Reel to Reel decks

I think the piece of this puzzle that might be missing is that there is not just a synergy between different media and equipment but also the reproduced sound and human auditory physiology and the resulting perception of it by the human brain. Is a recording better because it is mechanically measured to be more accurate when compared to a source, or when it evokes the perception of "walking amongst the musicians"?

I suppose if I threw in, "Maxell XLII, Position "EE" tape into this equation, that would realy "discombobulate" some minds. With this tape, the soundstage is so "holographic", that you feel as though you can walk among the musicians.

I understand what you are saying and the process of recordings of recordings has to introduce some error each time. I also have no interest in debating Mr. Karsten, (think I might be at a slight disadvantage), I guess I am saying there may also be a problem with trying to apply objective standards to a predominantly subjective experience. I have many times experienced, both with my own recordings and others, r to r copies which are definitely more dynamic than the vinyl originals, whatever the cause may be. Highly accurate equipment sometimes equals analytical, lifeless sound. Admittedly subjective.

Petepappp,
While I agree that "live" is often not better than a recording of the same event but I think it has been more an issue of tape recording of a recording being better than the recording itself.

I am inclined to agree with Mike (as I mentioned a couple of months ago) that the perception of "bigger" and "better" is probably a matter of R2R output stage synergy with preamp (when compared to the phono stage (something which would go to something Ralph a.k.a Atmasphere said on another thread a few days ago)), or pleasing distortion/filtering performed by the tape playback method, rather than the tape having created a better recording than the one it was just recorded from.

As many note, there is nothing wrong at all with preferring the way one piece of equipment sounds compared to another, but that conclusion is a matter of preference rather than 'quality' of format as defined in some objective way.

Interesting discussion. I am struck by the definition of the source being assumed to be some kind of fixed quantifiable thing. Most of us audiophiles who enjoy "live music" are often disappointed as the acoustics of many venues can be horrible to the point of rendering a mush of sound and echoes. It is easy to see how a recording at the mixer could be vastly superior to the original, "live" event. I don't believe there will ever be a method to perfectly reproduce a musical event with all its nuances. Every method "colors" the music. We have seen the pursuit of accuracy strangle the life out of digitally recorded music. Transferring to a different media can make it better, which I believe is the case with reel to reel.

Mikelavigne, while I am not familiar with your other decks, the RS 1500 is a professional deck that can be worked on. It looks industrial on the inside; new electronics are easy to install. New pinch rollers are a good idea, if still available.
Enjoy the music.

Let us go to photography. If you magnify an excellent photo, it will be bigger. My playback on the 2 track is "bigger" than the original, also the electronics in the reel have been upgraded. The playback is equivilant to an equipment upgrade. Is "bigger" better?

a bigger soundstage would generally considered to be better. and i would say that when there is a sense of presence and ambience (and room energy) that happens right before the music starts, that is an aspect of soundstaging that is always better. but sometimes you get an elongated or stretched soundstage, a 'U' shape, or maybe a 20 foot wide piano....so there are cases where a bigger soundstage is not better. better is better. and more real is better. but much of that is very subjective and system dependant. some would say live music does not 'stage' like recordings can.

your photography analogy is a good one. magnifying a photo does make it larger; but if the resolution and clarity of the photo is not sufficient then the magnification loses the sense of reality. the question is 'what is right?'.

getting back to how your RTR might be better; it could be as simple as the analog output on your tape deck could synergize with your preamp better than your phono stage. i have no idea of that but it's possible it's a signal path issue and not a format issue. or it could be that your tt/arm/cart/phono stage are not as high quality as your tape deck.

my point is that when you make generalizations as universal truths about recording Lps onto tape you need to consider whether it applies to some, or to most, or to all cases and qualify it; or guys like me will come along and call you on it. i have no doubt you are hearing what you are telling us. but exactly the implications of that is in question.

