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.
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.