Greetings friends, I hope you are well! 🙂

All is well here with me, and I've been having a ball playing music & hifi games. 

"Level Five" Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA phono preamplifier.

As I mentioned in my Today's Fresh Catch post (HERE), I've got the "Level Five" Audio Note (UK) M8 RIAA phono preamplifier and AN-S8L step-up transformer installed into the main music system and am working on getting it bedded-in.

"Level Five" Audio Note (UK) AN-S8L step-up transformer.

The bedding-in period for these Audio Note (UK) components is 100 hours, which when you do the math, turns out to be 133 LPs if you figure the average LP is 45 minutes of playing time - that's a lot of LPs!

I've got a decent start going at 23 LPs at the moment, but still, 133 LPs is a lot, so I'm only about 17% of the way there. This is going to take a while to get these components fully run-in. It's rough duty, but someone has to do it! 😉 

Tomei 211 amp (left), M6 RIAA phono pre (middle front), AN-S4L SUT (middle back), M8 RIAA (right front), AN-S8L SUT (right back).

Once I get everything bedded-in, then I'll start doing some listening comparisons between the "Level Four" M6 RIAA phono pre & AN-S4L step-up transformer and the "Level Five" M8 RIAA & AN-S8L SUT. 

Straight out of the box the M8 RIAA phono pre & AN-S8L SUT sounded very nice. At 17% of the way to bedding-in, the M8 RIAA phono pre & AN-S8L SUT have a beguilingly smooth, rich, and detailed presentation. 

I expect the presentation will continue to open up and become even more refined than it sounds right now, which is sort of mind boggling, because it sounds amazing right now. 

Opera box sets from the Golden Age of recording.

Whenever I mention I've been enjoying listening to operas lately, people stick their fingers down their throats and gag.

I know, its a little different than my usual jazz, folk, rock & roll, or whatever, but I'm giving you an audiophile alert: You can get mint condition box sets from the Golden Age of recording, of great performances with superb recording quality, from the "power" labels like Living Stereo, London, Philips, Angel, Deutsche Grammophon, and the like, for under $10 USD from Discogs. Most look and sound like they've been played once.

Here's the deal: besides being sublime performances of great music, done with care by the best in the business during the stereo magnetic era of recording, there's nothing that will display system performance like operas. If you like visuospatial cues of imaging, deep and wide soundstages, with lots of hall ambience, operas will blow your mind. Also, given there are orchestras, sometimes multiple choirs, singers moving around on the stage, organs, lots of percussion, they are a true test of your system performance. 

I used to think I didn't like opera, until I started listening to it, and now I'm smitten. 

Turandot opera, RCA Living Stereo (Red Seal, LSC-6149), 3 LP box set. 1959,

Take for example, the Turandot opera by Puccini, featuring great singers like Nilsson, Tebaldi, Bjoerling, and Tozzi, and conducted by Erich Leinsdorf at the Rome Opera House with the Rome Opera House Orchestra and Chorus. Recorded in 1959.

It's an RCA Living Stereo (Red Seal, LSC-6149), 3 LP box set, so you know the Living Stereo recording engineers obsessed about getting the sound quality spot-on. Also, those were the days when the accompanying booklets about the operas were amazing.

The recording and musical performance are excellent like you would expect, and can typically pick these up on Discogs for less than $10 USD. 

Esclarmonde opera featuring Joan Sutherland. London OSA-13118. 1975.

Here's another example. "Joan Sutherland is renowned for her role as Esclarmonde in Jules Massenet's opera".

"The opera is based on the medieval tale "Parthénopéus de Blois" and explores themes of love, magic, and chivalry in a fantastical setting." ... "It was first performed at the Exposition Universelle on 15 May 1889 by the Opéra-Comique at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet in Paris." 

Esclarmonde (London OSA-13118), featuring singers Joan Sutherland, Giacomo Aragall, Clifford Grant, et al., was recorded at Kingsway Hall, London, in 1975 with the National Philharmonic Orchestra. With this 3 LP box set you get an impressive 31 page booklet describing the opera, the singers, etc., and much more.

Another great performance backed up with excellent recording quality. You can find this 3 LP box set on Discogs for under $10. 

These opera box sets are amazing, and are a great audio system test. If they don't blow your mind then its not the fault of the recordings or the performances. 

It's not often you can get mint recordings of superb performances from the "power" record labels of the Golden Age of the recording arts for under $10 USD. Just saying. One of these days people will figure out these opera box sets are true bargains and the price will go up. Get them before that happens. 

My office audio system.

I set my office audio system up on a lark, and its performance has exceeded all expectations - I'm crazy about it! 

The Stokowski Altecs with their Duelund tinned-copper CAST crossovers, with my restored vintage Thorens TD124 (by Artisan Fidelity) and Yazaki-san's hot-rodded vacuum tube Douk Audio streaming DAC as sources, and amplified with the amazing little Triode Lab 45 EVO SET integrated amplifier, are combination that is a match made in heaven. 

The performance of this system just blows me away. Dynamic, natural, rich, liquid, detailed, and its a blast to listen to music with, brings out the best in the music, with all its drama intact.

There will be a couple of relatively affordable high-performance audio surprises that will appear in this system in the near future that will warm the hearts of vinyl-philes. 

As soon as they land here at Jeff's Place I'll give you the full scoop! 

Until then, enjoy your music & hifi and stay tuned!

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