Mikelavigne, apparently, we are seriously trying to communicate as opposed to proving a point.
Let us go to photography. If you magnify an excellent photo, it will be bigger. My playback on the 2 track is "bigger" than the original, also the electronics in the reel have been upgraded. The playback is equivilant to an equipment upgrade. Is "bigger" better?

Orpheus10,

i went back and read some of your posting on threads relating to reel to reel to try to better understand your perspective. i read some responses to some of your comments.

i don't presume to tell you how you feel about anything; but it seems you use the word 'better' to describe 'different in a way i prefer'.....which i can relate to and agree with. if you simply 'prefer' the sound of recording your vinyl onto 2-track tape then please enjoy. but it's the point of insisting it's 'better' in objective ways where the conflict occurs.

yes; if a tt is sufficiently negatively affected by speaker feedback then a case can be made that a 2-track tape recording made with headphones could be better in some ways (but not all ways). but that would mostly indicate that you need to improve the isolation scheme of your tt to make it less prone to that speaker feedback.

Orpheus10 wrote;

This only occurs with 2 track reel at a speed of 7 1/2 IPS or higher. This is partially the result of tape width. A cassette has narrow tape, a reel has wider tape. Most reels record in 2 directions; they use 1/2 the tape in the forward, and the other half of the tape in the reverse direction. 2 track uses the complete width of the tape in one direction. If you can compare the difference in the sound of a cassette and a reel, you will see where I am going with this. The sound of a reel is bigger and fuller, this is before we get to 2 track. If you have not carefully observed this difference, it will be impossible for you to conceive the "Phenomenon, playback better than source", with 2 track.

trust me; i get it. i'm a tape head, here is a picture of my tape deck family. but.....as good as i know a 1/4" 15ips 2-track recording of a source can be, it's not better than the source, or even totally equal. and in the case where a tt has no audible feedback effect from speaker feedback there is no logic to claiming a tape recording of it will improve it. it may introduce pleasing artifacts which some might prefer, but physics is physics. the step of recording degrades any source to some degree.

and in my particular case; my Rockport tt betters my RTR decks ocasionally even on 15ips 1/4" master dubs where both the Lp and master dub had the same source. not all the time, but sometimes.

now; if somehow your tape deck output electronics are better than your phono stage, or some other signal path in-equality is happening, then anything is possible. i suspect it is much more likely that your phono stage is better (more refined sounding) than your tape deck's signal path.

Mikelavigne, when I described my recording ritual, "headphones and recording in silence"; you understood that as my reason for "playback better than source phenomenon". (my fault) I will now describe and give my reasons for this phenomenon.
This only occurs with 2 track reel at a speed of 7 1/2 IPS or higher. This is partially the result of tape width. A cassette has narrow tape, a reel has wider tape. Most reels record in 2 directions; they use 1/2 the tape in the forward, and the other half of the tape in the reverse direction. 2 track uses the complete width of the tape in one direction. If you can compare the difference in the sound of a cassette and a reel, you will see where I am going with this. The sound of a reel is bigger and fuller, this is before we get to 2 track. If you have not carefully observed this difference, it will be impossible for you to conceive the "Phenomenon, playback better than source", with 2 track.
Audio "phenomenon" in the "hi end" must be heard to be believed. Before I became an "Audiophile", I thought they were crazy people who had more money than sense. After I went to a "hi end" emporium, I became one. Logic and reason can lead to conclusions that are shockingly wrong. Some phenomenon have to be witnessed.
Fish swim, birds fly, tigers hunt; I am an "Audiophile", I listen.

Enjoy the music

Orpheus10, good to hear about the rs1500 upgrades. I really like the rs1500, my first plan had been for outboard bottlehead electronics but will focus on transport performance then think about the playback electronics. The J corder decks made me think about possible upgrades to the stock electonics, I haven't even had the chance to use my 1500 much, there are a few corrosion spots on the two tape roller bearing housings that come in contact with tape so I stopped using it until I can replace/address that. Tape is great

Orpheus10, FWIW, they finally did figure out where they went wrong with the math on bumblebees, about 20-25 years ago- the Reynolds number was wrong.

