[W9TR]

I was part of a demonstration at an Audio Engineering Society meeting where two acoustic guitars were played by the same musician behind an acoustically transparent screen used to hide the visual cues.

One guitar was a Yamaha $200 starter guitar and the other a Hermann Hauser SR 1937 owned by Andres Segovia. I’m not a guitar aficionado but this particular guitar is very highly regarded.

The same piece was played on each guitar for a few minutes. The audience was encouraged to clap between performances.

A show of hands was used to indicate audience preference.

In this case the majority of audience members preferred the second guitar.

It was the $200 Yamaha.

The test was repeated multiple times during the conference with different audiences each time.

The second guitar always won. Didn’t matter if it was the Herrmann Hauser or the Yamaha.

The demonstrators explained the the loud white noise from clapping between selections changed the audience’s perceptual bias in a positive way that caused them to favor the second guitar.

Fascinating.

Tom