Why no interest in reel to reel if you're looking for the ultimate sound?

roberttdid

... your ears tell you what you like, and I honestly believe no one really questions that ...

Plenty of people here challenge  audiophile preferences, which some measurementalists will explain away as "delusion," "tin-foil hat," insanity," and so on.

Where the tensions rise, is when audiophiles assume that because they "like" something, that it must be more accurate ... They will go so far as to make up technical claims, about things they have almost no knowledge about, then defend those claims with passion and vitriol ...

Lotsa measurementalists here do the same thing, then add to the vitriol with demands for scientific double-blind testing and on and on and on and on. There are plenty of people here who "make up technical claims" to support their beliefs - no side has an exclusive on that.

rrcpa

Music (sound) is analog and by changing that signal to digital something is lost.

That does seem intuitively true, but that doesn’t make it true. I’m an analog guy at heart, so I understand your preference.

Something is lost once again when you change it back to analog so your ears can understand it. This is part and parcel of Newton’s 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is known as Entropy ...

Hmmm, that doesn’t apply here ...

Additionally, when you sample a analog signal, by definition, there is some period of time when you are NOT sampling. This information is lost forever.

Yes, that information is lost forever, that’s true. But the lost information is outside of the bandwidth of the system.

The notion that there is otherwise information "lost" between samples can be shown to be false fairly easily, as I’ve explained here previously. If you want to see the proof for yourself, this guy did all of the work for you.

topoxforddoc

https://i.vgy.me/Rye2Pf.jpghttps://i.vgy.me/OfKMvT.jpg
https://i.vgy.me/0tcXOh.jpg ...
https://i.vgy.me/xvuxdA.jpg

Holy S&@*&!
Sweet!

I’ve been into R2R since that was the only option for serious home recorders. I still have my quarter-track Tandberg TD20A and half-track rebuilt Crown SX822. I use them mostly to listen to historic recordings, which should probably be digitized for posterity. Maybe some day I’ll get around to that.

For me, audio is not about trying to get the best sound, but about getting the best sound from recordings that you actually care about. Efforts from boutique labels such as The Tape Project can sound fantastic, but I can’t justify the price. As much as I can appreciate the best quality pure analog, today’s digital is so so-oooo good that I can’t spend $450 for the tape. YMMV.

fusian

... I have never released a vinyl record (since my band in the 80s, anyways), so I don't even know if mastering plants have the capability to cut from an analogue tape.

They have, and they do.