Tape Deck Owners: What % of your time do you listen to TAPE, DIGITAL or VINYL?

[earlinarizona]

I think this would be interesting to all of us.

 

[Bruce B]

Tape 60
Digital 30
Vinyl 10

 

[dminches]

tape 30; vinyl 40; digital 30

 

[Eichenbaum]

Tape 50 digital 30 vinyl 20

 

[dcc]

Tape 30
Digital 10
Vinyl 60

 

[Mike Lavigne]

digital--70
vinyl--25
tape--5

but i do listen in a dedicated way 30-35 hours a week. so 5% is still hours of tape a week. and much of my digital is multi-tasking of some sort (reading/web surfing).

 

[Audiophile Bill]

Tape 70, vinyl 30

 

[rbbert]

tape 20, digital 80, LP 0

 

[Alrainbow]

I do mostly digital
so say 60%
vinyl 30 %
10% tape
but a good question would be also in what order
to me I don’t like changing formats in a back and forth manner
once I go to another it stays
no matter what lol i do it have heard there all too different
and I have yet to hear any digital to replace good sourced and setup analog
sorry if I’m offending

 

[wisnon]

tape =0 (no tape infra)
vinyl =50
Digital = 50.

 

[astrotoy]

tape-80
digital-20

 

[Pacha]

Tape 50%
Vinyl 50%
Digital 0%

 

[adrianywu]

Tape 80%
Vinyl 20%

 

[LeftToMyOwnAudioDevices]

Tape 90%
Digital downloads (at least 560kbps) 10%

Always had reel to reel in the house since growing up hearing my father's system (40+ years'-ago). Never cared for the thin artificiality of "vinyl sound" and always thought cassette, for example, was only for convenience usage.

 

[gds7368]

Tape 90%
Digital downloads (at least 560kbps) 10%

Always had reel to reel in the house since growing up hearing my father's system (40+ years'-ago). Never cared for the thin artificiality of "vinyl sound" and always thought cassette, for example, was only for convenience usage.

Have you listened to much 40 year old tape? Or many of the same tape many, many times?

I ask because I'm on the fence regarding obtaining R2R ... and I wonder if there is sound degradation over time if I end up listening too many times to a particular tape. I've heard "about 100 times" before a tape begins to degrade in sound. Thoughts?

 

[astrotoy]

I think 100 times max is a good rule of thumb. Opus 3 has limited the duplications of its master tapes to 50 copies. They have to be conservative to prevent wearing them out. Jonathan Horwich may have a comment on that also, since he also offers copies of his master tapes.

I have a large number of 40 year old safety masters which still sound great. I didn't get them new, so they have been played some. Don't know exactly how much. I have made copies of all of them as backups. Most of my tapes come from Tape Project or other commercial sources, people who have pro equipment and various master tapes which they duplicate for sale, and trades from collectors like myself. I have enough tapes that I don't have to play any that many times. However, I've also never been divorced nor collect rare watches, cameras, cars, nor have a yacht.

Larry

 

[rbbert]

Today’s tape formulations are significantly better than those from 40 years ago, so I wonder if data from repeated plays of older tapes from that era applies to the newer tapes?

 

[LeftToMyOwnAudioDevices]

Well....ALWAYS cleaning the tape path *religiously* AND never using an auto-reverse deck (which is NOT a feature of any deck aspiring to be in "semi-pro" or old-school vintage "broadcast-grade" class -just like the pointlessness of a 10 1/2-reel size model lacking 15ips capability- ever came with); has seemed to preserve them well-enough (the earliest being from 1956).

It's the tapes from the '70s, especially, which are more vulnerable to physical degradation. Not just the Ampex, post-1972-ish, 456 formula binder problem 3M copied with their 206 and 212 as well: but, also, lubrication "rot" affecting the Sony PR-150; Scotch 203; and TDK "Super Dynamic" and "Audua" from the '70s era.

 

[rbbert]

I think there are 2 separate (although interrelated) phenomena being discussed. One is the physical problems you mention; the other is the gradual loss of HF with repeated plays, documented with all of the older cassette tape formulations to varying degrees. As mentioned above, the dramatically lower oxide volume of cassette tape will exacerbate the HF loss problem, and I don't know if anyone has tried to quantify this with 1/4" reel tape at 15 ips 2-track. I do know that some of the pre-recorded reels from the '60's would physically deteriorate with repeated plays, but those were often from mediocre tape stock to begin with.

 

[LeftToMyOwnAudioDevices]

The bulk of pre-recorded tape stock from the '60s was Ampex 642 and Scotch 190. The considerations behind using it had more to do with: the equivalent counterpart of an LP side being able (for the most part) to fit on 900ft of tape (at 7 1/2ips) which made a 4" hub low-torque reel look "filled out" (to somewhat justify a tape then-costing $8.95 vs. a $3.98 stereo LP) and, secondly, 1.0mil was a technical compromise to make biasing at ultra-sonic 60ips - 90ips duplicating speeds workable without causing extreme oscillation and sibilance in the output signal (because the bias frequency involved in the duplication would have to be six times that of the recording speed and wind up in Mhz territory).

I have never seen in the wild 1960s-era "professional grade" recording tape on 7" reels consumers may have had access to (like the way Maxell proliferated in the '70s). So(?), it may have been such a matter of cost-analysis involved at the time (by U.S. brands) that it would not have been "over-the-counter" sold to the general public anyway.