Ron’s New System

[tima]

Tape is somewhat similar to vinyl in that the media is more significant than the hardware. it's kinda like that. tape provenance and transfer quality along with deck optimization are more challenging

The closet I've come to tape is cassettes, so no real familiarity -- heh. My sense is that good tape of top performances is expensive and hard to come by. Experts are required to maintain players. Tape itself is fragile. Tape copies are like unremastered reissues. Mike, is any of that close to correct?

 

[Kingrex]

Thank you very much for the kind words, Brian! It was great finally to spend some quality time with you!

He's just being nice. Hahaaaaaa

 

[Hi-FiGuy]

The closet I've come to tape is cassettes, so no real familiarity -- heh. My sense is that good tape of top performances is expensive and hard to come by. Experts are required to maintain players. Tape itself is fragile. Tape copies are like unremastered reissues. Mike, is any of that close to correct?

I agree with all of that, but the $hit sounds amazing. For all of those reasons however I am more than content to treasure the moments when visiting Steve or Mike or anyone else willing to share the experience.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

The closet I've come to tape is cassettes, so no real familiarity -- heh. My sense is that good tape of top performances is expensive and hard to come by.

relatively yes. the tape stock itself on a metal reel for 30 minutes of tape is $60-$90. most albums use 2 reels. and quality dubbing is real time, nothing efficient. so labor intensive. lots of tape is grey market (you need the secret handshake), and so variable in quality and typically provenance unknown. i am very selective and always compare tapes of popular recordings to my vinyl to judge it. if it's better i buy, if not pass. commercially available tapes are mostly from either 50+ year old recordings, or new one's are of marginal performances. so one has to sift through them to find the gems. there are some really fine current recordings such as Ultra Analog for small combo classical and International Phonograph for small combo jazz that have high standards for sound and performance.

Experts are required to maintain players.

true mostly. especially the master recorders. but experts are out there if you look. i've personally not had any problem with that myself, but my 'experts' were mostly really smart and talented guys (Ki Choi and Andrey Kosobutsky) who i got started into tape a decade ago, and they became the most knowledgeable people. maybe i made my own luck.

Tape itself is fragile.

not really. in my 15-16 years and around 250 titles (most 2 reels) i've yet to have a tape break, or wear out. but i do not play vintage tapes, only modern formulations. once i did acquire a small collection of vintage masters and they were a mess. so i divested myself from those and not gone back. it takes experience to be able to get a workable dub from vintage tapes. a special skill. not all vintage tapes are fragile, but most are.

my tape decks have been mostly the Studer A-820, which has the most gentle transport, and the Ampex ATR-102, also very easy on tape. so having a really well sorted out transport makes a difference on how a tape holds up over time. early decks are much harder on tape than later decks.

Tape copies are like unremastered reissues.

most master dubs are from production safeties so are the final master and not work parts. but i do have a few with extra passages in familiar tunes which were not the final product. those are fun and a generation fresher.

Mike, is any of that close to correct?

tried to answer the best i could.

 

[tima]

am very selective and always compare tapes of popular recordings to my vinyl to judge it.

Thanks. a helpful straightforward reply on all counts

 

[KeithR]

Aren't you a Debbie Downer! I am not interested in an objectivist discussion about this on my system thread.

This is a subjective hobby, and I am reporting that tape, when, as Mike says correctly, all the stars align, maximizes my emotional engagement and my suspension of disbelief.

Please feel free to start a new thread about your topic.

Subjective hobby yet you are addicted to frequency response charts

 

[Kingrex]

The cost of a good tape machine is $8k to $10k. That is by no means the best. But its a fully reconditioned Otari or Tascam with a good direct head outboard preamp. Go ahead and dump $30k if you want. But I have $6k in and definatly hear what its all about.

Generally, a tape copt that is darn good is around $180 a reel or $360 an album. Then there all the mainstream production tapes that are more or less.

What tape heads don't talk a lot about, as Lucy from A Charlie Brown Christmas says "Real Estate". Tape machines are big. They take up a lot of space. And they are a pain in the @&& to run. You have to load the deck, rewind the tape, reload the tape after it rewound, then play it all the way through. Don't stop unless your between tracks and need to pee. You don't want to stretch the tape with stop and start.

I hear tape is good for about 200 plays. Then the highs start to roll off. Now you want a second deck to dub your favorites. But, owe wait. Dubbing is not playing. Record electronics cost significantly more than playback. You may have to buy a $30k machine to be able to dub your favorite tapes.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Subjective hobby yet you are addicted to frequency response charts

Far from "addicted"! -- you haven't seen one from me in weeks! (And, yes, it was very useful for diagnosing problems.)

 

[bonzo75]

I hear tape is good for about 200 plays. Then the highs start to roll off. Now you want a second deck to dub your favorites. But, owe wait. Dubbing is not playing. Record electronics cost significantly more than playback. You may have to buy a $30k machine to be able to dub your favorite tapes.

