Is There Any Reason To Buy A Reel-To-Reel Machine Nowadays??


I bought my first reel-to-reel machine in 1977 as a convenience in order to record and play back multiple albums in high fidelity.without having to fool around with my manual turntable.  I was surprised to find out that I preferred the sound of the reel to the turntable.  Along came cd and I could play both sides of an album with the fuss of having to flip it over every 15 minutes.  Now with high a high quality DAC and a computer, you can have uninterrupted high fidelity music for days on end.

No one is making new recordings on reel-to-reel.  The cost of blank tape is exorbitant.  The cost of a good open-reel deck is stratospheric.  So pretty much you're left with recording an LP or a cd to your reel for playback.....what's that??

Please chime in for reasons to buy an open-reel deck today.
128x128mitch4t

Showing 1 response by hshifi

Hello,
If I could get the R2R and the music I love to listen to at a good price I would but good analog is not cheap or convenient for that matter.  I love to listen to it but I would rather buy better speakers, amp, preamp, DAC before I went on the full analog kick. I love spinning vinyl. In fact I am spinning vinyl as I write this. Stuff that I can’t find on digital. The minimum I think you are dropping on a decent analog media rig like Vinyl or R2R is $1500 to $2000. I would rather buy a Puritan PSM156 power conditioner or vibration control equipment for my gear like IsoAcoustics. Only because these things make all your music sound better regardless of the type you listen to. Don’t even get me started how good it is to add subwoofers to your system. MC has $5000 Tekton speakers added the vibration control platform by Townsend for probably a few grand. I have listened to these Tekton speakers at Dave Thompson’s house who is a reviewer for StereoTimes. They were really good! I am in the process of upgrading my foundation system. Amp, Preamp, DAC, cables, vibration control,  speakers, Power conditioner,  and subs. Mainly because if you have a great foundation you can listen to whatever you want. If you have not done this it’s like buying the $5k racing tires for your used $3k Honda Civic. If you want to hear the difference of what a good system can do with the music you already have and live near the Chicagoland area this is the store I buy my gear from. They let you try before you buy and I believe they have used R2R units for you to try out. https://holmaudio.com/
I don’t want to have to sell gear I wasn’t happy with due to buyers remorse. They do let you trade in used gear towards a purchase which I did for my surround sound setup last year. I hope this helped put things in perspective.