----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]> > So Mike, are you and others saying that a horn recording system is a > one-way system? I thought the point of a playback horn was, partly, to > undo some of the frequency response characteristics imposed by the > recording horn, like how an electronic disk recording system uses an EQ > curve to record and the reverse curve to play back. So, playing back an > Edison cylinder with no playback EQ -- to use one example -- is not the > listening experience intended, is it? So then you have to get into EQ "by > ear" by the electronic-playback engineer. > So how is that any different, at base, from selecting an appropriate horn, > playing back acoustically in a benign acoustic environment and recording > the playback with a properly-placed accurate mic (ie a small-diaphram > instrumentation mic or like -- not an obviously colored mic like a U-47)? > Okeh...I'll adjourn to the experts here...! For the first few decades, it was enough that one could actually play back the sounds that, before 1879, had vanished un-recorded into the atmosphere! I have NO idea whether any serious research (beyond Edison's x-hundred-foot-long monster recording horn.../!) was done on the subject of how accurately sounds were recorded and played back...?! Victor, of course, recorded "Orthophonically" (i.e. electrically)...and, as well, introduced an "orthophonic" playback based on research of how sound "behaved" in both recording and playback horns, I have NO idea whether other fairly-accurate acoustic systems (i.e. Brunswick's last acoustic recordings, and Vocalion's) were based on careful research...?! Columbia introduced an acoustic system so good that it was employed for their discount labels (Harmony et al) well into 1931! To what extent the science of acoustics, and the behaviour of sound in horns, had been studied by 1925 I wot not! For the most part, this sort of research didn't occur until after WWII...and involved "speaker systems" of that period! The other harsh reality is that those of us who have interests in the area are also old enough to have lost substantial parts of their high-frequency hearing to the inevitable deterioration of advancing age!! Steven C. Barr