Record from tape to cassette. And play back cassette.

 

[bonzo75]

, I have, on tape, three different performances of Symphonie Fantastique, two or three different performances of Beethoven 5, two or three different performances of Beethoven 9, two or three different performances of Night on Bald Mountain, and three different performances of Pictures at an Exhibition. So on my favorite classical pieces I even have alternatives on tape.

can you please say which ones you have?

 

[PeterA]

You haven't seen one from me in weeks! (And, yes, it was very useful for diagnosing problems.)

It’s unfortunate. With your changes to room acoustics, I think it would be really nice to see a new frequency response measurement to see if there’s a correlation and if you’ve solved some of your issues.

if you’re going to go that route and encourage other people to take measurements of their rooms as you did with me, then it only makes sense to continue the process to see if you’ve made progress with changes to the room acoustics and can verify them with measurements.

I don’t understand why you were so into it at the beginning and now you have no interest.

 

[Ron Resnick]

It’s unfortunate. With your changes to room acoustics, I think it would be really nice to see a new frequency response measurement to see if there’s a correlation and if you’ve solved some of your issues.
I don’t understand why you were so into it at the beginning and now you have no interest.

I don't understand. I did not say it was never going to do it again. Where did I say I had no interest in it any longer?

I've been too busy hosting guests and listening to music. In fact I do plan to take another measurement when the third AVAA arrives.

 

[Ron Resnick]

if you’re going to go that route and encourage other people to take measurements of their rooms as you did with me,

I'll show you mine, when you show me yours!

 

[PeterA]

I don't understand. I did not say it was never going to do it again. Where did I say I had no interest in it any longer?

I've been too busy hosting guests and listening to music. In fact I do plan to take another measurement when the third AVAA arrives.

I got the sense that you no longer want to talk about objective things in your system thread about a subjective hobby. I found it a bit confusing because of your interest early on in the objective room measurements. Keith and Tim and I all noted the apparent contradiction.

if you want to go back to objective measurements given that they were a big part of the thread at the beginning, that would be great. I am curious to see if those panels address the issues in the measurements. Subjectively, I don’t hear a lot of difference from the video evidence. To me, your videos do not seem to correlate with what I hear in your videos, particularly the bass emphasis and the treble roll off. Your videos sound more balanced that the measurements seem to indicate, but I have little experience with such measurements

As you know, I struggled with my own system thread also when the subject strayed off topic into areas I didn’t want to discuss there. It just seems to be the nature of these discussions and how things go.

Carlos simply posted a link to an article and you nipped that in the bud quite effectively.

 

[PeterA]

I'll show you mine, when you show me yours!

Funny, that brings back some memories.

Fortunately, that’s not a requirement here. If it were, there would only be about six people in the video discussion threads. And besides, you’ve already shown us your measurements.

 

[Kingrex]

Delete

 

[Kingrex]

Record from tape to cassette. And play back cassette.

I had a Nakamichi BX300 that was double speed and very tricked out. It was not the same as a 1/4" x 15 ips.
I did ask about that designer making me a hot rodded 1/4" x 7.5 ips machine with the record electronics optimized. Mostly to make mix tapes. Thats a lot more tape material passing over the head.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I had a Nakamichi BX300 that was double speed and very tricked out. It was not the same as a 1/4" x 15 ips.
I did ask about that designer making me a hot rodded 1/4" x 7.5 ips machine with the record electronics optimized. Mostly to make mix tapes. Thats a lot more tape material passing over the head.

if you are messing with cassettes, just get the vinyl. it does not take much of a turntable to surpass cassette. unless it's in car. and with Sirius, in car exotic sources are just not sensible.

 

[Kingrex]

if you are messing with cassettes, just get the vinyl. it does not take much of a turntable to surpass cassette. unless it's in car. and with Sirius, in car exotic sources are just not sensible.

Agree. I do wonder about the 1/4" x 7.5 IPS.

 

[Kingrex]

I got the sense that you no longer want to talk about objective things in your system thread about a subjective hobby. I found it a bit confusing because of your interest early on in the objective room measurements. Keith and Tim and I all noted the apparent contradiction.

if you want to go back to objective measurements given that they were a big part of the thread at the beginning, that would be great. I am curious to see if those panels address the issues in the measurements. Subjectively, I don’t hear a lot of difference from the video evidence. To me, your videos do not seem to correlate with what I hear in your videos, particularly the bass emphasis and the treble roll off. Your videos sound more balanced that the measurements seem to indicate, but I have little experience with such measurements

As you know, I struggled with my own system thread also when the subject strayed off topic into areas I didn’t want to discuss there. It just seems to be the nature of these discussions and how things

Without digging back into your thread Peter. Did you measure your room. Before and after you changed systems.
Does the horn measure better?