As acoustical consultants, we’re often forced to work around extraneous noise. Especially in New York, trying to measure something that is quiet can be frustrating when it’s surrounded by things that are loud. While this tends to be unavoidable here, the New York Times features this piece on an acoustic task that was too important for interference: the digital cataloging of a Stradivarius collection in Cremona, Italy.
By building a model of samples and tones from each instrument, the project hopes to preserve their sound indefinitely even after the instruments degrade. But because the sounds are too subtle to withstand any extraneous noise, city activity and traffic around the Museo del Violino is completely suspended during recording, an unprecedented precaution only possible since the Stradivarius is the signature sound of Cremona. That level of control would be nice for our own work, but city noise is the signature sound of New York!