Andy_P, my 2 track Technics 1500, has new transistiors, pinch rollers, and the capacitors were replaced with "Black Gates". There might be a difference between your deck and mine.

I've made some copies of vinyl on my mci jh 110 at 30ips and tascam br-20 at 15 ips, sound excellent but the vinyl sounds clearly better (wish there was not so much of a difference and think it could be tweaked to be closer..vpi aries/benz/george wright phono ag). Making copies of tapes is a something I still need to do (for sticky shed syndrome tapes, acetates or generally valuable/fragile tapes), tape takes a lot of time and effort, I think I have too many machines! Right now I am focusing on my mci jh110 which I feel sounds better than the tascam br20, technics rs1500 or otari mx5050 but no real comparisons have been made (just an initial impression), somehow I got sucked into the tape vortex (I just bought 5 boxes of 7" reels from an old radio station that I need to go through, they sit next to the 10 boxes of tape I got with the mci).

Orpheus10 said;

One always uses headphones when making a tape. Vibration degrades all analog. If you are playing a record, and listening at the same time, the sound is degraded to a minute degree. If you record in silence, this does not occur.

i agree that vibration and reasonance can degrade analog, particularly an Lp. but it's wrong to say that it is a problem in every case. some tt's are designed to effectively eliminate that issue.

i've recorded my Rockport tt with the speakers playing and while monitoring with headphones. there is no audible difference. in other words; feedback from speakers playing is not an issue for this turntable 'to the degree of being audible'. i would not argue that in theory there is some feedback, only that it's not significant enough to justify recording it.

which is why making a copy has zero value, even with top level gear. the copy cannot be as good.

my other turntables use mass and footers to reduce feedback and are effective if not quite as perfectly.

Since bumblebees were told they can't fly, they could explain this phenomenon better than anybody.

One always uses headphones when making a tape. Vibration degrades all analog. If you are playing a record, and listening at the same time, the sound is degraded to a minute degree. If you record in silence, this does not occur.

Okay, I understand that what I'm hearing is impossible. But the explanations aren't cutting it either. The most dramatic example of what I laid out above is a Gerry Mulligan tape, "Feelin' Good" on the Limelight label, a 3 3/4 ips "mistake" (I didn't know it was recorded at the slow speed before I bought it on Ebay.

Now, this is Mulligan with strings, and at 3 3/4 ips, the strings define "shrill" and "wiry" and have made the tape mostly unlistenable. Yet the 2-track 7 1/2 ips dub (from one Otari to the other) simply transformed it. And the 2-track dub of Miles' "Sketches of Spain" has transfixed everyone who has heard it. Cue the Twilight Zone theme.

Assuming one's source is vinyl, or CD, or cassette, or 8-track, or me playing the piano... will the tape (recorded with the speakers off) playback sound better than the original source did when it was played back by itself (or played)?

Maybe. My comments only apply to previously recorded sources like LP, that can be affected by vibration. So a tape will never sound better as a copy of another tape, although it can sound better than a CD because it can filter the digital noise that a CD player cannot.

Sorry for my tardy response...

I know what you mean.

I used to love to watch the VU meters jerk around to teh music back in the day when most tape units had VUs for playback as well as record.

My Denon CD recorder has LED meters but it just ain't the same.

Also my Roku Soundbridges have a VU like display mode, but I generally prefer to have the source track info show instead of jumping bars.

Here's what I think is happening in my case with the "copy" sounding better, through headphones at least. My TASCAM deck at 15ips is flat to 23Khz and with 3m/996 tape, has a 9db Headroom. Cutting out the room, the speakers, the speaker cables, the Cary monoblocks, the Transparent interconnects and the EDGE preamp, reduces a lot of aberrations done to the "original" down the chain and compression of headroom. A drum thwack I've heard a hundred times literally made me jump and, go ahead and laugh, I just love watching those huge, pro-grade VU meters on the 42B slam to the pin with no distortion with 996 tape.

a copy cannot be better than the original in a technical sense. It is just not possible.

