[WAAAY OT] Help - name needed

[Kay C Lan]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 11:09 AM, Judy Perry <katheryn.swynford at gmail.com>wrote:


> The flute is likely some silver-alloy
> (although Flutenet I think has had some really intriguing articles on
> how materials matter little and that a concrete flute would likely
> sound indistinguisable from a 9k gold one, though flutes are also made
> of platinum, wood & resin, pus -- l.et's think about it:  if you
> really think that materials matter, remember just how little gold goes
> into 9k gold, and yet people will pay $10K - $20k or more for a 9k
> gold fl8te over one of similar probably hand-made flutes of other
> materials composition);


Exactly, concert flutes are normally made of silver or silver alloy. A gold
flute will be either gold plated silver or a silver-gold alloy. Student
flutes are normally nickle-silver alloy or for the really cheap ones, silver
plated brass.


> Sir James Galway has noted that, from
> recordings of his own work, he cannot tell the metal composition of
> his flute being used, and Nina Perlove on YouTube has some interesting
> blind play-tests with flutes of varying materials composition.
>

I notice though, that in all these test they were with metal flutes, no
comparison with a wood flute. I also note that in Sir Jame's test, he used
16 flutes which he owned, so I imagine no cheap silver plated ones, but all
high quality flutes with a similar content of silver, only the very small
amount of gold may have varied.

Lastly, it is completely pointless trying to detect the 'subtle' difference
in sound of various flutes when the sound has probably been recorded using
the cheap inbuilt mic of a consumer quality camcorder, then compressed for
YouTube to be finally heard over computer speakers! It's a bit like those
ads for HD TV. How is anyone going to see the difference on their Standard
format TV?????

Still if Sir Jame's says it's hard to tell you have to believe him, but I
got to ask myself, if there is no difference in the sound of all those
flutes, why does Sir Jame's own so many?