Audio technology has been reinvented several times since members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir huddled around two 5-by-2-foot acoustic horns to make their first recording on Sept. 1, 1910. But what strikes music director Mack Wilberg is how much the essence of the choir has remained the same.

"They recorded music of the masters, they recorded hymns, they recorded a little popular inspirational music of the day," Wilberg said of the choir's earliest efforts. "That is essentially what we continue to do."

The choir will release "100: Celebrating a Century of Recording Excellence" on Thursday, June 10. The two-CD set features 32 of the choir's most-requested songs, four of them newly recorded for the project. An accompanying CD/DVD includes a recording of then-director Evan Stephens' anthem "Let the Mountains Shout for Joy" from that 1910 session, along with other audio and video clips of historic significance.

"I heard that original recording, and it was pretty scratchy," Wilberg said. "I was amazed at what modern technology is capable of doing ... to clean it up."

More than 175 albums later, "performance style and the concept of sound have evolved over the years," he said, "but there's a common essence about all of them."

Wilberg imagines the singers' sense of wonder as they gathered in the Tabernacle on that day in 1910. Though Thomas Edison's phonograph had been around since 1877, turn-of-the-century record companies had been unable to record large choirs.

Equipment was sent to Salt Lake City by train, and Columbia Phonograph Company engineer Alexander Hausmann made a test recording of organist J.J. McClellan playing the Tabernacle Organ on Aug. 30, 1910. He repeated the feat with the 300-voice choir singing the LDS hymn "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet" two days later. "It was like a miracle to them," Wilberg said.

Those old-fashioned wax cylinders gave way long ago to acetate, then to analog tape. and then digital technology. Audio engineer Trent Walker said the Mormon Tabernacle Choir always has been at the technological forefront.

In the 1950s, for example, the choir was recording in stereo, a good decade before that technology became mainstream. "The quality of those recordings is amazing," Walker said. Even the turn-of-the-century recordings "sounded incredible ... especially for the time period," he said.

Now the choir broadcasts its long-running weekly program, "Music and the Spoken Word," in 5.1 surround sound. "It's all about the audio," said Walker, whose engineering résumé also includes concerts by acts as diverse as AC/DC, the Beach Boys and Cake.

The goal on "Music and the Spoken Word" is to "give listeners, as best we can, what they would get if they were [in the Tabernacle]," Walker said. "We use everything at our disposal to try to do that."

That means an abundance of microphones onstage -- typically, 67 for broadcasts in the Tabernacle and more than 100 in the larger Conference Center -- each recording to its own track. "In the Tabernacle, we mike the sections -- strings, woodwinds -- but in the Conference Center, we mike every instrument," Walker said. He and his team recorded last December's concerts with guest star Natalie Cole on 214 tracks.

It isn't just the weekly broadcasts and the choir's concerts that are preserved for posterity. The regularly scheduled Thursday-night rehearsals also are recorded, so Wilberg and the Tabernacle organists can suggest adjustments to the Sunday sound mix.

The choir produces a new "Music and the Spoken Word" every week; on rare occasions, such as when Christmas falls on a Sunday, the program is taped in advance. So the 360 volunteer singers -- and the 110-member Orchestra at Temple Square, which has accompanied the choir since 1999 -- are old hands at recording. They release two, and sometimes three, commercial recordings every year.

"We stand on the shoulders of many, many people who have come before," Wilberg said. "Listening to those old recordings, watching that historic video, we have a fantastic tradition and legacy that we have to live up to."