Best recording

Ok, I have now carried my Studer A77 Revox down from my loft, despite my prolapsis and the thing weighing a ton - and will get back with listening results.

Note my Studer only plays 3,75 and 7,5 ips. It was modded by Lauvland of Doxa to good effect ca 1990, increasing the s/n-level, more like 15 ips is my impression. Does it beat the best digital recordings? We will see. More later.

First test, Studer Revox A77 versus Korg MR1: 0-1.

The Revox recordings sounded boxed-in and faulty in many ways. The faults with the Korg were on another, smaller level. Note that, I didn't have new tapes. I found that older tapes performed worst. Possibly, new tapes and service would make quite a big difference. Yet I have lived with this machine for many years, and beyond these problems, I felt that I did recognize a sound that is inferior to what I hear from the DSD recording.

My vinyl recordings like Grateful Dead Terrapin station sound marvellous through DSD and the Jade otl headphone amp, that also drives my small active pc sony srs z500 speakers. Never got this terrapin / therapy feeling so close before. Jade is very much recommended. The better the equipment, the clearer the superior format advantage (here, standard DSD).

VHS hi fi - haven't tried, but my guess is, it would sound poor compared to the Korg. I have tried several DAT recorders. Does anyone have actual experience?

Lp's not created equal - very much agree! But the better the playback and recording chain, the larger the proportion that sound good or at least acceptable.

There is no single best way to record. This is much a matter of subjective taste, context and so on. I have always been a recording enthusiast, moving from a 1967 Radionette tape recorder to a variety of Tandberg recorders, then a 1970 Revox A77 that i used for many years, Dat recorders in the 90s and sound cards later, to the Korg MR-1 now.

As I wrote above, retrying a couple of vintage Revox tape recorders did not work out, but if good cassette decks do - fine. For most people, I think, hi-res digital will be the best solution today, and like many others, I think dsd is the best-sounding format, compared to hi-res pcm. Blueray etc may change that, but not in the near future, it seems.

Based on my experience with a Cowon D2 and Creative 24/96 external laptop card as well as the Korg mr1, the Korg is a big step up. Even downsampled with Audiogate from dsd to pcm 24/96, the Korg files sounded better than files recorded with Creative 24/96 pcm. Difference was notable even on the Cowon (accepting only up to cd format 16/44).

Dsd recorder discussion cf
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f15/korg-mr-1-can-used-portable-player-425849/index1.html