Why are many people getting into expensive R2R ownership?

[phantomrebel]

No one has mentioned they can also be used to record live music and or create & produce music with dubbing on multiple tracks. Not as many tracks or as easy or efficient as digital but it hones your skills, it sure is a lot of fun and you get analog playback to boot. Back in the mid- 70's we spent a lot of time in the basement of a lake house with a brand new Teac 3340, a Mini-Moog, drums, guitars, and any instruments anyone wanted to bring over. Upstairs we played back our creations on a high end Quad system with of course the then all-the-rage JBL Century 100's. Boy, that was a fun time. We were 16 & 17, wild, creative, naive, and discovering Floyd, ELP, King Crimson, Strawbs, Hawkwind, etc. Like I said, it was the 70's, so you can imagine. Reel-to-reels are for making great memories.

Ahh, the good old days. That brings back similar memories, including times we'd make joke tapes for prank calls. Quad systems also have a nostalgic place in my heart! First reel deck I ever saw was at a friends father's home studio. He was a producer in NYC. I don't even remember what brand it was, just was in awe of the reels spinning. We had some fun with the equipment there though. I can actually still remember the particular smell of all the electronics running.

 

[Skylab]

All I can say is this...I’m far from the only person that started off with one R2R and one tape...and now I have 8 decks and hundreds of tapes...happens that way a lot, and for plenty of good reasons.

 

[meggy]

Wasn't Pet Sounds made with an Ampex 3-track?

 

[4-2-7]

Anyone ever hear this before?





I haven't yet, but will shortly.

 

[Skylab]

Wasn't Pet Sounds made with an Ampex 3-track?

No, although it was a combo of 4-track and 8-track pro reel decks. The commercial reel to reel of Pet Sounds remains the best sounding version available, IMO, though.

 

[Skylab]

Anyone ever hear this before?

I haven't yet, but will shortly.

Nice! I have several dozen live broadcast reels from Westwood One like that...The Cars, Elton John, Moody Blues, Robert Plant, Doobie Brothers, King Crimson, Van Halen, Grateful Dead, ELP, Blues Traveler, Ozzy, just off the top of my head...all incredible sounding live concert reels that as you point out very few people have ever heard, unless they listened to the original broadcasts back in the 70’s/80’s...

 

[phantomrebel]

That reminds me of another reel advantage: all the tapes out there made for broadcast radio. It's a lot of fun to collect and listen to these. Besides the live recordings, interviews, and playlists, there are the series like King Biscuit Flower Hour and Dr. Demento Show that can be found on reels. I once picked up a very large lot of 10.5" radio tapes from a radio station that was shutting down, unfortunately it was all Strings "Muzak" (from SRP). But the damn tapes were high quality.

 

[4-2-7]

Nice! I have several dozen live broadcast reels from Westwood One like that...

That reminds me of another reel advantage: all the tapes out there made for broadcast radio.

I should be using my other wasted no good piece recording gear, a Marantz PMD580.


Instead of recording room sound with my iPhone, I can record directly to 24bit WAV files so others can listen with great SQ online. I just need to learn how to put audio and a photo on Youtube, like this.

 

[4-2-7]

The Cars, Elton John, Moody Blues, Robert Plant, Doobie Brothers, King Crimson, Van Halen, Grateful Dead, ELP, Blues Traveler, Ozzy, just off the top of my head...all incredible sounding live concert reels

We should do some tape swapping, at least for a listen if not out right trading.

 

[4-2-7]

BTW, I know the Westwood One tapes I have are really rare. These where made between 91-93, a radio station at this short period had media options of Records, Tapes and CDs. Hardly any stations had Tape decks anymore even if they still had a turntable. At this time by far where orders of CDs. I don't know where I read it but Westwood one stopped making tapes in the early 80s. However for some reason they started up from 90-93 and quickly abandoned it again never to go back to them.

 

[phantomrebel]

So glad these tapes are being preserved and enjoyed. Reminds me of the event happening this Friday, when John Coltrane's lost album "Both Directions at Once" is released (just got my email order confirmation so on my mind). The studio master tape from this session was thrown out by Impulse Records to make room. Fortunately, John had a 1/4" copy to play at home that his wife kept. Without this simple copy, the music would have been lost forever, yet now, as Sonny Rollins put it, we get to discover a new room in the Great Pyramid.

 

[N8Nagel]

We should do some tape swapping, at least for a listen if not out right trading.

