Talking pictures : how they are made and how to appreciate them (1937)

Sound Recording notes were deficient or had a bad extra resonance, a strident sound. The letter s had to be avoided when possible, because of an exaggerated hissing effect, and high soprano voices sometimes recorded or reproduced with a false and inaccurate shrillness. To overcome these defects at least five hundred varieties of the basic recording and reproducing methods have been made by one studio alone. For the entire industry such variations would run into the thousands. Today, as a result, we have recording and reproducing systems which reproduce the low basso and the high soprano with nearly equal fidelity, which accentuate no letter of the alphabet at the expense of others. It has been said several times that the motion picture as a whole deserves unstinted credit because, in a short life of fifty years, it has made more definite artistic advances each year than any other form of art. Praise belongs in even greater measure to the sound recording process. Practical sound recording for motion pictures is now just starting its second decade. Today, its refinements and its great range make the crude "sound" of 1927 seem almost ridiculous. Sound recording has increased so progressively, and so evenly, that the average theatregoer is frequently unaware of individual developments which have brought spontaneous applause from the scientific world. It is possible that many of the important advances in sound recording might have been delayed in their inception had it not been for Lawrence Tibbett. Tibbett brought to the immature art of sound recording a voice which put too many demands on the equip [205]