Vinyl dead. Reel to Reel is back!

[Donald]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/5/9409563/reel-to-reel-tape-retro-audio-trend

[4313B]

Groovy! sans grooves.

I had the very popular RT-707.

These days I'll take flat files over vinyl or tape. I just don't have the time or inclination to monkey around with that stuff anymore.

[Hoerninger]

The only moving part at the point of signal retrieval is the tape, which travels in a straight line across a stationary playback head.
My "Philips Pro 12" is an electromechanical masterpeace, too costly for todays standards. :(
Adding two mics and a headphone - oh what a joy.
Just dreaming. :)
__________
Peter

The author did not mention
wow and flutter, dop outs, bias for k3 minimum, HF headroom, bass irregularities, bass cross talk, head magnetization,head alignment, poor electronics ...

[audiomagnate]

Groovy! sans grooves.

I had the very popular RT-707.

These days I'll take flat files over vinyl or tape. I just don't have the time or inclination to monkey around with that stuff anymore.

Me. too, awesome deck, and it looks so cool. I'm a 24 bit cloud streamer my self, but reel tot reel is great for a change of pace. I'll take a bit of tape hiss over groove noise, ticks, pops etc.

[SEAWOLF97]

Me. too, awesome deck, and it looks so cool. I'm a 24 bit cloud streamer my self, but reel tot reel is great for a change of pace. I'll take a bit of tape hiss over groove noise, ticks, pops etc.

I spent many years with R2R (mainly TEAC 4010s's) . They can sound great, but take a lot of fussing.
In my systems, tape has been replaced with MD (MiniDisc) . None of the fussiness, cleaning ..etc.

They are essentially a digital, re-recordable (limit to 100,000 times a disk) CD substitute on plastic media. Many editing functions are available (delete track, move, combine, name ..etc.) . Although they are lossy, I've never seen anyone who could tell the difference in an A-B test. The MD deck usually has a better native DAC than most CD players.

They hold 80 minutes a disk or 160 in near same quality mode or up to 320 minutes in long play more (I remember putting the entire Beatles discography on 1 disk for a vacation once). I have portable MD decks that take USB input from the PC and run 52 hours on a single AA battery.

Vinyl will never die.

[LowPhreak]

I've always wanted a RtR, since way back in another life when I heard a friend's top-end Akai decks in the 70's & 80's, and a couple of others (Teacs & Otaris I think). The GX-747 mentioned in the article may have been one that he had since he always kept up with the latest models.

But I couldn't really afford the better units at the time. Even if I'd have saved for one instead of audio budgeting for amps and speakers, drums, cymbals, & percussion doo-dads, etc., the biggest issue I've always had was availability of titles on RtR. Very limited and if you consider some of the prices in that article, it's a hobby for the fairly well-off.

The reality was for the decks I've seen, 99% of their time they sat unplayed just looking pretty on the shelf, if not they were spinning mostly copies of records already owned which was another generation removed, so not much point except to save wear on the original vinyl.

It's good to see RtR making somewhat of a comeback though.

[macaroonie]

I used to have a HS Revox B77 . Lush piece of kit . Worked with A77 and B77's a lot back in the day. Easy worked on and great Studer back up for parts and so on.

67472

[LowPhreak]

Yeah the Revox's had a great industrial design, very easy on the eyes.

[macaroonie]

The Revox' capstan motor makes for a superb Tuntable drive. Super quiet and smooth running. Spendy mind you.

[SEAWOLF97]

if not they were spinning mostly copies of records already owned which was another generation removed, so not much point except to save wear on the original vinyl.

It's good to see RtR making somewhat of a comeback though.

On Navy bases back in the 60's, the base library usually had a row of R2R decks and a selection of vinyls. The turntables were setup for copying. Most of the guys had R2R decks and headphones back at their racks or rooms. And YES, we bought those terrible pirate vinyls from Taiwan (that were good for 1 or 2 plays) and dub them on first play then use em for Frisbee s. :)

Govt sponsored copying ? yes.

Eventually the grease in the decks solidified and parts stopped moving correctly. And better/easier cassette decks were coming in with NR. The R2R decks got donated, just as vinyl did in the 80's. Both are making comebacks.

I do see a recurring ad on the local CL buying R2R decks..working or not. AND ... believe it or not ,,,, I see dealers stocking up on pre-record cassettes. They seem to sell well too.

[NickH]

Tapes only superior if your running a source media at 15 ips. Basically studio master quality. Plus the machine that's playing it back has to be up to par too. I've had otari, revox, teac, and akai tape decks. They were all cool and up to snuff. Its the source material that's the problem. The tape project makes studio high speed master source material but unless you can afford spending 400 bucks on an album your settling with mediocrity.




Nick

[Ed Kreamer]

Nick, are you taking pre-recorded tape? If so I would tend to agree, but not always. I have several pre-recorded tapes (71/2 ips ) tapes that sound very good. I purchased them in the '70's. I have just as many that sound like they were spawned in a snake pit. So it depends on the care being done by the reproducer, not to mention the quality of the tape and machines. I have one tape that is a real gem. I bought a Teac 3340 and was able to obtain a copy of the Star Wars soundtrack as a premium from Teac for buying one their machines. It still sounds very good even today. The 3340 is gone, (Stolen) but I still have my Teac 3300, and Sony 766-2. There is nothing cooler (as was previously mentioned) than watching those 10 1/2 inch reels turning while listening to your favorite music.

Ed

[NickH]

Ya store bough albums so to say. My issues with them was all the noise. I had a teac x2000 with all the noise reduction and I couldn't stand it. Honestly the best sounding deck I had was my akai gx77. But that stuff is no where near the quality of a studio master tape. Its got to be fast for the super low signal to noise ratio.



I do regret selling the akai but I also found buying tapes off ebay and the such was a crap shoot. And sellers thinking the tapes were made of sold gold. That's what did me in.



Nick

[SEAWOLF97]

I bought a Sansui (made by nak) cassette deck new. It included a demo tape.

That tape was incredible , but I could never duplicate it's sound quality.

On R2R , sure 15ips sounds great, but eats thru tape quickly, 7.5 is still very nice, but same issue.
We did 3 3/4 , but that kinda nullified the whole idea of R2R quality.

I found this book quite illuminating ==>> http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690

Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles

using 2 two track machines to make 3 tracks (1 shared to synch) to record The Beatles. They produced classics with rather primitive gear. :(

[Challenger604]

Always had Revox. 2 B's and 2A's... I still have my first A77 that I bought 37 years ago...

For those interested, we can still find brand new tape and I do believe they are the only one in the US but I can be wrong...

https://atrtape.com/

cheers!
Christophe

[SEAWOLF97]

I'm a big TYA fan . In one of their songs (Love like a Man ?) there is a temp slowdown
that I immediate recognized. Somewhere on the web it was mentioned that during recording,
one of their groupies leaned against the reel of the master R2R recorder. They just left it in.

So let it be a lesson when recording R2R ...keep the groupies at a minimum. :)