[ARSCLIST] Cylinder multi-horn recording (was: "How could anybody... Rant")

[Eric Jacobs <EricJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 26/04/07, Don Cox wrote:

> Acoustic recordings were often made with more than one horn. I haven't
> been able to find a picture of this, or to find out how the sounds were
> combined.
>

In the case of the few photos I've seen of early acoustic recording with
multiple horns (13 horns in one photo, each horn attached to a separate
cylinder machine), the horns were used to create duplicates of the
performance (on brown wax cylinders, before there were molded cylinders).
The use of these duplicates is unclear.  Just surmising, the dupes may
have been used to select the best one, which then became a master for
pantographic duplication, or perhaps these duplicates were all masters
for pantographic duplication.

I'm not sure the sounds were ever combined.  Was it possible to have
a multi-horn feed on a single cylinder machine?  I think any strategy
that required time synchronizing multiple cylinders would have been
far too difficult with the cylinder playback technology - the machines
were too imprecise in terms of absolute speed and speed stability.

Eric Jacobs
Principal

The Audio Archive
tel: 408.221.2128
fax: 408.549.9867
mailto:EricJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx