The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

A question comes up about the recording horn characteristics. It is known that larger playback horn reproduces the lower notes better. It therefore makes sense that a larger recording horn would pick up lower frequencies better. So, was there ever a circumstance where recording horn dimensions were chosen in order to match a singer's voice, or an instrument, either through attenuation or accentuation? Secondly, if such matching were successful, was there ever a case where several different sizes of recording horns were used at once, so that "mixing" and matching could be accomplished at the same time?

Wolfe

the vertical recording system is quite capable of recording bass frequencies the problem is that he playback system has problems tracking the groove as it can jump out and adding more mass to the stylus causes undue wear especially id the record is a wax cylinder.
the lateral v groove has no such problem as the stylus is held in to the groove often by a pretty weighty sound box.

Start groove

The recording studio notes for the Victor Lucia Sextet record actually uses 6 horns and a lot of y connectors. With big voices line Caruso and Melba it may have made sense to have a horn each.
the use of multiple horns was more common in the lateral disc studio than the cylinder studio
The use of a larger horn may well favour the bass frequencies but within limits as the roll off of the recording characteristic at this end is useful to prevent overload giving a boxy or blasty record.
victor seemed for a while (1906-10 period) to favour this multi horn method but I think Columbia did not and other members of the forum might like to compare the close "mic" tight recording of Victor with more distant but fuller effects from Columbia on disc.
shaped or bent horns also exist to suspend pointing down over grand piano strings or xylophones.
metal, woo and plaster of Paris horns are also itemised in the Gram co Victor documents.

In response to another thread, I copied the cover of my Dover edition of the Moses guide, which, curiously, features what must have been a Pathé session (Lucien Muratore and Lina Cavalieri) for a volume strictly about lateral cut disks. Regardless, it shows a two-horn recording mechanism, and I thought it might be of interest here in light of the current discussion.

Thanks for that great detailed picture of the Pathé set up.
I have seen a couple of Pathé studio pictures but not with this angle and 2 horns but the typical thing for Pathé is the small horn/s and the very close proximity of the orchestra.
Not only is the bass lacking in due to the small horns but the line up of this backing is almost all strings and smaller wood wind.
The master cylinder could have been transferred to lateral disc (Pathé did do that) but the vertical recording characteristic would have been retained regardless of the issued format.

recordmaker: That is quite fascinating. It seems so practical, even in those times, that larger horns could capture the sounds from low range instruments and the various volumes of instruments and vocals from other horns could be proportionalized by a valve mixing system. Was there ever such a system?

Here is a link to some pictures of some acoustic recording events. Two of them show more than one horn.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view ... 924&sim=11

Thanks

I tend to collect these pictures to see what was done and there are two I have not seen before.
The one with 6 or more similar horns is almost certainly a bank of cylinder machines making simultaneous master copies.

The Elgar and Beatrice Harrison picture shows the one horn for the orchestra nd the smaller one pointing at he cello.

Edison and others do seem to have had some valve systems they tested but the noise of opening an closing a mechanical valve is difficult to mask and awkward to coordinate. I doubt it was common practice.

Perhaps a way to get around that would be to do a test recording, a partial track, and pre-set the valve settings to balance the various volumes. Once the settings are realized, then a new blank can be used for the final cut. That is just my imagining a possibility, I have no idea what would actually work.

Meanwhile, I wonder if anyone has made any recent experiments using various length recording horns that would focus on different ranges of tones.

recordmaker wrote:In my practical experience the lateral disc for acoustic recordings is restricted to a fairly steep roll of from 2.5Khz
The vertical cutter can respond up to 3.5Khz all of this is due to the lower mechanical mass of the stylus holder cutting directly into the wax against the longer lever and pivot needed in a lateral recorder.

That's not a lot of difference. It's less than a half octave.

I have talked about this in detail through the years on this TMF, I am not going to add anything to what I already stated earlier. In my experience, lateral recording tends to record the mid-bass and mid-range loudly and has a hard time recording over 3K with an acoustic recording of course. I have done some experiments (I suppose I need to replicate on my youtube channel.) Where is sent test tones down the horn of my vertical recorder, and not electrically but acoustical playback roughly 200-5,000cps? I generated the tones in audacity through a Marantz 2235B and used a 5" full-range Sony surround sound speaker with a 1" neodymium tweeter with 3mfd capacitor. This was using a .007" glass diaphragm in an advance ball, original studio vertical recording body.