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

In the mid 80s I roomed in a house owned by a fellow audiophile who recorded a local semi-pro orchestra live to a hot rodded Revox A77 using DBX NR. His tapes were amazing. He used the Nakamichi Tri-Mic system with spaced super-omni capsules to capture sound in Boston’s Jordan Hall at NEC or Sanders Theater at Harvard.  No LP or CD compared remotely to the dynamics and effortlessness of that sound. Later, he switched to a Nakamichi PCM adapter and Sony Betamax to record the same feed. Interestingly, the quality of his now videotape playback was just as good as the open reels, (but much cheaper to buy).  My conclusion was that the promise of digital was that while not being realized in the commercial marketplace, but the theory of its “transparency” was correct. 

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

@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.

Interesting thread. I'm always fascinated to hear from people who's experience has been different from mine.

I have a Teac X1000RBL reel to reel that I bought new. It does 3.75 & 7.5 ips. I used it mainly to record classical vinyl to get long play times. Using the dbx noise reduction, high bias tape, and recording at 7.5 ips the recordings are a dead ringer for the original vinyl. The deck works extremely well for this purpose.

I also have a modest collection of about 30 pre-recorded tapes with most of them being 7.5 ips. My experience is that the best of these pre-recorded tapes cannot compete with a CD. They are maybe a little better than the vinyl version but they don't "blow away" the vinyl by any means. After reading @elliottbnewcombjr 's post I think I'll go back and try some of them again because I've had such a different experience than he has.

I've heard 15 ips tapes at a few audio shows and they sound amazing but I would love to compare them with a CD or SACD. I've got a pretty nice CD rig (Berkeley Alpha Reference II MQA, Jay's Audio CD3 Mk III) and I would be surprised if these tapes were clearly superior to an audiophile CD version.

Even though I don't play my R2R very often I love it and will keep it until I go into assisted living or die, whichever comes first. It's a beautiful piece of audio engineering and it's just plain cool.

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.