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Friday, April 1, 2011

The Sound of 94 Speakers - Don Baker

Theme From Sanctuary
Don Baker At The Console Of The Rodgers Electronic Organ
The Sound Of 94 Speakers!
Great Motion Picture Themes
Capitol Records T-1626
1961

This is an organ recording made in The Portland, Oregon, Memorial Coliseum.

From the back cover: The Rodgers is unique. Completely electrified, it uses neither simple pneumatic nor electrical-pneumatic action. Each of its 600 tones is produced by a separate match-box sized transistorized etched circuit, housed within the console. To allow the Rodgers to sound throughout the 14,000-seat Coliseum, technicians arrived at the highly unusual solution. 32 speaker enclosures hold the 94 speakers, and together with 26 amplifiers, they were placed in a two-ton "basket" suspended from the arena ceiling. Pointing slightly downward and covering a full circle, the speakers beam sound to every seat in the arena.

What this all means to the non-technically minded record listener is the more dramatic pieces on this album sound cool because the sound is spacey and full of reverb.

2 comments:

  1. dident no that speaker systems existed like that in those old dark days.

    ReplyDelete

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