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----- 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