[JoeProBono]

The five instruments played during a sound test in Germany, including two made from wood treated with fungi and a stradivarius. (Visually, there is very little difference between them.) Credit: Egmont Seiler.

[JoeProBono]

[CodeToad]

In so many ways this is awesome. I thought the woods necessary to make a fine instrument are not to be found anymore, so a great substitute is a minor miracle.

[proxy_user]

These brief listening tests are not reliable. In order to fully prove this, they would have to listen to a wide variety of music on each violin over a period of weeks or months.

[ZinGirl]

we're trusting a sound test from people who can hear words like “Osnabrücker Baumpflegetagen" and think it sounds correct?

;)

[VeniVidiVici]

Well, it would certainly make Christmas much easier for the musician in your life.

[Terabitten]

This sort of test has been done on audiophile and musical instrument websites forever. Some of them are "Which is the real 1959 Les Paul, which is the 1959 Reissue (built in 2003)." Others are "which is the real 1968 Marshall 50 watt amp, which is the Line6 modeler?" My favorite was the "which is the $100 per foot speaker wire, which is a coathanger (literally, a coathanger wire...)"

The results are always the same. The "better" instrument never wins a clear majority, and sometimes is upset by the "lesser," as was the case in the speaker wire test. A majority of listeners actually preferred the sound of coathanger wire to $100 per foot high-end audiophile speaker wire.

The important thing to come away with is this: The vast majority of people can't tell the difference. If you can, then by all means, spend twenty times the money to get that extra one-half of one percent of tone.