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Just read some posts about reel to reel and how close to the master tapes they are at 7.5ips and how they're better than vinyl.
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When a bit yunger I worked in the medium.. Tapes .. even Direct masters wer3e V fragile things indeed. Best quality Tapes on the best of equipment had to be reverse wound even for weeklong storage.. Remember "print through" it was a Real problem.. And Magnetic tapes deteriorate just sitting there.. all by them selves.. after their 4 th Birthday these were Junk. As a direct reminder.. Got any old floppy discs Well likely they are now corupted beyond use.
Nostalgia is 90% selective memory.
Got any old floppy discs Well likely they are now corupted beyond use.Dozens. They read just fine, thank you very much. Need a 1993 copy of DOS 6.21? Flightstick Pro drivers from the same year? I read some of the documentation. Just for S&G, I restored my 1994 backup of Quicken. The data ran through the conversion programs perfectly. It was fun to look at my financial position back then.
It is true that magnetic tape does deteriorate over time. Like CDs get scratched. The point has to do with the sonics. I'll take the sound of most any analog master tape any day over a CD when it comes to natural high frequency extension.
While some magnetic tape does deteriorate, I've bought quite a few never opened r-r tapes from the 60s and 70s and they play pefectly. Actually, I've got hundreds of tapes from this era and enjoy almost all of them. Tape squeal, I discovered, is caused as frequently by an out-of-adjustment tape deck as by problems with the tapes themselves.
Initially it was a little tough and required persistence and patience to get my two akai R2R players up and running as they should, but with a little preventive maintenance they purr just fine now.
Finding good quality material to play and record is the problem. Most prerecorded tapes aren't up to what they R2R's are capable. I set the timers and tape mostly late night jazz and ambiance to listen to later.
If you care to spend some time they are fun to play with and wonderful to listen to.
...if only it were as easy to find high quality prerecorded tapes at yard sales and thrift stores...as it is to find good records....I gave up on my R2R in 1990. Too much effort to keep running. Even my complex Dual changer is easier to keep running than my old Tandberg reel to reel.
ease of use. Threading the machine, rewind, want to play that one song near the end well there's fast forward for that. Production cost. Record companies could press a record for less then the cost of the empty reel and in a fraction of the time it took to record the tape even on a high speed duplicator. Also as mentioned real time tapes were few and far between also expensive. The ones produced on high speed duplicators ran at 10 times real time. That meant that for the duplicator that 10K signal now became a 100K signal or at least tried to. Tapes don't store as well or as easily as records and you sure don't want them near anything magnetic. Historically even with it's record capability, high quality reel to reel machines were considerably more expensive then a comparable sounding turntable and what source material would you record anyway? BTW I own a Studer A80. It sounds great, it's fun to watch and it's the most seldom used and impractical piece of gear I own but it's part of the family and I love it.
reel to reels can produce GREAT sound. In fact, back in the day, the "master" recording was on tape and that was the source for the master cut for the press to make the LP's. Of course, those was not the same decks used in the home, but still, there were great tape decks out there.However, as docw pointed out, tape decks are HIGH MAINTENANCE machines. Often they required almost constant maintenance to function properly. When repairs were needed it would often be expensive and time consuming. Turntables by comparison are simple machines (mechanically speaking) with far fewer parts and hence was not as hard to maintain.
And vinyl sounds soooo good and was far easier to use and turn tables cost less than tape decks (back then anyway). I have a couple decks. I rue the day I got rid of the Crown.
IMHO I disagree! When you consider the time spent cleaning LP's, Adjusting your TT (stylus pressure, anti skate, height, etc.) and the fact that you have to change stylus' every so many hours, I find my r2r tapes to be low maintenance. And, none of those anoying clicks and pops that you get with LPs. Just great, crystal clear analog sound......
I think it's all things being equal it's probably a draw at best. I've read several posts which seem to suggest that reel to reel machines are a "set it and forget it" device. They're not. I quess it would depend on the type of machine you use and the level on performance you want from it just as it does with a turntable. Tape heads require regular cleaning and occasional demagnetizing. They also wear and need to be relapped from time to time (until they need replacement)and aligned. This requires an alignment tape. Tape guides and bearings also wear and need replacement from time to time and then a tape path alignment needs to be done. In my case this requires a set of gauge blocks. Tape tension needs to be checked regularly and adjusted as needed. If you're going to record the bias oscillator needs to be adjusted regularly, they drift. There's also meter level calibration. Tapes can and do sound great and most records from the 50s, 60s, 70s and even into the 80s were cut from them but proper tapedeck operation is no day at the beach.
The answer is that the later tapes are high speed duplicated. Some earlier 2 track tapes are duplicated in real time. Not the format, the average recordings.
R2R was considered the standard. There was no question that it was a better sounding format over vinyl. In the end, ease of use won out over perceived sonic benfits.
TommyK
but they sound good. My Tandberg 9041X is in the garage, waiting for a look see by a tech. Expensive probably. Or maybe just a belt. Likely frozen motor and a junker. Sounded wonderful until 1988 or 1989 when it quit.
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