Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well!

Here in the Pacific Northwest cool Fall weather has finally descended upon us, reducing the number of opportunities for bicycle & motorbike adventures in the great outdoors.

I put on my cool weather bicycling attire and went out for an increasingly rare bicycle ride a few days ago. 

The Fall colors were resplendent, with pumpkins, Halloween decorations, and red, orange, and yellow leaves, lining the bicycle paths. The cool crisp air was a pleasure to breathe, and with just a touch of the aroma of wood smoke adding to the Fall ambience.  

It's sweater weather, and early in the morning with frost covering the landscape, a down jacket and stocking cap feels nice & cozy while out running errands. 

The cool Fall weather also signals that the full force of the indoor Hi-Fi season is upon us.

I've gotten into a rhythm of cooking dinner while listening to my Stokowski Altec office system playing opera, classical, or jazz, streamed from my iPhone to Yazaki-san's hot-rodded Bluetooth DAC. 

Yazaki-san's cleverly hot-rodded Douk Audio U4 Bluetooth vacuum tube DAC, with just a few circuit modifications using premium components, provides an eminently musical and information rich presentation from any stream I choose to listen to, like the excellent opera stream from the Operavore on WQXR, that I am listening to as I write this. 

This simple three component audio system of the highly-sensitive Altecs - with their Duelund-Altec Project CAST tinned-copper crossovers - powered by the delicious Ferrari red 2-watt Triode Lab 45 EVO SET integrated amplifier, streaming music from Yazaki-san's Bluetooth DAC, is impressively good.

The 45 EVO SET's 2-watts of power sounds dynamically powerful with the Altecs, and combined with Yazaki-san's DAC, the music is incredibly engaging and information rich. 

As an aside, the Triode Lab 45 EVO SET integrated amp is jazz guitarist, David Gitlen's, favorite amplifier of all the ones that have passed through my audio systems. David's not an audio guy, but he enjoys listening to fine audio for what it can reveal in the music, and he say's the 45 EVO gets it right better than anything else he's heard. 

David's first and foremost a jazz musician, and I personally know of no one who has an ear for music and insights into jazz music & recordings like David does. I always listen carefully to David's observations when we are listening to music here at Jeff's Place, and I've learned a lot from him. 

The nice thing about the Triode Lab 45 EVO SET integrated amp is that it is relatively affordable as far as high-performance audio exotica goes. If you've got highly-sensitive loudspeakers like the Altecs, it's hard to beat the 45 EVO. 

The combination of vintage Altec loudspeakers, Yazaki-san's Bluetooth DAC, and the 45 EVO is totally intoxicating. 

Beautiful Duelund CAST tinned-copper crossovers in the "Stokowski" Altec loudspeakers.

Speaking of Dr. Stokowski's vintage Altec loudspeakers, which I feel very fortunate to have residing here at my place, there's a truly exciting development on the Stokowski front (see the Duelund-Altec Project – Dare to Dream! article at Positive Feedback for more info on Dr. Stokowski's delicious vintage Altecs).

I just got the Fall 2024 Marston Records newsletter - Marston Records is perhaps the leading source for important historic music releases these days - and they have announced a new future release of a 4 CD set of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra from the 1931-1932 season (more HERE):

"During the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1931–1932 season, Bell Telephone Laboratories’ engineers were invited by Leopold Stokowski, the orchestra’s forward-looking conductor, to set up an experimental recording station in the cellar of the orchestra’s home, the Academy of Music, to try out new developments in improving recording technology. The historic results mark the first attempts of what we now know as high-fidelity recordings, represent the earliest experiments to record in stereo, and include repertoire that Leopold Stokowski and the orchestra did not record commercially. The sound was stunning when compared with the orchestra’s commercial records of that time." 

"Bell Laboratories preserved many of the discs made during these concerts, and in 1979 the orchestra issued two long-playing records containing highlights from these experiments. Additional material from the Bell Labs experiments were issued by the orchestra in their 1999 centennial CD set. These productions were remastered by Ward Marston and are highly prized by collectors. Yet, many of the discs Bell recorded have remained unheard. Next year, Marston Records will be producing a four-CD boxed set containing all extant recordings using the latest digital restoration tools, including new improved restorations of all previously issued material."

"(It should be noted that the time limitations of recording on single discs prevented the recording of complete works, but since recordings were made during Friday and Saturday concerts, it is possible to assemble complete performances of some of the music including Beethoven’s fifth and Haydn’s 88th symphony.)" 

"Due to the nature of the discs, Ward will devote a tremendous amount of engineering time to preserve these important artifacts. We are pleased that a Philadelphia Orchestra donor has provided a lead gift to cover Ward’s time, but for those interested in this important project, additional contributions would be tremendously appreciated to defray the extensive production costs."

As you might imagine, I'll be ordering this important historic set of early stereo Stokowski recordings by Bell Labs from the electric era of recording as soon as it becomes available, so I can listen to them on Dr. Stokowski's personal Altec loudspeakers. I'm so excited to hear these recordings! 

Duelund-Altec Project "Stokowski" Altec loudspeakers.

It's astonishing for me to think about stereo recordings so early in the eras of the recording arts. Recordings from smack in the middle of the Electrical era of recording (1925–1945) are monaural, right?

Photo courtesy of the Stokowski archive.

It is exciting to think that Stokowski and Bell Labs were doing experimental stereo recordings in 1931-1932, as normally we think of stereo recordings coming from the stereo period of the magnetic era of recording, starting circa 1957, for public distribution. 

I will be impatiently waiting for this CD set from Marston Records, and when I get it and listen to them, I'll be sure to tell you all about them - stay tuned for more on this in the future.

Ok, that's enough for now.

As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!