John E. Volkmann (1905 in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

– July 9, 1980 in

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

) 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 RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

, working on

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

, large scale

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or, more fully, a speaker system) is a combination of one or more speaker drivers, an enclosure, and electrical connections (possibly including a crossover network). The speaker driver is an ...

s and

stereophony Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configurat ...

, writing numerous technical papers and receiving several patents. He was the architect of historical

RCA Studio A RCA Studio A is a music recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee, built and founded in 1965 by Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley and Harold Bradley as an addition to the RCA Victor Studio the company established seven years prior. Together these two s ...

located on

Music Row Music Row is a historic district located southwest of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Widely considered the heart of Nashville's entertainment industry, Music Row has also become a metonymous nickname for the music industry as ...

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. 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. He is cited as receiving an additional professional degree from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

in 1940.Obituary in the AES Journal, Oct. 1980
/ref> 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 A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded by Charles Francis Jenkins in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and e ...

(SMPTE), the

Acoustical Society of America The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is an international scientific society founded in 1929 dedicated to generating, disseminating and promoting the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications. The Society is primarily a voluntary org ...

(ASA), and the

Audio Engineering Society The Audio Engineering Society (AES) is a professional body for engineers, scientists, other individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. The membership largely comprises engineers developing devices or product ...

(AES). He received the AES Gold Medal in 1966.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Volkmann, John E. American audio engineers 1980 deaths 1905 births 20th-century American engineers