That does not mean a copy cannot sound subjectively better however. That is more a function of what one likes to hear.

Copying often has a filtering effect on teh original meaning that some aspects of the signal are altered relative to otehrs which changes the sound.

The bad thing is that information lost in copying cannot be replaced should your preferences change in the future.

Better perhaps to find other ways of tweaking to achieve the desired results that can be reversed or eliminated dynamically if desired? Different ICs, tone controls, speaker toe-in, etc. are all examples of reversible tweaks that might have similar effect without risk of permanent loss or damage to the source.

I suppose you could keep multiple copies of recordings around but there is still a lot of time and expense involved in dubbing recordings to achieve sound improvements versus other options perhaps?

Here's another view of "the copy sounding better than the original." And I still can't believe it, no matter how many I do. I currently have two Otari machines at hand (one belongs to a friend) along with a Teac A2300SD (Dolby). I've been dubbing my own 4-track commercial tapes (mostly 7 1/2 but a few 3 3/4) onto one of the Otaris at 2-track 7 1/2 and 15 ips. In every case, the dubs are audibly better than the originals.

I'm not sure how far I'm going to take this -- and the excellence of the tape stock used for dubbing does make a major difference -- but the results so far have led to more and more dubs. Outstanding cases in point are the Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" and "Sketches of Spain." Has anyone else tried this?

I recently picked up a near-mint TASCAM 42B, (2-Track, 15ips) from a local church having been inspired by the CES reports of "Best Sound at the Show" at the Tape Project room as well as the amazing j-corder and the United Audio sites. I made a 15ips recording on NOS 3M/996 tape of direct-to-disk vinyl; Basis/Graham/Benz front-end through EAR 834P pre-preamp output directly into the deck. Listening through Sennheiser HD-600 headphones from the deck jack to the playback was amazing. Actually heard things I'd never heard before. I now intend to tape all my best vinyl. Tape quality is crucial. You can buy used 10.5 inch reel tape, but there's no guarantee it's been stored properly even though it may appear fine. You'll need to "bake" the tape (unless it's an old pre-recorded acetate). NOS and new tape is available but is expensive. TEAC/TASCAM Service Support has been great and is a crucial consideration in getting into this.

BTW, I think I saw that United Home Audio is participating at the Capital Audio Fest near DC this weekend. UAH where I heard some of the new RTR master recordings eclipse vinyl and CD last year on a very fine mbl system. I suspect that some of this technology will be on display there for those interested in hearing.

Actually here is what is advertised:

"Special events in the UHA room at the Capital Audiofest:

" UHA will be playing a precious few 0 generation Master Tapes recorded directly to 1/4" tape at 15ips, these tapes are not copies,
these are the original 0 generation tapes. We have both jazz and classical, you won't want to miss this demo.

3.) We will be playing "The Tape Project" 1.5 generation Master Tapes.

4.) We will be playing tapes we recorded using the Phase6 reel to reel tape deck from a $100,000 vinyl system, incredible reproductions."

The problem with seeking the best RTR based sound available is that there is not a lot of source material available relative to other formats and it can become quite expensive just to listen to the same stuff over and over again just for the sensation while everything else (99% of the music available) sounds inferior. Potentially an expensive addition with some very real limitations. Be careful!

Andy_p, you are a lucky guy however to get to where you are the way you got there!

Ralph,
I don't want to AGAIN pick nits, but I will anyway...

First, tape **Can** sound better than the source. Why? Physical vibration. If you have the speakers playing while making the recording, the tape will *not* sound better than the source, but if you use headphones to monitor and turn the speakers off then it has every chance of doing so. In addition, tape can filter out digital noise quite effectively. Try it!

Assuming one's source is vinyl, or CD, or cassette, or 8-track, or me playing the piano... will the tape (recorded with the speakers off) playback sound better than the original source did when it was played back by itself (or played)?

