I thought some of you might find interesting the efforts made to capture the sound of some well respected violin family instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries.

https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=694056444&rid=1001

Perhaps some day we’ll be able to “play” one of these particular Stradivarius, Amati, or Guarneri via a Motif.

Interesting, but an amateur like myself finds it hard to understand why they did it like this.
Since they had the 32 mics picking up all the noise from outside the hall, doesn’t that indicate that what they recorded was how the posh violin sounds in that particular concert hall?

IMHO, it would’ve been better to record the Stradivarius in a studio and then anyone buying the ‘sample pack’/VST could add whatever reverb they want afterwards. Especially since they went through the effort of recording all those transitions between notes etc.

But I’’m clearly missing something here! :-)

The concert hall is apparently part of the museum. It wouldn’t surprise me if the museum might not have allowed the instruments out of their possession.

The article doesn’t make it clear how many of the 32 mics were being used at any one time. Mixing a large number of simultaneous sources typically results in a poor sound image, due to reverberation and attendant phase differences. The article did state that there would be “several hundred thousand files”, which certainly leaves room for multiple recording techniques. Hopefully some of the recordings used just a few mics, in relatively close proximity, which would limit the amount of hall ambience captured.

Then again, I’ve heard some “professional” samples which exhibited rather poor technique, so who knows…