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

@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.

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.

@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.