If tape is so good why does it record so poorly?

[rbbert]

I talked to one of the Decca engineers about the fiasco of the Solti Ring, where they wore out the master tapes after so many reissues. They did make a decent reasonably hirez digital copy - IIRC 96/24 or maybe 96/16 in the late '90's and have used that for their more recent reissues...

Larry

The official releases are 24/48, and the accompanying notes indicate this is how the transfer was made in the '90's

 

[Kingrex]

I personally am seeking a deck with superior record capability. I don't care as much about playback. I want to make some mix of my favorite tapes. My Otari to some other machine. I have my Otari with the heads wired to my outboard preamp for all my playback needs.

I want the machine sort of portable so I can put it away when not needed. I have a nice playback machine in my room. And I don't have space for additional fixtures in the room.
Thats my desire. Other might want different.

 

[rbbert]

I personally am seeking a deck with superior record capability. I don't care as much about playback. I want to make some mix of my favorite tapes. My Otari to some other machine. I have my Otari with the heads wired to my outboard preamp for all my playback needs.

I want the machine sort of portable so I can put it away when not needed. I have a nice playback machine in my room. And I don't have space for additional fixtures in the room.
Thats my desire. Other might want different.

IMO you will be better off with one of several digital recorders (probably DSD, 128f or 256f) than with a cassette deck. A good R2R recorder would end up replacing your Otari as your main deck.

 

[astrotoy]

The official releases are 24/48, and the accompanying notes indicate this is how the transfer was made in the '90's

Thanks for the clarification. In the nineties, I think it makes sense that the release was done in 24/48. I don't have a digital copy of the Ring. Do the notes tell whether the transfer was done in 24/48 or a higher rez and downsampled to 24/48? When I met with the Decca staff in 2013 and 2014, one of them said that they were surprised that Das Rheingold (released in 1958) Siegfried (1962) didn't have some release them in the public domain, since they were not under copyright anymore with the change in the E.U. copyright rules, at least in the E.U.

 

[rbbert]

Thanks for the clarification. In the nineties, I think it makes sense that the release was done in 24/48. I don't have a digital copy of the Ring. Do the notes tell whether the transfer was done in 24/48 or a higher rez and downsampled to 24/48? When I met with the Decca staff in 2013 and 2014, one of them said that they were surprised that Das Rheingold (released in 1958) Siegfried (1962) didn't have some release them in the public domain, since they were not under copyright anymore with the change in the E.U. copyright rules, at least in the E.U.

Transfer at 24/48. It isn't clear why a more recent transfer from a safety master was never done, especially since there are some in private hands (like yours); presumably Decca still has some?

 

[Argonaut]

I personally am seeking a deck with superior record capability. I don't care as much about playback. I want to make some mix of my favorite tapes. My Otari to some other machine. I have my Otari with the heads wired to my outboard preamp for all my playback needs.

I want the machine sort of portable so I can put it away when not needed. I have a nice playback machine in my room. And I don't have space for additional fixtures in the room.
Thats my desire. Other might want different.

Sorted.

 

[astrotoy]

Transfer at 24/48. It isn't clear why a more recent transfer from a safety master was never done, especially since there are some in private hands (like yours); presumably Decca still has some?

Unfortunately Decca doesn't. Winston Ma found that out with some of Decca's more famous titles, where they sent him the original master tapes in the early mid 2000's. Some of the tapes were in fine condition and he had Paul Stubblebine remaster them for release on his FIM label on CD. However, there were several that were not useable. He told me about one of my favorite of the Decca releases, the Britten Noye's Fludde which Decca engineered on their Argo label. It was a TAS Superdisc - spectacular sonics. The tape arrived and it was terrible. My digital rip of an early vinyl copy was much superior. BTW, the remasters that Paul did of the 17 (IIRC) releases that Winston did were superior to the CD remasters that Decca released around 2010 in their bargain box. Winston chose excerpts from many of them for the 4 CD's that accompanied my Decca book that I wrote for FIM.

Larry

 

[adrianywu]

I personally am seeking a deck with superior record capability. I don't care as much about playback. I want to make some mix of my favorite tapes. My Otari to some other machine. I have my Otari with the heads wired to my outboard preamp for all my playback needs.

I want the machine sort of portable so I can put it away when not needed. I have a nice playback machine in my room. And I don't have space for additional fixtures in the room.
Thats my desire. Other might want different.

The Nagra IV-S was designed for location recording. It's recording quality is much better than its playback, which is really for monitoring purposes only, because there is no editing function on the machine. Both Jazz at the Pawnshop and Cantate Domino were recorded with a Nagra IV-S. All the Fone analog recordings were done with a Nagra as well. I have been using one for more than 20 years for concert hall recordings off a Studer mixer, and the result can be spectacular. No cassette tape recorder can ever hope to match it. If you want a machine mainly for making recordings, this is it. If you want it for playback, you can simply wire the playback head out and use an external preamp. The thing is rugged and indestructible, and spare parts are readily available because they were so widely used. All the TV stations, film studios and radio stations used them. Mine came from the BBC.

 

[adrianywu]

Note the stereo version has 2.75mm heads and ruby tape guides.

 

[astrotoy]

I think the Nagra IV-S may be more than what Rex is interested in paying. How much are they going for these days? Thanks, Larry

 

[Kingrex]

I do have a budget Larry. Not sure what it is. Maybe $4k???

