They found the secret audiobook
Antonio Stradivari, who was born 139 years later, inherited Amati’s methods and designs and improved on them until he was manufacturing instruments now widely considered to be unsurpassed. His instruments were so successful that the designs were copied for generations. Female singers tend to have higher-frequency formants than males because their vocal tracts are shorter.īorn in 1505, Andrea Amati is credited with inventing the modern violin. “Some Stradivari violins clearly possess female singing qualities, which may contribute to their perceived sweetness and brilliance,” he said. Hwan-Ching Tai, an author on the study at the National Taiwan University, said Stradivari violins are often described as having “brightness” and “brilliance”, both qualities that could be rooted in the higher-frequency tones that make the instruments sound closer to female voices.
Specifically, the Amati violins produced formants similar to those from bass and baritone singers, while the Stradivari instruments had higher-frequency formants, closer to those of tenors and contraltos.
The researchers found that the early Italian instruments produced human-like “formants”, the harmonic tones that correspond to resonances in the vocal tract. The scientists recorded a professional violinist playing 15 antique instruments at Taiwan’s Chimei Museum and compared the acoustic signatures with those from 16 male and female vocalists who were recorded singing English vowel sounds.
#THEY FOUND THE SECRET AUDIOBOOK SOFTWARE#
Using software normally reserved for speech analysis, they found that violins from the two Cremonese luthiers mimic aspects of the human voice, a feature they argue adds to the instruments’ exceptional musical quality. Now scientists in Taiwan believe they have hit on an answer.
The violins made by the Italian masters Andrea Amati and Antonio Stradivari are celebrated as the finest ever made, but the secret behind their perfect sound has mystified experts for centuries.