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

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:

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.

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

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.