Editing Stradivarius (section)

==Comparisons in sound quality==
The Stradivarius instruments are famous for the quality of sound they produce. However, the many [[blind experiment]]s from 1817<ref name=":0">A guitar-like violin made by the naval engineer François Chanot, a member of a family of [[luthier]]s. A committee of scientists and musicians, listening to the violins played in an adjacent room, judged Chanot's violin to be at least as good as the Stradivarius, but apparently Chanot's instruments quickly lost their good qualities. {{cite book|last=Fétis|first=François-Joseph|year=1868|title=Biographie Universelle des Musiciens et Bibliographie Générale de la Musique, Tome 1|place=Paris|publisher=Firmin Didot Frères, Fils, et Cie|edition=Second|page=249|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UEMQAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA249|access-date=2011-07-21}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{cite book|last=Dubourg|first=George|year=1852|title=The Violin: Some Account of That Leading Instrument and its Most Eminent Professors...|edition=Fourth|place=London|publisher=Robert Cocks and Co|pages=[https://archive.org/details/violinsomeaccoun00duboiala/page/n371 356]–357|url=https://archive.org/details/violinsomeaccoun00duboiala|access-date=2011-07-21}}</ref> to as recent as 2014<ref name="NYT-201430407">{{cite news|last=Belluck|first=Pam|author-link=Pam Belluck|title=A Strad? Violinists Can't Tell|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/science/a-strad-violinists-cant-tell.html|date=7 April 2014|work=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=9 April 2014|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140408200503/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/science/a-strad-violinists-cant-tell.html|archive-date=8 April 2014}}</ref><ref name="Fritz">{{cite journal|last=Fritz|first=Claudia|author2=Joseph Curtin|author3=Jacques Poitevineau|author4=Palmer Morrel-Samuels|author5=Fan-Chia Tao|title=Player preferences among new and old violin|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America|date=3 January 2012|volume=109|issue=3|doi=10.1073/pnas.1114999109|pages=760–763|pmid=22215592|pmc=3271912|bibcode=2012PNAS..109..760F|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Distillations"/> have never found any difference in sound between Stradivari's violins and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Beamen |first=John |year=2000 |title=The Violin Explained: Components, Mechanism, and Sound |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=89–90 |isbn=978-0-19-816739-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WbW18PBXOEYC&pg=PA89 |access-date=2009-01-23}}</ref><ref name=Coggins>{{cite journal | last = Coggins | first = Alan | journal = The Strad | date = Feb 2007 | title = Blind Listening Tests | pages = 52–55 | url = http://www.westerlunds.se/stradeng.htm | access-date = 2011-03-14 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110720152752/http://www.westerlunds.se/stradeng.htm | archive-date = 2011-07-20 }}</ref> In a particularly famous test on a [[BBC Radio 3]] programme in 1977, the violinists [[Isaac Stern]] and [[Pinchas Zukerman]] and the violin expert and dealer [[Charles Beare]] tried to distinguish between the "Chaconne" Stradivarius, a 1739 [[Guarneri]] del Gesú, an 1846 Vuillaume, and a 1976 British violin played behind a screen by a professional soloist. The two violinists were allowed to play all the instruments first. None of the listeners identified more than two of the four instruments. Two of the listeners identified the 20th-century violin as the Stradivarius.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Marchese |first=John |year=2008 |title=The Violin Maker: A Search for the Secrets of Craftsmanship, Sound, and Stradivari |publisher=Harper Perennial |pages=133–134 |isbn=978-0-06-001268-7}}</ref> Violinists and others have criticized these tests on various grounds such as that they are not [[Blind experiment#Double-blind trials|double-blind]] (in most cases), the judges are often not experts, and the sounds of violins are hard to evaluate objectively and reproducibly.<ref name=Coggins /><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fritz |first1=Claudia |last2=Curtin |first2=Joseph |last3=Poitevineau |first3=Jacques |last4=Borsarello |first4=Hugues |last5=Wollman |first5=Indiana |last6=Tao |first6=Fan-Chia |last7=Ghasarossian |first7=Thierry |title=Soloist evaluations of six Old Italian and six new violins |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |date=20 May 2014 |volume=111 |issue=20 |pages=7224–7229 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1323367111 |pmid=24711376 |pmc=4034184 |bibcode=2014PNAS..111.7224F |doi-access=free }}</ref>

