Reel to reel sound quality vs. vinyl..What do they mean?

[Bkkersey93]

When vinyl was king, tape was used to record the song and for mastering.

It then got transferred to vinyl.

So yes reel to reel tape is at least as good as vinyl, well the master tape is.

Home recorded tapes may or may not be. Professionally released tapes can be if recorded properly and the duplicator was in proper operating order and a good quality tape was used.

I wouldnt doubt with any of my mind that R2R is at least as good as vinyl. I just call BS on the claim that it sounds "better" than vinyl when there are a million different determining factors across the board.

 

[FluxT]

Interestingly, I have a pre-recorded 2-track reel-to-reel from the late '50s (Leopold Stokowski-"Landmarks of a Distinguished Career") that I swear has some audible vinyl artifacts in the recording. You can hear what sounds like a needle being cued, a couple pops, and even what sounds like inner-groove distortion at the end of the tape. There's one track on the tape that is absent from the LP release, which happens to be on the end of side 1 on the LP. It certainly seems like an official Collumbia tape, but there's also no Discogs entry for it.

LP dub or not, even on my 4-track Akai it sounds fantastic.

 

[FONSguy]

Sheffield Direct to Disk LP's DO sound better than tape.

 

[damacman]

Sheffield Direct to Disk LP's DO sound better than tape.

Yeah, but how about when recorded to tape at 15ips?

 

[FONSguy]

Sheffield labs recorded off the board at 30 IPS which became the source of the CD's.