I am Donald W. Reichle.  I collect Audio Fidelity recordings and information.

How did my collection get started?

                After getting married in 1959, my wife and I decided that we must have a stereo system.  Money was really tight so we settled on a kit built amplifier, a home built set of bass reflex speaker enclosures and a Garrard changer.  It was a very modest system but it far exceeded anything we had experienced.  Stereo records were still in short supply and some were re-processed from mono versions.  We became aware of the Audio Fidelity label.  It promised superior technical specs and better recording techniques.  In short, if you wanted to demonstrate the best your stereo system could do, you purchased an Audio Fidelity record at a premium price. Some of the first albums we purchased were albums by the Dukes of Dixieland, Dave Wierbach and Johnny Puleo.  What a revelation!  Our apartment neighbors probably didn’t miss us when we left.

            For the next few years, including two in the Army, we collected mostly classical records but we found a few more by Audio Fidelity.  One of them was a four-track tape, Symphony Fantastique by Hector Berlioz (FCST 50,003).    That tape could raise the hairs on your arms.   All in all we never saw many Audio Fidelity records in the record stores and I assumed that they had a very limited output of perhaps 50 or so different titles. How wrong I was.

            Time passed, a family was started, raised and left home.  Interest in collecting LPs had waned.  Equipment was obsolete.  CDs were replacing LPs.  In the early 1990s, I was browsing an Antique Mall for my other collecting obsession, photographic equipment, and I spotted an Audio Fidelity record that I didn’t know existed.  You could always spot AF jackets by the strong bold graphics.  I bought it and wondered how many others existed.  After finding a few more in various antique shops my interest really picked up.  I started to frequent used record shops and looked for references in the Schwann Record Guide and other record collecting books. 

            I was frustrated.   No publication furnished a simple list of everything that Audio Fidelity published.  If you knew an artist’s name, you could look it up in Schwann RG or other books with no assurance that the artist was listed. But how do you look up an artist if you don’t know the artists name?  Using the reference books, I could only find a very small fraction of the total AF output. 

            As I was collecting everything published by a single recording company, I wanted to see everything listed by catalog numbers, album titles, artists names or labels and I wanted a little history as well.  Who was Sidney Frey whose name appeared on every jacket?  How did he take a very small company into successful competition with the major established record companies such as RCA, Capitol, Columbia and others?  I really wanted someone to publish a book that would satisfy my curiosity on all aspects of the Audio Fidelity Company and Sidney Frey.  Instead of  “The Little Engine That Could”, it might be titled “The Little Company That Could”.

            As my collection grew, I needed a list to avoid buying duplicates.  Being a database designer for PCs in real life, I designed an relational database.  As it grew, I added more and more complications to automate data entry and record more data from each record.  At some point I decided that I was really building an Audio Fidelity discography and I added the capability to add catalog numbers that I did not own.   While I wanted to write a book, I knew my writing and researching skills were insufficient and someone else would have to write the definitive book on Audio Fidelity and Sidney Frey.  I decided to make my data available to writers, historians, and collectors. 

            I had all this data but no easy way to publish it.  A paper book would be quite large and out of date before it was printed.  My database manager software was a DOS based product that was already giving way to Windows apps.  I decided to output html coded files directly from the DOS database and create a WEB accessible database.  This html version only uses very basic html code and is therefore limited in appearance.  However it does present the data sorted in all the ways that I originally wanted to find as I started to collect AF recordings.  At the present time, the html database contains 806 files including picture files. 

            As more time went by I retired and realized that I did not want the expense of maintaining a server or the expense of using a hosting service. I decided to donate my collection of recordings to the Belfer Laboratories archives and thus make them available to any future audio researcher or historian.  In addition the Syracuse Univ. Library of Music of which Belfer Labs is a part, agreed to host the html WEB version of the database on their WEB site. 

At the time of writing this, the database contains the following:

• 1,404 different catalog numbers identified.
• 2,418 actual winning on-line bids (without shipping charges and with condition and dates) paid on 654 different AF catalog numbers.
• Matrix data supplied from 1,048 AF vinyl records.
• 1,176 different Artists identified and cross-linked with album details.
• 5,858 different Track Titles identified and cross-linked with album details.
• 654 different pictures of album jackets or labels cross-linked with album details.
• 30 scans of catalog pages

Please help me add new data and correct any errors.  I live in Columbia, Maryland.  You can contact me at: dwreich@comcast.net

copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reichle