The Sound Quality Of Commercially Pre-Recorded Reel-To-Reel Albums

I have been listening to prerecorded R2R tapes from Barkley-Crocker for decades. Certainly superior to home made copies of LPs IMO. 

I settled on Teac X2000r machines. their last prosumer deck. 6 heads, auto-reverse.

Amazingly, the pre-recorded tapes from late 50’s and 60’s, 70’s, early 80’s STILL sound terrific. No tape shedding, bleed thru, only rare brittleness and very rare stretching.

I bought +/- 500 of them years ago when shipping cost more than the tape. I add new leaders to transfer the starting force to the new leader, and metal strips for auto reverse.

Later, I sold over 100 of them on eBay, unlimited refund/returns: only 1 refund because USPS practiced destruction upon it.

People here: everyone picks tubes over SS. Everyone picks LP over CD; Everyone picks R2R over LP.

7-1/2 IPS sound darn good, best source material I have (except late 50’s 2 track stereo tapes, they are terrific IF you have real 2 track heads which I did, but sold, as the content is limited by it’s era.

3-3/4 IPS not superior to LP, avoid unless content cannot otherwise be found.

Home Made. I made a few from live FM simulcasts. IF you had superior FM tuner and reception, they were/are very good, I just played a live Pretenders tape I made. Exciting now as it was then.

I have bought several batches of home made tapes on eBay, some darn good, most just ok, I think the person’s recording skills, their sources are more important than the machine’s/tape’s capability; AND several brands of blank tapes sold back then had ’shedding’ problems later. Not the pre-recorded ones.

Here is a mixed bag of tapes that you will learn a lot from at very little cost

For truly superior sound, 2 track 15 IPS is the way to go, (much more expensive). my friend has 2 Otari’s, played me Led Zeppelin, holy smokes, now you know what they were hearing when they recorded. A whole world above other source material.

His are in great shape, this one looks beat, but just to show it:

My main experience with a pre-recorded tape was when Harry Weisfeld played the Mercury recording of Gershwin's Concerto in F, which I owned in its original vinyl version.  It was the first time I had heard the conclusion of the piece without any distortion and with full bass, as the record grooves went almost to the edge of the center.  Had we recorded the record, we would have also recorded that inner grove distortion and compression.  So for that reason, I'd have to think the pre-recorded tape version, if done well (and Mercury certainly did), should be better than the vinyl, as you can avoid the shortcomings inherent in the vinyl pressing.  

That said, I guess if you had a perfect, uncompressed vinyl record that you played back and recorded to R to R  with a particular cartridge whose sound was not flat but which you preferred, you might like the sound of the tape you made over the pre-recorded tape.

Original Moody Blues, Piano Based Blues Band, Denny Laine PRIOR to Justin Hasyward.

1st album: Go Now.

Dynamic Piano was is distorted on LP, and Later CD, the sound of the R2R was/is the 1st time I heard it all without distortion.

no bargain priced at the moment. NOS, $500.

a few used for $150 to $200.

Years ago I once balked at paying $8.00 at a record fair, got to my car, realized, ’you idiot’, went back got it.

Inferior. Pre records were manufactured at high speeds. I sold mine.

They sell for big bucks - not worth it.

Back in 1975 I had a 4 channel R2R and bought prerecorded tapes for it. The genre never caught on, but the sound was amazing. Live at the Fillmore blew me away and I have heard that music on every media it was released in except 8 track.

R2R beats them all, vinyl, cassette, CD, SACD included. I just wish more music had been available. I always wanted a Revox with the big reels, but $$ prevented that 50 years ago.

I stream now for convenience and at 75 my hearing is less than stellar due to many rock concerts in the 60s and 70s as well as being a machine gun crew chief in the Army in 1970.

It's easier to get good tape playback than equivalent vinyl playback. A good used Revox goes for 1-2K, whereas an equivalent TT, tonearm, cartridge, and phono stage will set you back 5-10 times as much.

But pre-recorded multi-track R-R has its own issues which are unique to the format: sound from one channel can bleed slightly into the adjacent ones. No big deal if it's 2-track; but if it's 4-track R-R, then the channels are arranged so that the slight bleed is the other side of the tape. Reversed. That can be audible and it's not high end.

Cassette tapes solved that problem with a more sensible arrangement of tracks on the tape.

The solution of course is the cost-no-object 15 ips 2-track stuff, at $1000 per hour - and that's pretty phenomenal, or so I've been told. So you've got a choice: pay big for the hardware, or pay big for the software. Since vinyl has rather more titles, it's vinyl for me.

In the mid 80s I roomed in a house owned by a fellow audiophile who recorded a local semi-pro orchestra live to a hot rodded Revox A77 using DBX NR. His tapes were amazing. He used the Nakamichi Tri-Mic system with spaced super-omni capsules to capture sound in Boston’s Jordan Hall at NEC or Sanders Theater at Harvard.  No LP or CD compared remotely to the dynamics and effortlessness of that sound. Later, he switched to a Nakamichi PCM adapter and Sony Betamax to record the same feed. Interestingly, the quality of his now videotape playback was just as good as the open reels, (but much cheaper to buy).  My conclusion was that the promise of digital was that while not being realized in the commercial marketplace, but the theory of its “transparency” was correct. 

dynalead

mentioned Barclay Crocker Tapes, and DBX Noise Reduction was just mentioned by crustycoot.

Only late R2R machines had DBX, my late Teac x2000r has DBX-1, called Professional Noise Reduction.

Later, good quality Cassette recorders has DBX, AND tape formulations during the cassette era were progressively improved. Tape movement was vastly improved, all combined so that a format developed for mono dictation could actually sound very good with a very small track width: 4 tracks on a 1/8" wide tape. This compared to commercially recorded R2R 1/4" wide tape.

