Recording Kronos direct to disc, cylinder and tape

[Steve E.]

Last October, at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, Leandro Leo Gonzalez and I recorded the Kronos Quartet to 78 rpm record, and our friend Eli Lief (MrMegaEli) recorded them to tape, sharing our preps and trading equipment and tools. Meanwhile, Jerry Fabris recorded them to wax cylinder and Brian Mohr recorded them digitally. Simultaneously. We had an hour to set up equipment that usually takes, er--_much_ longer to calibrate adequately, and there was only one electrical outlet in the room for all of us plus camera crew.

It was chaos. In the absence of a vacuum system, Leandro did a lot of panicked manual blowing of tangled threads from the stylus. Our trio almost killed each other, and we came out of it better friends.

The event was organized by the Red Hot Organization.

Here is a new video about the unprecedented stunt. http://www.livescience.com/46388-kronos-quartet-tracks-bach-at-thomas-edisons-studio-for-aids-research-video.html

[Techie]

Great project and interesting documentary. I guess the focus was only on the cylinder because of the Edison connection. Will there be a venue for us to hear all results from all recordings?

[Steve E.]

There will be an app that will allow you to toggle between the different audio formats and hear the differences. I'll let you know when it becomes available.

[Jccc]

Really cool video steve! I really liked how they were saying that there sound was going through a time machine with all the different recording devices in the room.

It made me think the same idea. I wonder if the music cut on this presto machine (k8) had the same quality sound wise back in the 40s that it does today?