Open Reel Curious

The pre-recorded tapes that will be much better sounding than other formats are very expensive and the selection of music is also very limited.  Playing R2R tapes is NOT just as easy as playing records unless you have some strange problems with records.  It will not be a primary source component for any serious music listener.  That is not to say that it cannot be a fun bonus thing to play with.

Reconditioning machines for the long run can be quite a process.  Even if all the transport parts are fine or reconditioned, there are a lot of other parts that might best be replaced.  I know the owner and the service person for a really nice Technics RS1500 machine that had crappy Panasonic electrolytic caps that started to go bad (the electrolyte is corrosive and destroys board traces if they leak).  The technician replaced 134 caps in that one machine.  I think the technician charged four hours of work (I would have had to charge four years myself).  I went to CapitalAudiofest with the owner of that machine and he lugged around a 15 ips pre-recorded tape of Bartok's String Quartets; we found one exhibitor showing a new model of tape player that is now on the market (can't remember the brand) and he was wiling to play the tape.  That tape cleared the room very quickly. 

I have made a couple of visits to United Home Audio UHA), a company that specializes in refurbishing and making their own improved electronics for R2R machines.  The most interesting demonstration involve playing a record on a very high end vinyl set up and comparing the sound to a tape recording of that same vinyl setup playing that record.  The UHA folks think that the R2R copy sounds better than the vinyl original.  I did not agree (the vinyl original sounded a bit more dynamic) but I can see why others might prefer the R2R version which was very open and airy sounding with a pleasant relaxed quality to the sound.  Of course that means the recording altered the sound, but arguably, it improves the sound.  In any case, I enjoyed the R2R sound a lot.  Since that visit UHA has gone much deeper into improving the electronics of refurbished machines; top models approach six figures.

This reminds me of an interview a magazine presented of three recording engineers.  All three agreed that high resolution digital recordings sound much closer to the sound of live microphone feeds than do the analogue R2R recording when doing instantaneous comparisons.  But, all three agreed that they liked the sound of the R2R recording more than the digital version.