The Great Consumer Heist

[JRhoBurton]

It's all good. I started with R2R in college to overdub myself on guitar, got into factory recorded tapes later. A good Barclay-Crocker dbx tape sounds really nice. I'm hanging in there with R2R as long as I can. Heart like a reel.

I rode the CD wave happily, great format. Nowadays I might play, in the course of a Saturday, FM (I do a lot of that), a CD, vinyl, cassette, R2R, 320k mp3 intenet stream. Might be jazz, classical, rock, bagpipes (if my son is home on leave from the army, he likes that).

Specialization is for insects.

John

 

[jwmacnj]

I agree with most of what has already been said in support of the CD format and digital formats in general, not that I can't appreciate a quality analog signal. Let's face it the recording companies sold a lot of crap in both digital and analog.

 

[rcspkramp]

I stopped using R2R because it was a giant pain the ass. I had three different Revox models and a nice Teac. Too much trouble.

 

[hjames]

I would agree as well ... some Redbook CD's I've owned sound exceptional ... it's just damn shame it's the exception rather than the rule.

Kind of reminds me of a Football game where one team has all the stats on their side and still end up loosing the game that should not have even been close

Or the beta-VHS war - the visually superior medium lost ... oops!

 

[Condorsat]

Or the beta-VHS war - the visual superior medium lost ... oops!

True that ... but the Compact Disc format won ... the point is that "technically" the format should have wiped the floor w/ the LP. Based on my experience ... it was a wash ... many of my LP's sound better than CD & vice versa.

Two points ...

... If I do a needle drop to CDR ... it sounds fantastic.
... Many of my best sounding Classic Rock original vinyl albums sound great on re-issued Redbook CD as well ... provided the mastering engineer did not re-master the album to sound "modern" ... aka loudness wars.

Over the years .... I've come to the belief that "well recorded albums/music" are just that ... a well recorded album can potentially sound good on any format IMHO.

 

[cscottrun4it]

Wow, guys. Sorry to have left this excellent thread abandoned. I had some health issues, but those are corrected now.

Not to start the debate again, but...

1. I get the cost of reel to reel decks as being a barrier to entry, but let's compare that to the turntable. The Thorens TD 124 COST $99 in1961. This translates to -$800 today. The turntable did not come with a tonearm. The Thorens TP 14 tonearm was advertised as £22 in 1963, which translates into ~$500 in today's dollar. The buyer probably still had to buy a cartridge. A Shure M3D, Ortofone SPU AND SL15, Gerrard TPA 12, Decca London Configuration, and Variluctance Phono Cartridge seem to be models commonly recomended. I have no idea what these might have cost, but let's guess $10 to $15 in 1963, or ~$75 to $100 in today's dollars. After shelling out over $1,300, probably more given the modern cost of Thorens materials and the filty cost for high-quality manufacturing in today's marketplace, it's hard for me to consider a very good turntable "cheap." However, I understand that reel to reel decks cost, in the mid 19602, somewhere between $150 (~$1,000 in 2015 dollars) and $500 (~$3,600 in 2015 dollars), which, as one poster above points out, are rather startling costs. However, I know many audiophiles who have spent well over $3,600 for their turntables, tonearms, and cartridges. I'm guessing audiophiles in 1965 were no different.
2. Its so difficult to compare LP, CD, and reel to reel sound quality. All things being equal in terms of the quality of the units' playback, reel to reel decks required the user to select a good recording on good tape and then thread the tape correctly. Of course, the deck's heads had to be demagnitized once in a blue mood. For his turntable, the user still had to select a well recorded LP on good vinyl, but he also had to clean the LP and stylus before each listening. Further, he had to ensure correct playback speed, replace styli and turntable belts, and worry about footfall and other vibrations for top performance of his turntable. Then, the components of his table, the tonearm, cartridge, platter, motor, etc., all must work well together. However, for his CD deck, he first had to buy a unit that could convert digital information to a warm, analog sound ($$$), find well recorded CDs (easier said than done), and then sit back and enjoy himself.
3. Does CD sound better than a turntable or a reel to reel? I don't think so, but CD decks were/are generally cheaper than reel to reels ever were (I think I bought a fairly good Denon CD deck for ~$300 back in the day.) They were devilishly easy to play, just about like a cassette tape. And any idiot could hear his CDS playing cleaner than records with all the effort of plugging the unit in.

All in all, I have to say I think LPs are very capable of sounding as clean as a CD. If the stylus is kept clean (and replaced when worn), the cartridge is properly aligned, the record is kept clean and static free, and the belt replaced every 5 to 8 years, an LP can really sing, even on a midling table.

However, in 1985, when the CD started to take hold, finding a stylus the equivalent of today's JISCO SAS required you to know the equivalent of a high end coke dealer. Protractors for aligning your cartridges were just about as hard to find. The quality of LP pressings was dropping as fast as interest rates were rising. For most, including me, the LP was doomed as soon as CDs became financially available.

