A great violin should sing and inspire you, not make you wince.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Violin making is a delicate craft – small imperfections can ruin everything. Traditionally, sound is only evaluated after the instrument is done. Adjustments can be time-consuming and costly.
Arun Krishnadas and team at MIT are bringing computation into the workshop. They X-rayed a renowned violin and made a virtual model.
And when they simulated play?!
The model reproduced complex music with impressive accuracy. Small tweaks to wood or thickness of this virtual violin changed the sound.
So now, violin makers can perfect their instruments before carving.
But they can’t perfect their customers.
Krishnadas, A., Liu, Y., Campbell, B., Barnas, R., & Makris, N. C. (2026). Exploring the behavior of a strung computational Stradivarius violin. npj Acoustics, 2(1), 13.