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In Reply to: RE: It says "Transferred from a 15ips 2-track tape"? posted by Tre' on September 22, 2022 at 14:27:57
"High Definition Tape Transfers is the brainchild of an avid 2 & 4 track open-reel collector and a serious audiophile. Collected over the years, many of our tapes contain forgotten performances of historical importance. Our mission is to preserve and share these rare gems with other music lovers by painstakingly remastering them with the finest state-of-the-art equipment and best techniques available."
IOW these are digital ripsfromold commercial reel to reel tapes. The details...the vast majority of those old reel to reel tapes were high speed copies taken from second generation copies. Not even close to the original master tapes.
Follow Ups:
And yet. . . paradoxically. . . the HDTT offerings CAN sound better than the remasters from companies which do own the master tapes (or master 35mm magnetic films). Tapes can deteriorate over time, and perhaps the HDTT source tapes were stored in a way which, over the decades, produced less deterioration.
This is one case where I'm in the "listening is believing" camp, despite whatever theoretical arguments there are in favor of recordings produced from the actual masters.
Or there are cases where the actual masters have been lost - such as the Skrowaczewski/Minneapolis recording of Schubert's Great C-major Symphony, and even Wilma's remastering of it in the 90's was produced from a backup tape - not the 35mm film master. OTOH, the commercial open reel tapes from the 60's (used by HDTT as sources for their reissues) were produced from those very 35mm film masters, even though they may have been a generation or two removed. I contend that the HDTT issue of this recording has that 35mm magnetic film "magic" (liquidity, air, etc.) which I don't hear even in Wilma's remastering.
what sounds better and what is more accurate isn't always the same thing.
I am very much in the "listening is believing" camp too.
But in light of the discussion of master tapes that followed the original post I thought it was worth pointing out that this service is not using actual original master tapes as their source. If accuracy is what one seaks, this aint it.
As for "magic" personally I was playing around with adding some magic secret sauce via tube simulation DSP before starting this hell job in Italy. The results were quite interesting.
I have most definitely revised my philosophy on audio as of late. I was of the opinion that the quest for accuracy was a distraction in the persuit of sonic excellence. Now I think it's a very good starting point but not neccessarily the end point.
The best steak still benefits from great seasoning. But great steak matters. No amount of seasoning will make a McDonalds burger into a great steak.
Now I am off to eat dinner. All that talk about steak....
And my recent overhaul of my system has been very much focused on those advances. The BACCH4Mac in particular is still IMO the biggest single advancement in high end audio since the hobby adopted stereo. But it did force me to change everything except my turntable/arm/cartridge.
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