4. Perceptual studies of the violin

 

Ultimately, the quality of a musical instrument is never determined by measurements alone: judgements by people are necessary. Experimental psychology, and psychoacoustics in particular, has an established body of procedures for testing and analysis. The detailed design of tests should emphasize the very best performances, provided they are convincingly and repeatably demonstrated, since they are likely to relate most closely to the musical world.

 

There are several types of perceptual question that can be posed, and some are much easier than others to test. The simplest type of question is to vary a single parameter influencing a sound, and determine the threshold of perception for changing that parameter, often called the just-noticeable difference (JND).

 

Saitis show that violinists show a good degree of self-consistency, but that there is very little consistency between players when it comes to ranking a given set of instruments, either on overall preference or according to more specific criteria such as ‘richness’ or ‘dynamic range’.