Curtain of Sound

An approach to capturing and reproducing stereophonic sound developed by Dr Harvey Fletcher (of Bell Labs in America) in the early 1930s. A multiplicity of microphones arrayed in front of a large ensemble sample the audio wavefront at different points in space. Each microphone is connected to a corresponding loudspeaker in front of the audience to recreate the same wavefronts. Although effective, this technique was deemed highly impractical at the time, and it evolved through simplification into various spaced-omni microphone techniques.