Why Not Bring Back Analog, Reel to Reel Tape

when you see 'elevator operators' and 'full serve' gas stations, reel to reel must be next.

Well, Jaybo, over the holidays my wife and I stayed at the downtown Marriot in Minneapolis and they had elevator operators (not sure why!). Plus, here in Oregon, self serve gas is illegal, so all stations are still full serve.

Where do I go for the reel to reel?

:-)

Reel to reel tape machines are as good as gets, no one can get any better sound than a 2" 30 IPS properly calibrated 2 track reel to reel mastering machine, period.

Not even the best digital audio a/d converters can match a top of the line mastering reel to reel machine set up through the best preamps.

Most of the best LP records ever mastered come from the original reel to reel masters anyways, some newer records are made from digital masters or cut direct to a record master.

However mastering from reel to reel to any other format will always sound slightly or highly different. Depending on your playback electronics, phono cartridge, D/A converters, preamp, amplifiers and speakers etc. But nothing will sound as good as the best reel to reel master.

So as far as I am concerned, the best recordings ever made in history were done on a reel to reel machine, period.

And who cares if people don't like the format because they have to actually work at threading the reel tape and or calibrating their reel machine, and or they are afraid the reel tape will not last and will deteriorate over time.

The truth is, most reel tape masters have lasted through fifty years or so, except some reel tapes made in the late 1970's to 1995 due to a bad decision to change the chemical process they had sticky shed syndrome, but unlike records, most reel tapes still sound as good as the day they were recorded without pops, excessive background hiss and audible distortion.

I will not include here the prerecorded reel tapes, most of those were duplicated at high speed and have tape hiss and way too much treble and most sound like crap and are distorted, and in this case the LP records do sound better.

However real time recordings on to the reel tape format, such as studio masters, can not be beat for sound quality, period.

Even in a digitally sampled world, the analog reel tape picks up more audio analog information and translates it to our ears better, especially on the low, mid and high frequencies, which digital can not handle as accurate. This is especially the case with 44khz 16 bit CD's, that is why they sound harsh.

Open reel is a small nitch market even in the pro audio world. On the consumer side, the only demand would come from high end audio interests, which make up a really small percentage of the common audio market. At $4- $8K for a new deck, a company would have to ask themselves how many are they really going to sell?? Not enough to warrant the expense of carrying inventory, handling repairs etc.

In an age when MP3 sonics is quite fine for most folks, who pay 99 cents for a download tune, this would make even less sense.

Even in the pro-sumer audio market, garage bands, and home bands are all doing digital if nothing else due to cost. Once one has invested in the hardware, laying down another track requires some additional drive space, not another reel of 50+ dollar analog tape.

In the pro studio market, you will almost always find a Studer or an Otari MTR tucked in a corner. They know that some clients will pay for the analog sound, but not all. Even here its a small market.

I have a number of analog 15 and 30 ips master dubs, as well as record live to two track without any compression, or Effects boxes in the signal path on the weekends. All the weekend recording is done to hi res digital. Every once in a while I will lug along an analog half track machine. No question, the analog machine does sound better by far.
At the end of the day though all the tracks will eventually get mixed down for CD, so unless I want an analog copy for myself, there is no reason to take the analog deck along, even though it smokes the digital gear.

Have any of you guys with working R2R decks tried A/B comparing to the audio performance of a good HiFi VHS deck? I've dubbed a few cd's and some 24/96 PCM stereo tracks from concert DVD's to VHS just for fun and the sound quality is pretty awesome exp. on SP speed. Anyone happen to know the specs of the relative ips/width of tape allocated to audio in VHS compared to R2R? Might be a good alternative to R2R if you really want to record to analog tape.. and good-quality VHS blanks are still easy to find and pretty inexpensive. You can't play 'em in your car but neither can you with R2R.. Thoughts? -jz