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Honorary advisor
Regulars
here's a very good test if you know what a Strad, a 19th century german, and a $39 violin sounds like;
http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graph.....index.html
surprisingly, I got it the first time, the sound was much obvious, specially with the $39 one, it sounded bulky and as if the sound was encased inside, the german one is darker and has a large, not much smooth sound, and the Strad has a thin smooth sound that seemed great for a chamber music.
cheers! - ⁰ℨ
Regulars
Regulars
Members
Well, I got the $39 one right. LOL
For the other two, I haven't listened much to Strads in particular so far as I know.. So I figured the one I thought sounded best would be the Strad. Apparently I just like the old German violin sound better.
Which is actually kinda cool, since I might be able to afford an old German violin someday, but a Stradivarius? Probably not. LOL
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
Member
Hah, don't know how I managed it as I'm very new to this. I got all three right on the first go.
To me the cheapo sounded very scratchy and whiny on the high notes, the german was similar but not as bad and the strad was the best, so I guessed the worst sound had to be the cheapo, with the next worst being german, etc.
First time I've ever purposefully listened to a strad. I may have heard them elsewhere but never identified as a strad.
Regulars
Advanced member
This was conspicuously easy. I wonder if the intent wasn't to proliferate the idea that Stradi's are the epitome of violins and nothing else compares, which simply isn't true.
Let's get a second opinion
Let's take some sound samples of various violins all being played from the same impartial player.
See if you can pick out which sound sample comes from the following instruments:
Cecilio CVN-200 $99.00
http://fiddlershop.com/instrum.....n-200.html
Fiddlerman Apprentice Violin $299.00
http://fiddlershop.com/fiddler.....iolin.html
Fiddlerman Soloist $1199.00
http://fiddlershop.com/fiddler.....iolin.html
Cremona Kreisler Violin $1,589.00
http://fiddlershop.com/instrum.....iolin.html
Sample A
https://soundcloud.com/alphacrow/a-1
Sample B
https://soundcloud.com/alphacrow/b
Sample C
https://soundcloud.com/alphacrow/c
Sample D
https://soundcloud.com/alphacrow/d
Good luck
Members
Did anyone else notice that in the first test, the one with the 3 violins, that they also are not being played equally well? There are quite a few points where it sounded like the non-Strads were being played intentionally a bit off, on not only intonation, but timing. It may be too painful for some to listen all the way through the tracks, but if you jump to about the 30 second mark, you won't need to listen for even 10 seconds to hear what I'm talking about.
Now listen to Pierre playing the 99$ Cecilio. I would bet that if you handed that 39$ violin from the test to Pierre, probably he couldn't make it sound really wonderful either, but it would be an even comparison and the differences would be in the actual sound of the instrument.
Not sure why they would want to "slant" their little test like that, but it seems to me they did.
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
Honorary advisor
Regulars
Aye, I do agree, if the violinist thinks that he's playing a cheap one, he wouldn't play it nicely, I think that they shouldn't tell what the violins are to the player, maybe let him/her play it with a blindfold....but anyway, some cheap violins have bad wormanship, i.e high nut, slipping pegs, hight and thick bridge, therefore, making it hard to play a nice sound.
cheers! - ⁰ℨ
Regulars
DanielB said
Did anyone else notice that in the first test, the one with the 3 violins, that they also are not being played equally well? There are quite a few points where it sounded like the non-Strads were being played intentionally a bit off, on not only intonation, but timing. It may be too painful for some to listen all the way through the tracks, but if you jump to about the 30 second mark, you won't need to listen for even 10 seconds to hear what I'm talking about.Now listen to Pierre playing the 99$ Cecilio. I would bet that if you handed that 39$ violin from the test to Pierre, probably he couldn't make it sound really wonderful either, but it would be an even comparison and the differences would be in the actual sound of the instrument.
Not sure why they would want to "slant" their little test like that, but it seems to me they did.
Yep. I thought at first that they gave those violins to the different violinists, with differnt skills level.
It wasn't hard to guess, really. I'm not a fan of Strads, but this one definitelly wins!
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