Back to Barclay Crocker. A great many of them were DBX, and you needed a tape deck with built-in DBX NR equalization capabilities to play them, just as you need a phono equalizer for LPs.

Studio recorders used 1/2"; 1"; 2" wide tape, the re-mastered LPs etc. hopefully made using them. 15 or 30 IPS, and Mercury used a version of 35mm film tape for superior recordings.

IMAX movie film is 70mm (2-3/4") wide; and is projected running horizontally, not vertically like 35mm. Horizontally allows taller images

@crustycoot Yes, an A77 is easy to improve, and the half-tracks running at 15 ips were a fine transport. I did some recording 20 years ago with Rode mikes, and the results were excellent. Female vocal is superior to anything on my air bearing TT.

Interesting thread. I'm always fascinated to hear from people who's experience has been different from mine.

I have a Teac X1000RBL reel to reel that I bought new. It does 3.75 & 7.5 ips. I used it mainly to record classical vinyl to get long play times. Using the dbx noise reduction, high bias tape, and recording at 7.5 ips the recordings are a dead ringer for the original vinyl. The deck works extremely well for this purpose.

I also have a modest collection of about 30 pre-recorded tapes with most of them being 7.5 ips. My experience is that the best of these pre-recorded tapes cannot compete with a CD. They are maybe a little better than the vinyl version but they don't "blow away" the vinyl by any means. After reading @elliottbnewcombjr 's post I think I'll go back and try some of them again because I've had such a different experience than he has.

I've heard 15 ips tapes at a few audio shows and they sound amazing but I would love to compare them with a CD or SACD. I've got a pretty nice CD rig (Berkeley Alpha Reference II MQA, Jay's Audio CD3 Mk III) and I would be surprised if these tapes were clearly superior to an audiophile CD version.

Even though I don't play my R2R very often I love it and will keep it until I go into assisted living or die, whichever comes first. It's a beautiful piece of audio engineering and it's just plain cool.

8th-note

Your pre-recorded 7-1/2" tapes: make sure DBX is OFF.

and, some, they recorded L/R signal strengths differently on purpose, watch meters, listen, adjust, enjoy. Mine definitely beat CD or SACD. SACD for me is simply a lower noise floor, music emanates from aural darkness, sometimes un-natural quiet.

Tape does have some hiss in quiet passages, as used LPs has some surface noise. We train our brains 'not to hear' the hiss or LP surface noise. After years of CDs only, I had to re-acquire the ability to not hear LP surface noise

My friend's 15 IPS 2 track is Phenomenal, way beyond 7-1/2 IPS 4 track; LP, CD or SACD.

Next visit, I expect terrific sound from the 2T 15 IPS Jazz tapes he has been buying.

@8th-note I think that it depends on the kind of distortion which you can tolerate.

I don’t mind wow and flutter, but it drives other people bananas. The audible high frequency ’fizz’ that sits on top of almost all digital recordings, like the crap on top of an electrolytic capacitor, drives me nuts - I can’t listen to more than a few seconds of the worst, and get no pleasure from the best.. I even have to choose my cartridges carefully, lest they pick up the electrolytic caps used in the recording studio.

Apparently, your milage varies.

Hello Mitch4T!  I have many "pre-recorded" commercia tpes from 50-60 years ago, broadway shows, movie soundtracks, etc. They Stil have EXCELLENT sound. The years have added a noticable hiss from sitting inthe earth's magnetic field, however.  I also have many tapes recorded from LP's and FM radio programs as well as live recordings of musical groups. The hiss can be easily removed by using a program like Wave Pad. First: record your music digitally. Then find about 5 - 8 seconds of space between songs that should be silent. It should be in the program material itself.  That way, you can remove noise and hum in the original presentation Plus any noise and hiss in the original recording equipment.  If it is just the blank tape sound, you can get rid of the hiss from the aging of the tape and any hum in the equipment. The trick is to record this "blank - supposedly silent" area and then make a copy and reduce the level by about 10- 20 percent and use that reduced level copy as the "noise sample" for the computer to remove. This way, you will avoid cutting the high frequencies in the actual music by any noticable amount. The results are remarkable. Happy listening!

I’ve had a Teac X-10R since 1981.  During the 80’s and very early 90’s, I recorded about thirty 10.5” reels of old school soul/R&B and contemporary jazz albums.  Each tape is dbx encoded.  I don’t know how, but my dbx tapes sound better than the original vinyl album.  My 15ips reels sound the best.

I have had numerous pre recorded R2R tapes back in he day. Some good, some not so good. Unfortunately, back in the 60's and 70's and probably 80's, many tape editions were afterthoughts. Although some name Mastering Engineers did do a "Tape Duplicating house" master, many times it was left to staff underlings for such. Probably much less so for classical. I'm not certain if RVG mastered the tape editions. RVG did do many 45rpm single masters. 

Generally, the higher the tape speed, the better the sound. Also, two-track machines have more head space to work with so usually, better sound.

Pre-recorded tapes from 50 years ago were good if they were 7.5 ips and barely better than a Dolby-encoded cassette at 3.75. 

Working with R2R tape is a lot like having a turntable. There's something very satisfying about looping the tape around the pressure guide, past the heads an over the capstan, etc. The TEAC decks mentioned are among the best you can find. According to the guy who restored my Akai GX-620, ReVox A77's aren't all that reliable and when they break, they're a bear to work on, thus, expensive. However, they sound really good when they work. 

These $10k play-only 15ips decks are grossly overpriced IMHO. If you want to go that route, find a used Otari 5050 or Tascam 32 and save yourself several thousand dollars. Both are reliable, sturdily built and sound fabulous.