Loud Speakers and Microphones*

Abstract

In ordinary radio broadcast of symphony music, the effort is to create the effect of taking the listener to the scene of the program, whereas in reproducing such music in a large hall before a large gathering the effect required is that of transporting the distant orchestra to the listeners. Lacking the visual diversion of watching the orchestra play, such an audience centers its interest more acutely in the music itself, thus requiring a high degree of perfection in the reproducing apparatus both as to quality and as to the illusion of localization of the various instruments. Principles of design of the loud speakers and microphones used in the Philadelphia-Washington experiment are treated at length in this paper.