[78-L] Acoustic-era monitoring

[Sammy Jones]

This one's been bugging me for a while...

Did engineers in the acoustic days have any way to directly monitor the
sounds coming from the recording horn?  Were there perhaps listening tubes
tapped into the line (or pipe)?  Was there any way to visually monitor
volume other than watching the cutter head etch the grooves with a
microscope?

I wonder how they mixed sounds coming from different horns, or if they even
did!  Maybe they just moved performers closer to or farther away from the
horns...

Sammy Jones