[78-L] Acoustic-era monitoring

[Royal Pemberton]

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 11:52 PM, Sammy Jones <sjones69 at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> 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...


No monitors.  All trial and error.  Record something, take notes of what the
set-up was, make a test pressing, listen to it, take notes as to what needed
to be done differently....lather, rinse, repeat.  Mixing was by balancing
via manipulating distances from the horn(s).  Singers did their own volume
limiting and gain reduction (as it were) on the fly, leaning away from the
horn for the loud bits, leaning in for the softer ones.  Some of them were
assisted in this by the engineer who had to move them gently back and forth
while they were singing.