Before the story begins: John Williams’ Star Wars Main Title on vinyl

A fanfare at the suite’s threshold

John Williams’ official score catalogue places Main Title first in the Star Wars symphonic suite. The order gives this familiar music a particular job: it is the threshold to a larger sequence, not merely a theme detached from what follows.¹

This HFI session used the stereo London Records ZM 1001 LP, Suites From Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, released in January 1978. Zubin Mehta conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Williams’ Main Title.

That position suggests a simple way into the performance. Hear the movement once as an entrance: let its opening establish the scale, then follow how the music turns ceremony into forward motion without reducing the passage to an audio checklist.

Keep the movement in one arc

On a first pass, stay with the complete movement rather than chasing individual effects. The useful question is how an opening statement gathers momentum and keeps enough breadth to introduce the world beyond it.

On a second pass, shift attention between the leading brass lines and the larger orchestral body. Listen for continuity between proclamation and movement: not which section sounds biggest, but how the orchestra carries one gesture into the next.

An anniversary analogue front end

The record played on a Thorens TD 124 DD 140th Anniversary package with its SPU 124 cartridge, followed by an HSE Swiss Masterline 7 phono preamplifier. The signal then passed through a Ypsilon PST-100 Mk2 preamplifier and Aelius II mono power amplifiers to Peak Consult El Diablo loudspeakers.

Thorens supplies the anniversary turntable and its silver-coil SPU as one matched package. HSE describes the Masterline 7 with newly developed discrete gain stages and servo-controlled head amplifiers. Those manufacturer accounts define the new system question in this return to the Submarine chain: how the record groove enters the amplification path before the already documented Ypsilon and Peak Consult stages.²³

A sweet-spot perspective from Submarine

HFI recorded the system at Submarine Music & Audio on 14 October 2025. DPA-4011 microphones fed a Zoom F8n Pro through Vertere microphone cables at 192 kHz/32-bit float, with Sennheiser HD820 headphones used during production.

Set a comfortable headphone level and give the movement an uninterrupted first pass. Then return to the moment when the opening statement becomes a journey and decide which orchestral line makes that transition clear for you.