In a test in 2009, the British violinist Matthew Trusler played his 1711 Stradivarius, said to be worth two million U.S. dollars, and four modern violins made by the Swiss violin-maker {{Interlanguage link multi|Michael Rhonheimer|de}}. One of Rhonheimer's violins, made with wood that the [[Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology]] researcher Francis Schwarze had treated with fungi, received 90 of the 180 votes for the best tone, while the Stradivarius came second with 39 votes. The majority (113) of the listeners misidentified the winning violin as the Stradivarius.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090914111418.htm|title=Fungus-Treated Violin Outdoes Stradivarius|work=[[Science Daily]]|date=14 September 2009|access-date=2010-01-22|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100505011453/http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090914111418.htm|archive-date=5 May 2010}}</ref> Analysis of the treated wood revealed a reduction in density, accompanied by relatively little change in the speed of sound. According to this analysis, treatment improves the sound radiation ratio to the level of cold-climate wood considered to have superior resonance.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Schwarze |first1=Francis W. M. R. |last2=Spycher |first2=Melanie |last3=Fink |first3=Siegfried |title=Superior wood for violins – wood decay fungi as a substitute for cold climate |journal=New Phytologist |date=September 2008 |volume=179 |issue=4 |pages=1095–1104 |doi=10.1111/j.1469-8137.2008.02524.x |pmid=18554266 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

In a double-blind test in 2012<ref name="blogs.discovermagazine.com">{{cite web | url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/ | title=Violinists can't tell the difference between Stradivarius violins and new ones | access-date=3 January 2012 | url-status=live | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120103184518/http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/ | archive-date=3 January 2012 | date=2012-01-02 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad?ps=cprs | title=Double-Blind Violin Test: Can You Pick The Strad? | website=NPR.org | access-date=3 January 2012 | url-status=live | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120103025322/http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad?ps=cprs | archive-date=3 January 2012 }}</ref> published in the study "[[Player preferences among new and old violins]]",<ref name="Fritz" /> expert players could not distinguish old from new instruments by playing them for a short time in a small room.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science/in-play-off-between-old-and-new-violins-stradivarius-lags.html|author=Nicholas Wade|title=In Classic vs. Modern Violins, Beauty Is in Ear of the Beholder|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=2 January 2012|quote=[Carlyss] likened the test to trying to compare a Ford and a Ferrari in a Walmart parking lot.|access-date=2 January 2012|author-link=Nicholas Wade}}</ref> In an additional test, performed in a concert hall, one of the Stradivarius violins placed first, but one of the participants stated that "the audience in the concert hall were essentially equivocal on which instruments were better in each of the pair-wise instrument comparisons" and "I could tell slight differences in the instruments... but overall they were all great. None of them sounded substantially weaker than the others."<ref name="blogs.discovermagazine.com" /> Modern violins were rated as having better sound-carrying qualities and were preferred again in a study in 2017.<ref name="Curtin">{{cite journal |last1=Fritz |first1=Claudia |last2=Curtin |first2=Joseph |last3=Poitevineau |first3=Jacques |last4=Tao |first4=Fan-Chia |title=Listener evaluations of new and Old Italian violins |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |date=23 May 2017 |volume=114 |issue=21 |pages=5395–5400 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1619443114 |pmid=28484030 |pmc=5448217 |bibcode=2017PNAS..114.5395F |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="Distillations"/>

While many world-class soloists play violins by Antonio Stradivari, there are notable exceptions. For example, [[Christian Tetzlaff]] formerly played "a quite famous Strad", but switched to a violin made in 2002 by [[Stefan-Peter Greiner]]. He states that the listener cannot tell that his instrument is modern, and he regards it as excellent for [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]] and better than a Stradivarius for "the big Romantic and 20th-century [[concerto]]s."<ref>{{cite news |last=Norris |first=Geoffrey |date=2005-02-10 |title=Debunking the Stradivarius Myth |newspaper=The Telegraph |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3636787/Debunking-the-Stradivarius-myth.html |access-date=2009-08-08 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090923175048/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3636787/Debunking-the-Stradivarius-myth.html |archive-date=2009-09-23 }}</ref>