If so, why?

FWIW, I can perfectly understand why tape playback, with recorded from source with speakers off, might sound better than tape playback which was recorded from the same source with speakers on, but saying so is not quite the same thing as saying that tape sounds better than the source, and I expect should not be used as a reason to explain it.

I have to say though that tape can sound pretty remarkable even with a modest set up. Can't keep it modest though, that's just not going to happen!

Hi Ralph,

Did you see "All That Jazz"? Great movie -- wasn't it?

Best,
Sam

The next is anger, then comes the deal-making, and finally, acceptance :)

Hehe...well, you've advanced beyond the denial phase - lol :-)

thanks C1ferrari, I'm just worried that it will drive me to new levels of buying madness

Congrats, Andy_p :-)

-Sam

I'm just getting into tape myself. A friend had sold me some boxes of factory recorded 7" reels and it turns out about 60 are 2-track from the 1950's (mostly classical), I informed him of the value and he agreed it was a mistake to sell them to me but told me to just keep them (I offered them back twice, there has to be more than a few thousand dollars of 2 track tapes..at least a dozen of the early rca plain box for example, all early titles).

I bought an otari mx5050 mkii on craigslist for $60 that sort of works then unbelievably I found a technics rs-1500US at a garage sale with a spare headblock for $35 a few weeks later (the headblocks are rp-2224 and rp2422). Had to fix the 2/4 track switch on the installed headblock and got it set up. I have played a few of the 2 track tapes and have been amazed (one of the rca tapes from 1956 has a price printed on the box of $18.95, that is a lot of money for 1956!). A few friends had a chance to listen and had commented that they wish there were some current titles available (more affordable than the tape project tapes).

I plan to do a direct output from the heads on the rs-1500 and buy the bottlehead tape head amp. If I hadn't purchased this collection of tapes however I don't know that I would have pursued tape.

A few comments. First, tape **Can** sound better than the source. Why? Physical vibration. If you have the speakers playing while making the recording, the tape will *not* sound better than the source, but if you use headphones to monitor and turn the speakers off then it has every chance of doing so. In addition, tape can filter out digital noise quite effectively. Try it!

2nd: Tape is known for compression *but only near saturation*! At levels below that no compression at all.

3rd: physicists figured out that the Reynolds Number that bumblebees use to fly is quite different from aircraft! It was the Reynolds Number that was off when the math 'showed' that they can't fly.

So far, tape is the most practical form of state of the art reproduction. LPs, if done direct-to-disc, can be better, but only under ideal playback conditions. Tape machines, even if marginal like a Teac or Sony, can come very close to creating ideal playback conditions on the tape head. This is worth a lot! BTW I have a lot more respect for Tascam machines than Teac. My main objection to Teac and Sony is the quality of the electronics.

The idea that a blue ray is going to somehow keep up with analog tape is absurd. Anyone who has spent time in the studio with state of the art digital (using the master files) and even a rather pedestrian analog system can tell you that. You can hear it in a heartbeat.

I see Buconero has not bitten... ;-)

Mikelavigne, "Wider bandwidth, greater dynamic range, and correspondingly lower noise level" than 4 track. If we assume that high quality 4 track sounds as good as the source, if 2 track sounds better than 4 track; it has to sound better than the source.

assuming the same speed....7 and 1/2ips, the difference between 2 and 4 track is mainly that 2 track is double the width; which yields a wider bandwidth, greater dynamic range, and correspondingly lower noise floor.

what that does in reality is that 4-track does not quite measure up to better vinyl in my system; whereas 2-track can equal or even slightly better 33rpm vinyl in my system. this is based on the better examples of 2 and 4 track tapes i have heard.