View attachment 1222193 View attachment 1222194 View attachment 1222195

You all owe it to posterity to digitize that stuff. I'd volunteer except I'm a complete idiot in that regard; I've got as far as ripping CDs but that's about it.

 

[TheNLOwner]

Instead of recording room sound with my iPhone, I can record directly to 24bit WAV files so others can listen with great SQ online. I just need to learn how to put audio and a photo on Youtube, like this.

YouTube compresses the audio to 256Kb/s AAC, at 16-bit sampling rate. It has a distinct frequency rolloff at around 16KHz as well, making it seem as if the sampling rate is something as paltry as 32KHz. Uploading hi-res audio, or any audio at that, for listeners to judge, is a waste of time, as it just ends up being compressed, low bitrate, low bitdepth, and low sample rate, AAC audio.

 

[safebet]

Fun. A hobby.

 

[4-2-7]

YouTube compresses the audio to 256Kb/s AAC, at 16-bit sampling rate.

You should have a look around on Youtube, it has lots of 24 bit rate files in WAV, Flac, Lossless, etcetera, now.

Uploading hi-res audio, or any audio at that, for listeners to judge, is a waste of time,

Well I wouldn't be posting it for anyone to judge, but to have something to listen to. My main statement was talking about my vid I posted using a iPhone and recording the room. I can do better that that with the equipment I have.

 

[phantomrebel]

My understanding (revealed in Andrew Scheps lecture at Google) was that the higher resolution the video uploaded, the higher the resolution of the accompanying audio on Youtube. That's why people just put a 1080p video of an album cover up with their audio files. Up to 192 kbps?

 

[Skylab]

Also, just for the record, there are 3 companies currently making and selling brand new reel recording tape: Mulann Industries/Recording The Masters, ATR Magnetcis, and Splicit/Capture. All three make both 1 mil and 1.5 mil versions, and RTM has several different versions with different bias characteristics. Neither rare or particularly expensive, given what they are.

And if one wants to do the cheap route just to make mix tapes, one can easily buy incredibly durable used Ampex 631/641 for under $5 per 7” reel.

 

[4-2-7]

And if one wants to do the cheap route just to make mix tapes, one can easily buy incredibly durable used Ampex 631/641 for under $5 per 7” reel.

I used to have three Sansui SD5050 quad decks, that where very well built and inexpensive, under $200 each. I would then go on the bay and look for used home recorded tapes that people where selling for the tape only. I would mainly look for stuff like BASF library box, 7" reels on 1800ft. Then get music I liked and tons of stuff thats hard to find the record of today.

People buying tape like this 40 years ago where also good at recording. They would have recorded the 40 year old record when it was new and these tapes lasted the time. 99% of the time I got good tape and recording of three records on one tape, or a mix. I didn't have to have the record or do all the work, just put a tape on and listen for three hours.

I ended up selling all those decks and 100s of tapes to go higher end and faster tape speed. In retrospect I wish I didn't do it. While I can have better SQ and higher speed, I lost all the music and the convenience of tape being able to be played for hours.

 

[judsonw]

Why? Because sometimes I want a format that is even more inconvenient than vinyl.

Actually, I got interested in high school (early 2000s) when my dad was going to get rid of his Teac A-2300SD. I stopped him from giving it away by putting it in my system in my bedroom. I also got his 30-40 reels, most of them bootlegs of radio broadcasts or albums from the 70s. So I have a decent amount of things to listen to.

Then I went to university and traveled a lot and the Teac was left in the garage for about a decade before I picked it up again, cleaned it up, and put it back in my system. Still plays wonderfully, though the few small test recordings I tried showed I need to do some work still.

 

[phantomrebel]

Yes, definitely a hobby. The beauty of this format for hobbyists is that one can be very happy with a $100 deck and a bunch of old Scotch tapes recorded by someone in the past or they can take it all the way to a $20K new Ballfinger, modified Studer or UHA deck and play only $450 Tape Project tapes (or $850 for others). Similar to turntables in that there is always room to upgrade whereas the ceiling for cassettes and 8-tracks is reached much sooner. Then there are all the variations in tape width and track number one can experiment with. It's a tweakers playground. Then there's the whole mystery tape fun when you take a chance on some old unlabeled recordings and they turn out to be lost gold. Original studio recordings on reel tape are still out there to be found. I know this feeling first-hand.