peterbas wrote: ↑Tue Aug 22, 2023 9:52 am
People should try to understand that there are different things here at play. I make up a non-scientific list
- a pure mechanical change made to an instrument that gives a measurable change in one type of measurement or the other.
- that same change tested in an ABX test (sort of double-blind test) to see if a human can detect the change.
- same thing but now the player can or can not detect the change.
- again same but now the listener can detect the change.
- all the above seeing of the change is preferred
Number one is the easiest to do.
The others require hard to design test that need to be done under strict control with a big enough size of people.
That's because we people have the ability to think, and mostly we think we know it better, but that is hardly ever true.
It is on the other side a part of what makes us all different and keeps life interesting.
Given the difficulties of blind testing, we could start with the last bullet. It requires playing at least three instruments, not two, and requiring all listeners to rank them by preference. With enough listeners, the rankings will either show correlation to the instruments or not. If not, there is no preference. If there is no preference, any measured differences become unimportant, which is useful particularly if those measurements are difficult and expensive.
The issue will be with the performer, who cannot be a blind tester. One way around that is for the three instruments to be played by, say, ten performers. That might be enough to average out biases for similar instruments. The preferences of the performers should also be collected and ranked, but not with any hopes of statistical significance (unless you test with a hundred performers).
Here's the point: There is no science to be had here, simply because filtering out the biases is too difficult. But if we recognize those biases, we can also realize that a tuba that is loved by its performer will likely produce a more beautiful result than one the performer dislikes for whatever reason. A performer whose music is emotive and beautiful, and who plays in tune with others, will be preferable to an alternative that might be easier to play in tune for some players or that produces a more beautiful tone. Ease of play, which is a relationship between a host of variables with both the instrument and the player, has to be a big factor. Some performers are proud of mastering a "difficult" instrument, and others run away from those difficulties. Joe has said that he can usually find a way to make a decent sound on just about any tuba, as long as it plays in tune, and that expresses his own objective of point-n-shoot intonation so that he can work on sound and musicality, versus another player who prefers the best possible sound produced most easily, so that he can work on intonation and musicality. Both can lead to a high level of competence, as we have seen demonstrated over and over again.
The statement that tuba X or tuba Y isn't played much by professionals isn't very informative to me. I suspect that the instruments Joe (to call him out) have been playing lately would not be at the top of the list for most other similarly (or even more) successful working pros. That in no way invalidates them for Joe's use. The interest in Bb tubas by orchestra pros seems to me limited to kaiser-size rotary tubas for those works that say "kontrabasstuba" at the top, so these smallish Miraphones or Cerveny piggie-sized Bb tubas and their clones are unlikely to appear in those hands, for reasons that might be unrelated to the instruments themselves.
For second-rate amateurs like me, a tuba has to excite me. And for it to excite me, it has to be able to do things for me that I can't do for myself, but that I value when they happen, in specific performance settings. That's a somewhat different set of objectives than what Joe has expressed, though he has always mentioned his preference for tubas that make him sound better than he thinks he is.
Science is hard, but fortunately the choices don't have to hinge on scientific measures. I follow a science-oriented audio forum, and I see people there chase numbers far beyond where those numbers have any practical meaning. (Example: Can we hear the difference between music played
through a DAC that has a SINAD of 120 dB versus a "mediocre" one with a SINAD of 100 dB? I defy most people to hear the presence or absence of distortion only 40 dB down from actual music when using real headphones, even the best ones on the market. It's easier to hear with test tones, but listening to test tones is not why I buy audio equipment. And this is for playback, which is entirely in the engineering/science domain, and not for the production of art, which mostly hinges on what is in the mind and skill of the performer.) We are allowed to like suboptimal (in whatever dimension) instruments if they excite us enough to do what it takes to be musical using them.
This is where this thread ends up, given that nobody has actually played both a Miraphone 494 and a 282 Bb.
Rick "on storm watch this week and therefore not traveling for once" Denney
