John E. Volkmann
John E. Volkmann (1905 in Chicago – July 9, 1980, in Princeton, New Jersey) was a sound engineer and architect.
Volkmann received a BS degree in 1927 and an MS in 1928. He worked his entire professional career at RCA, working on acoustics, large scale loudspeakers and stereophony, writing numerous technical papers and receiving several patents. Among his accomplishments at RCA, Volkmann helped design the Fantasound recording process and theater playback systems for Disney's 1940 Fantasia film.[1]
He was the architect of historical RCA Studio A located on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. The building was designed specifically to incorporate the musical techniques of the Nashville Sound. It also is the last remaining gym sized facility of three that he was a principal architect on.[2]
He is cited as receiving an additional professional degree from the University of Illinois in 1940.[3]
He transferred to RCA Laboratories in 1964 and retired from there in 1970. He was, amongst others, responsible for the development and design of the sound systems for the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
He was a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and the Audio Engineering Society (AES). He received the AES Gold Medal in 1966.
References
- ↑ Gordon, Elana (October 10, 2016). "Modern movie sound was born in a Philadelphia basement". WHYY-FM. Retrieved April 17, 2026.
The detailed notes and handwritten diagrams from Volkmann outlined the development of sound for the film "Fantasia."… they went to Philadelphia to record the Philadelphia Orchestra, who under Stokowski, knew how to create a rich sound in their home base, the Academy of Music. Stokowski, remember, had already turned it into a sort of recording lab… That was the recording part. But Fantasound had another key element: post production… in order to pull this off, Fantasia needed one final thing: a special playback system… RCA and Disney had to design and then haul in special equipment to theaters because regular movie theaters wouldn't have big sound systems in place.
- ↑ Gold, Adam (February 8, 2018). "Three Years After Being Saved, Studio A Still Makes an Impact". Nashville Scene. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
- ↑ Olson, Harry F. (October 1980). "John E. Volkmann" (PDF). In Memoriam. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 26 (10): 768. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 12, 2007.