But what's a guy to do? If you care about sound, you're gonna do what you can to get the best quality your finances will allow. In my case, I own a better than average, well maintained turntable, a very good, albeit old, CD deck, and a better than average reel to reel deck. The sound quality? I'd rank them this way: the reel to reel is best when it is playing at least 7.5 rps recordings on good tape, and the CD deck and my turntable are about equal, not because of snap, crackle, and pops on the table, but because the CD deck was about $1,500 when sold to someone in 1986 (it's a top-end Marantz) and the turntable was about $300 when it was sold to a family friend in 1979. (I got the CD deck at Goodwill for $10 - my best score of all time.)

And Condorsat, you are so right - good recordings sound good on almost any medium. I say almost because I have never heard a good cassette unless I made it.

 

[Condorsat]

And Condorsat, you are so right - good recordings sound good on almost any medium. I say almost because I have never heard a good cassette unless I made it.

If I had not heard the Nakamichi Dragon Cassette deck back in 1985 ... I would have to agree with you.
Good grief that deck was jaw dropping good ... even on consumer pre recorded tapes.
.

 

[petehall347]

must admit i have a fairly modern teac mini system that plays tapes real good even without Dolby .never been a fan of Dolby as it happens anyway . it always sounds muffled to me .

 

[kirk57]

However, in 1985, when the CD started to take hold, finding a stylus the equivalent of today's JISCO SAS required you to know the equivalent of a high end coke dealer.

Protractors for aligning your cartridges were just about as hard to find.

I think you may be overstating the case a bit here. There were plenty of cartridges available in 1985 with Shibata, Hypereliptical, VanDel hull and other sophisticated shapes in 1985, and most were under $200. In the moving coil area, there was always the Denon 103D. The DBX protractor I bought in 1985 via mail order and I still have it.

As far as sound quality, even at 7.5 IPS, I don't see how R2R sounds better than the source it's recorded from. Which for most people would have been an LP.

IMO, R2R decks did have two advantages: they were great for parties where they could run for very long periods without interruption (and impaired guests wouldn't trash your turntable) and they looked cool, especially with 10" reels.

 

[Blue Shadow]

Wow what an interesting bunch of ideas. Maybe when I'm I front of a keyboard, I'll throw a couple cents into this.

 

[luddite]

My TEAC tape deck got little use because it was too hard to find the track I wanted to hear on a four hour reel. You need to be organized to use one. Like writing down the footage point on every track. Who did that?

 

[cscottrun4it]

Kirk57, I completely agree with you. In the 1980s, lots of gr e at carts were around, as they were in the 1960s and late 1950s. The trick was, how was I, a recent high school grad, supposed to find out about the VanDel? I could read hi-if magazines, talk to my local audio store salesman, get a recommendation from a friend, those toes of things. I was willing to do the last two as a high school senior. My Dad was willing to do none of them, likely. He had bought a Pioneer turntable with a Shure M91ED, all of which the salesman had told him would sound good with his Marantz (which he bought because it had FM Dolby - arg!). Well, it sounded like an ill-set up Pioneer with a great integrated, aa not that good.

My Dad was like most people: he wanted reasonable sound with minimal hassle. He wasn't you or me, or any of us on Audiokarma. At the time, of course, there was no Audiokarma, and he was darn sure not reading audio magazines. (The occasional Playboy maybe, but it was just for the articles.)

The CD was the answer to all "Dads" requirements: no hassle with good sound quality you could dance to without the usual footfalls. And to get one, he could go talk to the same salesman who didn't teach him to properly setup his Pioneer and this time it didn't matter. The CD player was plug and play!

And maybe that's the great consumer heist. The uneducated consumer will buy almost any slop thrown his/her way and feel good about it as long as someone whom s/he perceives as his/her better says it's better. It worked on my Dad. It worked on my friends' dads. It worked on me.

I loved his ill-setup Pioneet turntable, which became mine, and when the suspension broke during a shipping incident, I put pennies under the broken spring and went right on loving it until I bought a CD deck right after I graduated from college.

And things really haven't changed that much. Even in the world of consumers passionately trying to educate themselves on sites like Audiokarma, we all get suckered. Audio-reporter X says the latest Rube Goldberg XTC-39 turntable has the flattest response with the most detailed bass he had ever heard - the highs are slightly rolled off but that might have been because of the Hubbard Sciencephonics Gold E cartridge. We all pick up our ears and start posting about it. The myth grows so some of us shell out $4k for the Goldberg XTC-39, but we find out its not the Sciencephonics cart. Maybe it's the tonearm? So we go get known-to-be-good SME and Ortofone tonearms, and we listen, waiting for gold.

I've never shelled out $4k for a turntable, let alone a cartridge. Does that make me any better than those that have? Nope.

