Jonah Lehrer, the writer for the New Yorker who lost his job when it was discovered that he was recycling content and manufacturing quotes, had an interesting article before his disgrace where he discussed how hard it was for people, when subjected to double-blind tests, to discriminate between wines, not being able to tell the difference between high-priced reputedly quality wines with much cheaper varieties. There have been studies that show that when subjected to blindfold testing, even people who are considered expert wine tasters cannot even tell the difference between red and white wine, let alone the fine distinctions such as year, vineyard, grape type, etc. between different grades of wine
I am not a wine drinker. I suspect that taste discrimination is closely related to one’s sense of smell and we know that there are a few people with the ability to discriminate among an enormous number of smells and detect very fine differences. So what I suspect is that when it comes to wine and food and other things that involve smell, there are a very few people who are truly discerning. But there are a vast number of people who may talk a good game but would be stymied by a double-blind test.
It seems to be the same with sound because along comes another study that suggests that the reputedly high sound quality of the highly-prized Stradivarius violins, that have long been studied to try and determine what it is that gives them their superior sound, may also be a myth.
Many researchers have sought explanations for the purported tonal superiority of Old Italian violins by investigating varnish and wood properties, plate tuning systems, and the spectral balance of the radiated sound. Nevertheless, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has been investigated scientifically only once very recently, and results showed a general preference for new violins and that players were unable to reliably distinguish new violins from old. The study was, however, relatively small in terms of the number of violins tested (six), the time allotted to each player (an hour), and the size of the test space (a hotel room). In this study, 10 renowned soloists each blind-tested six Old Italian violins (including five by Stradivari) and six new during two 75-min sessions—the first in a rehearsal room, the second in a 300-seat concert hall. When asked to choose a violin to replace their own for a hypothetical concert tour, 6 of the 10 soloists chose a new instrument. A single new violin was easily the most-preferred of the 12. On average, soloists rated their favorite new violins more highly than their favorite old for playability, articulation, and projection, and at least equal to old in terms of timbre. Soloists failed to distinguish new from old at better than chance levels. These results confirm and extend those of the earlier study and present a striking challenge to near-canonical beliefs about Old Italian violins.
Once again, it may well be that like with smell, there are a few rare people with highly developed discrimination powers while the rest of us are just fooling ourselves that we can tell the difference.