a bit before you get right into it. Not many athletes would start running, swimming, jumping etc before performing some sort of warm up routine to get there neuromuscular systems working smoothly. 

 

[LCF]

On 3/6/2025 at 2:10 AM, Don Noon said:

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.

Mastering, as most will know, is the process of taking a nearly final version of a recording and preparing it for  rendition on some medium of distribution whether it be broadcast, vinyl, cd, mp3 or Moonbounce relay to Mars. Different mastering for each medium. A very useful tool at this stage is known as a Vectorscope and it is very simple. In days of yore just an oscilloscope with one sound channel fed into the Y axis and the other fed into the X axis. Nowadays a plug-in app in software, a VST or whatever. You use it to asses phase relationships, stereo image and so forth and it displays a mess of constantly changing Lissajous figures. 

 

So to expand on Don's statement, you take two amplifiers feeding identical loads and feed the output voltages into a vectorscope, or two vectorscopes on a channel by channel basis L-L and R-R.  If there is any deviation from a perfectly straight diagonal line with varied input content you have identified your difference. If not, there is none  

[Victor Roman]

8 hours ago, LCF said:

So to expand on Don's statement, you take two amplifiers feeding identical loads and feed the output voltages into a vectorscope, or two vectorscopes on a channel by channel basis L-L and R-R.  If there is any deviation from a perfectly straight diagonal line with varied input content you have identified your difference. If not, there is none  

The actual question is not as much if you can identify a difference but if you can identify a difference your auditory experience can be assigned to. That is a very hard nut to crack. Personally, I think the ear is smarter than we give it credit to and can sense "things" we haven't yet thought about. Nothing magical, we'll eventually figure it out.

[martin swan]

9 hours ago, LCF said:

Mastering, as most will know, is the process of taking a nearly final version of a recording and preparing it for  rendition on some medium of distribution whether it be broadcast, vinyl, cd, mp3 or Moonbounce relay to Mars. Different mastering for each medium. A very useful tool at this stage is known as a Vectorscope and it is very simple. In days of yore just an oscilloscope with one sound channel fed into the Y axis and the other fed into the X axis. Nowadays a plug-in app in software, a VST or whatever. You use it to asses phase relationships, stereo image and so forth and it displays a mess of constantly changing Lissajous figures. 

 

So to expand on Don's statement, you take two amplifiers feeding identical loads and feed the output voltages into a vectorscope, or two vectorscopes on a channel by channel basis L-L and R-R.  If there is any deviation from a perfectly straight diagonal line with varied input content you have identified your difference. If not, there is none  

The vectorscope is a very blunt instrument … but it was fun to stare at if you’d had a spliff or two

I can’t see it being helpful in identifying if a violin sounds different to a player after 30 minutes of playing. For that we’d have to measure brain activity!

[LCF]

1 hour ago, martin swan said:

The vectorscope is a very blunt instrument … but it was fun to stare at if you’d had a spliff or two

I can’t see it being helpful in identifying if a violin sounds different to a player after 30 minutes of playing. For that we’d have to measure brain activity!

I can think of ways it would be of use for testing areas of soundboards etc but not in the context of this discussion of playing in. 

I was mentioning it in relation to comparing the outputs of two different amplifiers.  I don't think it is a completely blunt tool but it does take a lot of practice to interpret what it is showing you - eyes can be faster than ears.  A useful aspect of it is that if you have two identical wideband channels  on a good quality CRO for the X and Y axes then there are no digital or other processing artefacts which get in the way of the analysis. 

 

[LCF]

11 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

The actual question is not as much if you can identify a difference but if you can identify a difference your auditory experience can be assigned to. That is a very hard nut to crack. Personally, I think the ear is smarter than we give it credit to and can sense "things" we haven't yet thought about. Nothing magical, we'll eventually figure it out.

I find that good quality instrumentation (I mean technology) can teach many things you did not notice acoustically, visually ... 

 

PS This discussion is about comparison in a general sense. Humans are not very good at comparing two sensations directly without technological support - do you listen to both simultaneously or one after the other, how long after?

-  with all the psycho-acoustical difficulties that entails.

The simple device I mentioned is a type of comparator and fantastically good at testing for linearity and proportionality between two signals.

 

 

As an aside this reminded me I bought one of these for my wife to record fine details of plant specimens. I haven't thought about whether it could have a role in repairs but I have been eye-ing off the precision XY stage ... 

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.1stmachineryauctions.com%2Fmedia%2Flot%2FLot-86---1-2.jpeg&tbnid=tpaEePNM8H8w3M&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.1stmachineryauctions.com%2Flots%2Fmitutoyo-optical-comparator&docid=V2mcqii1JbPHxM&w=576&h=768&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F0&kgs=032357604009ff35

 

Edited March 7 by LCF
PS

[Jeffrey Holmes]

22 hours ago, donbarzino said:

Could the phenomenon  of instruments sounding better after 30 minutes playing be due to our breath

slowly creating a humid zone between the instrument being played and our ears ?

I believe @Bruce Carlson was involved in some testing concerning the Il Cannone involving temperature and humidity sensors placed on the interior of the fiddle during "warm up" and relying on the player to declare when the fiddle was "ready".  I recall the results were interesting and, if I recall correctly, seemed to have a pattern (temperature and humidity relating to the fiddle being "ready").  I think I have this mostly right. Maybe Bruce will chime in and comment.

[David Burgess]

5 hours ago, Jeffrey Holmes said:

I recall the results were interesting and, if I recall correctly, seemed to have a pattern (temperature and humidity relating to the fiddle being "ready")

Yup. There had been a temperature increase, and a weight gain from moisture entrainment when the Cannone was considered "ready for the performance".

[GoPractice]

On 3/6/2025 at 9:32 AM, donbarzino said:

I have noticed  violins of mine and others sounding better in humid weather and I have also

been told by audiophile friends that their speakers sound better in higher humidity conditions.

 ( ... [ my edit] )

How much better, based on how much humidity?

What occurs during high humidity? Roll off of the highs?

When over seas in Asia, tuning rooms if there were not the required AirCon ( air-conditionings ) the measurable datas were less meaningful.

If listeners liked rolled off high frequencies that was an issue. Not certain for lower frequencies, but still trying to quantify the lowest octaves, most listeners liked rolled off high frequencies.

This is an intense argument difficult to discuss without understanding of what listeners hear and that of the player.

Sorry... just plopped in.