I've shelled out $1k for 10 turntables, 4 of which have made me handy at fixing turntables, and three of which were horrid on my at-the-time system. All of the turntables I bought had some group of people singing their praises on Audiokarma, or similar sites. I figured, being new to the vintage audio game, these guys would know. And they probably did... for their systems at that moment. You all were my Audio Reporter X!

But along the way, I've learned a lot, mostly thanks to the people here. Now I know how to set up a table, clean pots, replace bulbs, even do some elementary soldering. I also know I don't always have to do soldering - audio circuit boards have elements that let you make subtle adjustments to the components. I even typically know when someone is spouting dogma and when someone is saying his/her truth.

But I still believe, when reel to reel decks were priced too high and it was difficult to get good prerecorded tapes (or even good tape at all), it was a consumer heist, just like the CD was in the early 1980s. Good 7.5 ips recordings are just flat out superior to any other analog medium. If Capital Records could produce LPs for 1/8th the cost of open-faced tapes, of course the RTR deck was doomed. If Sony could produced CDs for 2/3rd the cost of an LP, of course the LP was doomed. With Spotify ruling the landscape, we have become the current, best hope for Sony, as a label and producers of largely crappy music, continuing to matter in the least.

Buy vintage or independent, gentle folk. We'll have our revenge for the reel to reel yet!

 

[asilker]

Cool discussion. There was an article somewhere recently where the author said tapes were going to become the "new vinyl resurgence" or some such:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/5/9409563/reel-to-reel-tape-retro-audio-trend

Written authoritatively with some sexy clean marketing, but by the end of the article I still did not consider springing for a deck.

Sorry, perhaps that sounds negative. It does look like a cool format, but the cost is just prohibitive.

Notably, many studios record digitally. You an acquire exact copies of those files through vendors like HD Tracks and run them through a high quality DAC. As I understand it, the draw of the R2R tape is having an exact copy of the studio master tape. Well in the digital age, you can own the 24/192 file as simply as copy-paste

 

[Alobar]

In the 70's my Teac R2R was used basically like the original "playlist" for parties when I would be far too wasted to deal with any turntable. Nothing rivaled that function until my first 5 cd platter arrived but my partying days were more or less behind me by then. Now the pc and 1 terabyte hd can play music for days on end! I would have killed to have that in 1974!

 

[DEAFASABAT]

Also it's too bad the Elcassette never became widespread in popularity and therefore more affordable. With its high precision carts and 3 1/2 IPS speed it had potential for more audiophile-level sonic quality than the the Phillips dictation machine systems carts which the standard cassette evolved from.

The Elcassete physical medium does live on as a telemetry data recording/playback system, although recorded with PCM encoding. For its convenience factor. Tandberg was one manufacturer and a few more obscure instrumentation equipment outfits as well.

 

[Salar]

Reel to Reel wa very fascinting to me, my parents bought an Akai around 1971, is still running -
but not as confortable as CD, Tape, LP

 

[bshorey]

Surely you jest.

It was a big, expensive format, used on big, expensive machines. It was no secret to me that R2R exceeded everything else back in the day in terms of sound quality, but not by enough to overcome the cost and format issues. And that's before you even start to think about taking things mobile..

You've got 1000 lps, and 1000 cds, now imagine trying to store 1000 R2Rs? That format is even more heat sensitive than vinyl.

bs

 

[131east23]

Most of the CD's I bought through the 80's/early 90's sound good. The best sounding CD's seem to be early where someone just recorded the master tapes and let it ride OR later someone (like Beck) takes special interest in doing it right. I love my records, but I always thought the CD was the best format, the one with the best potential. Now they are just flea market junk to most people. I still haven't bought into streaming music and refuse to store anything in the cloud. Just a bias of mine. The best thing I have going for me is the local FM Jazz station. They play jazz like AOR stations used to play rock in the 70's - freeform. Without the local Jazz station I would be totally dependent on my own collection, which would be ok.

I think most mediums suffer when you throw in the convenience factor. Right now it's just easier to stream the music you want to hear.

 

[4-2-7]

I don't like tape hiss myself, but I wonder if these hiss at all to compete with high end tables.

$1,000,000 The World's Greatest Audio Systems and United Home Audio tape decks

World's Greatest Audio Systems- Rockitman, Wilson, Pass Labs, TechDAS, UHA Phase 12

 

[Ken Boyd]

For me tape hiss was the problem, just ruined the high end. And for me this is one reason I still like vinyl over CD's as I like the way the high frequencies are reproduced using vinyl over other mediums. For low end both Tape and CD's out perform the vinyl but given the choices I like the details and nuances better than the foundation. The CD is pretty good though in my mind much better than the tape, but as with vinyl it is hypnotic to watch that tape reel spin why you heads in another place listening to your favorite tunes.