15ips can surpass the best of my vinyl; but not 100% of the time. the source of that 15ips tape must be a 15ips master dub in good condition and the dub needs to be very well done.

i'll grant that there are aspects of tape replay which the 4-track has which i do enjoy such as the continueousness that set it apart from vinyl in some cases. but the 4-track also has a higher noise floor than my vinyl. the 4-tracks i have are very inconsistent.

i almost never listen to a 4-track tape as with 12,000 Lps why would i?

i do have three very good tt's and 2 high quality phono stages so Lps do perform quite well in my system. if i had a more modest vinyl front-end maybe my viewpoint on how 4-track (or even 7 and 1/2ips 2-track) compared might be different.

Mikelavigne, can you discribe the audible difference between 2 track and 4 track playback?

Orpheus, the Technics RS-1500 is a 4-track/2-track machine.
it does 3 3/4ips, 7 1/2ips and 15ips.

i have about 20 7 1/2 2-track tapes and maybe 100 7 1/2ips 4-track tapes.

i'm not sure what you are referring to regarding applying the term 'direct drive' to an RTR deck. my understanding is that the Technics does have the motors directly connected to the reel shafts.

Mikelavigne, is your technics 2 track or 4 track. Which ones are direct drive?

currently i have 3, the Studer A-820, the Ampex ATR-102 and Technics RS-1500.

Mikelavigne, how many reel to reel tape decks do you have at present?

as big a tape fan as i am, i'm with T-Bone on this one. you can take any output signal, record it, and change it, or add something to it, but.....you cannot improve it in terms of information. the additions and changes may or may not make it more pleasing to one's tastes. and you can call it better if you like. but at best it's different but also most certainly diminished to some degree.

yes; mixing engineers will even take a digital master and run it thru a tape machine or use EQ to do the same thing; but you could also apply that to your Lp output or get a phono stage that mimics that....it's normally considered a coloration. adding bloom or anything always comes at a price somewhere else.

there is one 'theory' that has been mentioned previously that makes a case that since a turntable can be affected by speaker feedback......making a tape off an Lp with the speakers turned off, and then playing it back on a tape player (which likely is less affected by speaker feedback) might give you a net gain in information even when considering the signal path loss and generational loss in the recording process. personally i don't buy it, but in theory it does have merit.

also; if using RTR tape and optimizing recording quality; you will be taping at 15ips with $40-$50 per reel tape. that's almost $100 per album just to copy your music in an attempt to 'improve' it. not too sensible an approach if you ask me. if you are using 7 and 1/2 ips and cheaper tape then don't even talk about getting close to the original media.....that's not going to happen. any way you look at it it's not a good direction.

OTOH if you just like the sound better then knock yourself out.

i'm strongly from the camp of enjoy any media in it's most original form. making recordings of media you already own is a waste of time to me. it cannot sound better after messing with it. only different. if your original playback media system is flawed then fix that.

T_bone, I decided to explain my statement "The playback is better than the source"
Most decks record "forward" and "reverse", they do this by utilizing 4 tracks on the 1/4 tape. A 2 track uses the entire width of the tape in one forward sweep. The tape heads are wider, hence the sound is bigger. This is equivilent to looking at a photograph under a magnifying glass; same photograph, just bigger. Bigger is better.

Handyman, where are you? If you are going to buy pre recorded tapes, they are very expensive, and blank tape is not cheap. Are you still interested in a reel to reel?

Dopogue, if you don't know about the compression effect of tape heads, then you should read some of the following:

A tech explanation

A discussion of the variables involved

Tape compression can sound so good that several companies make effect processors to emulate the sound. Check out Crane Song, Rupert Neve or Empirical Lab's Fatso.

When I had a reel to reel machine many years ago, I too felt the recordings that I made from my LP's were better than the LP used to record it. I never could understand that, but it sure sounded good. I got rid of the machine before I bought my first cd player. The only reason I bought a reel to reel in the first place was so that I wouldn't have to keep flipping over and changing LP's on the turntable. When 5 disc cd players came along, it rendered a reel to reel obsolete for my purposes. I could now have 5 hours of music without interruption and without having to record it myself.

T_bone, I have never read more "gobbledegook" in my life. You should have been a lawyer. I believe you wrote my last divorce papers.