Thank you Adrian. I think your noting what might work for me. Even a 7" tape would let me play my favorites over and over without worry. NAGARA wrote me back. All they said in broken English was 3 month wait. I wrote back and asked the price. We shall see.

WRP, Im not a digital fan. I mean I am. I love my streaming. But digital is my weakest source. I would always be limited by my DAC and server. And why waste my money on tape to listen to digital files of the tape. It makes no sense to me. I'm sure you can laud over how good the transfers are. but in the end, I may as well stream. IMO. Its not like I have any tapes that are not already readily available on vinyl or Qobuz.

If anything, I would want to go the other way. Make some mix of a few records. Sometimes I like to shake it up. Variety. Some albums are not well thought out in song placement. Its not like every band cut a Dark Side Of The Moon.

 

[adrianywu]

I do have a budget Larry. Not sure what it is. Maybe $4k???

Thank you Adrian. I think your noting what might work for me. Even a 7" tape would let me play my favorites over and over without worry. NAGARA wrote me back. All they said in broken English was 3 month wait. I wrote back and asked the price. We shall see.

WRP, Im not a digital fan. I mean I am. I love my streaming. But digital is my weakest source. I would always be limited by my DAC and server. And why waste my money on tape to listen to digital files of the tape. It makes no sense to me. I'm sure you can laud over how good the transfers are. but in the end, I may as well stream. IMO. Its not like I have any tapes that are not already readily available on vinyl or Qobuz.

If anything, I would want to go the other way. Make some mix of a few records. Sometimes I like to shake it up. Variety. Some albums are not well thought out in song placement. Its not like every band cut a Dark Side Of The Moon.

Yes, please get back to us about the price. I would be interested to find out. There should be many of these floating around, but it is a risk to buy from someone unknown. I sent mine back to Nagra for a major service about 5 years ago, with new heads and belts installed. I think they charged me less than 1000 CHF.

 

[Foxbat]

Before committing to that purchase, I would recommend trying it in action. You may or may not like its function, it is not everyone's cup of tea.

Personally... I love Nagras, I have several, but I would never have it as my main machine.

 

[rbbert]

I don’t have a huge tape collection, but many of the albums I have are specifically because they have much better mastering than any commercial digital release. A 2x DSD (128f) transfer of one of those albums is going to sound noticeably better than anything you can stream (there is not much, if any, 2x DSD streaming). I know that doesn’t directly answer your question but it is something you should consider. You should also consider that my tape playback sound is (essentially) identical to yours, so I know the sound quality of your source.

 

[rbbert]

It is a bit over your budget, but if you are willing to go to $4k why not spend a little more and get a lower end Studer? Then you have a deck with both better record and playback capabilities than your Otari…

 

[Kingrex]

$19,500

 

[rbbert]

Within the last year there have been a few reconditioned Studer A-80's offered (but now sold?) in the $5k-$8k range, including one from a poster at AudioNirvana which may still be available?

 

[Kingrex]

I'm going to crawl back in my hole and give up on messing with tape duplication. Way way to expensive. Way to large and cumberson equipment.

If this guy makes a double speed Nak BX300, I will send mine in for an upgrade.

If a IV-S pops up for a good price, who knows. Otherwise it feels its a bit of a pipe dream. Sometimes your just late to the party and everyone has gone home.

 

[Foxbat]

I would buy a nice PR-99 for maybe $3K and live happily.

 

[Rekmeyata]

I went to a store wth a friend shopping reel to reel decks. As a demo of why tape is so great, the owner takes a crappy cd player and uses the disc as a source to the tape deck. He records onto the tape and then flips the source switch back and forth between the cd and what has been recorded and is playing back from the tape. The owner is so smitten with himself. Listen to the difference. Hear how full the tape is. How rich the music sounds compared to the cd. I did not want to call the owner to the matt, but I sure told my friend, thats messed up. My belief would be a tape copy should be indistinguishable from the cd. Not the tape is bloated with artificial distortions, eq bands boosted. In general it was as if a loudness switch was flipped.

If this is truely what happens every time you dub a tape, how many levels would you have to go before the whole of the recorded media were not a compounded pile of mush and totally inaccurate to what was originally captured. If that is what tape does, I can see why no studio would want to use it. Digital is much more pure to each dub. It appears as if tape adds large, very audible amounts of incorrect, innaccurate additiona, not in the source noise to every level of the copy chain.

Am I wrong??? This guy swore up and down his cd player was direct to the tape with no processing. 15ips with a fairly new quality tape. View attachment 73079

You cannot take a CD, record it onto any type of other media, and make it better than the original source, so the owner of the store did some BS crap to sell the tape deck. The best thing that would happen is that the tape would sound identical to the CD if everything else was equal. You cannot make a better recording of an original source because the information on the CD is not there to make that happen.

Now what I will tell you all is this. I knew a guy who had a professional recording studio, when requested by a singer or a band to record a master in both analog and digital, thus there was a master tape and a master CD, the tape always sounded far superior to the CD. One of the reasons a prerecorded tape that was recorded from a master sound so good is because it is a true 2 track recording media, you have a separate track for the R channel and a separate track for the L, with CD and vinyl they artificially separate the channels.

It is true that reel to reel tape machines are making a comeback, but to get the sound that you want from it you have buy prerecorded tapes that were recorded from analog master tape, otherwise you're wasting your money. Those prerecorded tapes are also making a comeback and can be found on the internet, howbeit in limited performances at this time, but more "should" slowly become available.