MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS — RICHARDSON 257 



Fortunately a way out of this dilemma is suggested by a recent dis- 

 covery in the use of the public address system. The disadvantage 

 of the common use of loudspeakers to amplify sound — for example, 

 the voice of the preacher in a large church — is that the output of the 

 nearest loudspeaker to an auditor, since it seems usually louder 

 than and slightly in advance of phase over the human speaker, gives 

 the impression that it — the mechanical source — is the true source. 

 But if the reproduction over the amplifying system is delayed so that 

 it arrives some millionths of a second later than the direct sound — 

 which can easily be done by making a record of the sermon on magnetic 

 tape and picking it up to feed the amplifiers at a point a little farther 

 along the tape, so as to produce the required delay — the sound is esti- 

 mated to come from the original source and yet is amplified. Lon- 

 doners may hear such a device in action in St. Paul's Cathedral and 

 although, to my knowledge, it has not been applied to music, it seems to 

 have possibilities in instances such as those I have cited where loss of 

 directivity would be a disadvantage. 



INDIVIDUAL INSTRUMENTS 



Strings. — The problem that will most interest string players is: 

 What, scientifically speaking, differentiates a good violin from a bad 

 one? Though put in this bald way the problem seems puerile, it 

 is by no means easy with scientific apparatus to tell a good modern 

 violin from a classical one. Professor Saunders, at the University 

 of Harvard, has spent about 20 years trying to discover what he calls 

 "the secret of Stradivarius" and although some facts have emerged, 

 a good deal on the psychological side remains to be explained. In 

 one set of experiments, in which Jascha Heifetz assisted, three 

 violins. A, B, C — one a good old one and two modern types — were 

 played behind a screen, while a critical audience was asked to "find 

 the Strad." This they were unable to do — that is to say, one-third 

 named A, one- third B, and the remainder C as the veritable old 

 master. Heifetz himself, however, claimed that he could tell a dif- 

 ference in ease of tone production or "singability" while playing them. 

 Perhaps the older violin from constanly being played had acquired 

 with age greater "efficiency" as a music maker. 



Not much can be learned by comparing acoustic outputs of violins 

 over their range except that the really bad ones will have in their 

 f ormants a few pronounced and strongly separated resonances in each 

 of which a "wolf" lurks, whereas these resonances ought to be reason- 

 ably and closely distributed over a range of four octaves. Much 

 can, of course, be done to improve a poor violin, by altering the 

 coupling between the strings and resonators by shifting bridge, bass 

 bar, and sound post. 



