How does this explain the often astonishingly realistic & clear recordings of other vertical companies, such as Everlasting, Pathe, and Majestic? I still say that when speaking of ACOUSTIC recording and playback, vertical was superior.
----- Original Message ----- > > With regard to Edison's early cylinder recordings sounding better than > Victor's, I agree with that sentiment. But not because of any intrinsic > superiority of the vertical over the lateral technology. It's really the > opposite, as I've stated above. Edison's better sounding recordings are a > result of his engineers taking more effort to have properly functioning > equipment and his engineers general preference for getting the talent > closer > to the recording horn and with recording in relatively acoustically "dead" > environments. These preferences lead to capturing more high frequency > content in the recording. Edison's engineers also are known to have been > very careful to choose the recorder that best matched the nature of the > music and the talent, that is different recorders were used for selections > featuring a solo vocalist than were used for band recordings or were used > for massed voices, etc. Victor and Columbia probably weren't as careful > in > the early days about these details of their acoustic recording setups. > > Greg Bogantz
