Why no interest in reel to reel if you're looking for the ultimate sound?

I kind of foolishly fancied that Abbey Road would have used something like a top quality Studer (certainly in the back half of the 60s) but no. Apparently they used a British design instead - the BTR3 (British Tape Recorder 3) to record most of their seminal albums.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Tape_Recorder

I also recall a quaint story I heard about when Sinatra came to record in London in the early 60s (I think it must have been the 1962 Sinatra Sings Great Songs From Great Britain/ CTS Studios). 

Legend has it that he was so unimpressed with the technology available that he had an Ampex tape deck and operator specially flown over for the occasion!

Perhaps some fan of Ol Blue Eyes can fill in the details. In any case these mastertapes are still the best source of this priceless music that we have.

To have a first or even second generation copy of a favourite album...

I used to wish that tape would become mainstream but it hasn't happened - yet.

Every account I read or heard about stated the vast gulf between the original tape and the end consumer playback medium eg CD, vinyl, cassette etc.

Even artists such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young went on record to say what they heard on studio playback bore little resemblance to what was sold to the consumer.

Alas, the industry politics deemed it unwise to offer the consumer such a high quality format for whatever reason, but I'm guessing plagiarism must have been one, and sheer inconvenience must have been another. 

Oh well, perhaps one day digital will finally grow up and fully take its place.

topoxforddoc,

"I can testify to that, having archived many 15IPS master tapes in my collection in a straight zero level transfer with a professional Prism Sound A2D converter. The digital file sounds pretty much indistinguishable."


Wow, is digital really that close to capturing original studio sound quality? Can you do level transfers for those tapes that were intended for vinyl?

Do you think this would also be the case for 30IPS recordings? A lot of questions I know, but the closest I ever got to play with something like a Studer was to walk past one parked outside the studio where I did some voluntary work.


"The problem is that many modern digital files are not just transferred, but remastered from the tape, and are often made worse. This is particularly true if compression is added after the transfer to make the sound "better" on a phone, rather than on an audio system."


Yes, and it’s these remastering alterations that usually cause the headaches for some of us audiophiles.

There seem to be an awful lot of problems preventing what was recorded (on tape destined for vinyl) to make its way to digital with the same end result. In a perfect world a CD/download would be (could be?) an identical copy of the original vinyl release without any of its issues.

Yet this seems to be beyond the efforts (or most likely wishes = $$) of all those involved.

A good case in point, amongst far too many to mention, has been the failure to deliver a copy of the classic The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society album that would make us forget all previous releases.

Or maybe I’m getting all this remastering business confused by assuming it’s intended for those in pursuit of a better sound.

Obviously, despite what they may suggest, it isn’t is it?

rauliruegas, orpheus10,

Interesting exchanges going on there. Ultimately I think you’re both right!

Digital is measurably better than analogue by any known yardstick, and ss amps distort way less than tube ones.

Yet for all its superiority digital has failed to win the hearts of audiophiles worldwide. For whatever reason it has not been able to establish itself as a perfected version of analogue. Certainly not with audiophiles.

This suggests one of two things, either it isn’t better than analogue in the areas it matters most, or we still don’t know how (or can’t be bothered) to get the best out of it. I strongly suspect it’s the latter, especially reading the first hand testimony of earlier posters such as topoxforddoc. The accuracy of digital is not in dispute but the implementation certainly is.

Perhaps it’s because of this industry inability (or sheer unwillingness) to maximise the implementation of digital, (prob due to a lack of correlation between fidelity and profit) many audiophiles might still prefer the impressionistic tone of analogue and tube amps to the photo clarity of digital.

Maybe it’s because that even a precise snapshot will always fall short of the real thing, whereas an impressionist depiction might get the essentials right, some prefer the latter.

Same goes for r2r. It’s the big brother of the cassette deck and the daddy of all pre 80s vinyl. Analogue at its finest.

Digital recording must be better
intrinsically as all the evidence suggests, but it just hasn’t proved it yet, not on a mass scale. In fact you could argue that most modern recordings are themselves only an impressionistic attempt to create a palateable musical concoction with zero effort towards capturing anything like an accurate audio snapshot of an event. Case in point, the Giles Martin Beatles remixes/reimaginings of those 50+ year old recordings.

This sort of audio trickery started with mono but really took off as we moved into 4 track and beyond. Today almost all digital content is recorded, or shall we say assembled, in this manner.

So unless the recording industry begins to take digital recording seriously again (ie higher fidelity as opposed to merely a different means of concoction) on a large scale, there’s no risk of r2r, vinyl or tube amps disappearing anytime soon yet.

roberttdid,

"This is why Bob Carver was able to modify a somewhat low cost amplifier to be sonically indistinguishable from an expensive amplifier. He matched the transfer functions of the two amplifiers with the real speaker loads."


A seminal moment in the history of high end audio.

Many, much like Dr Zaius in the celebrated 1968 classic Planet of the Apes movie, would wish they could bury any evidence of this (and much more) so as to not disturb the paradigm that is in their interest to push.

roberttdid,

"Hello fuses, my old friend.
Geoff has come to talk to you again.
Because an electron softly creeping
Induced a field while he was sleeping.
And the direction, that was planted in his brain
Still remains
Outside the bounds of science

 

With his Walkman he walked alone
Through narrow hallways he calls home
Neath the halo of the directional camp
He dreams of cables but he has no amp
And his eyes were stabbed by scattered laser light
That CD wasn’t right
It was outside the bounds of science

 

And in the audio forums there he saw
Ten thousand “philes”, maybe more
“Philes” posting without considering
That $15 for a $3 spring is price gouging
“Philies” buying things, without even a care
Because no one dared
To question the bounds of science

 

Robert said, ah you do not know
Geoffkait’s posts, like a cancer grow
Read his words that fail to teach you
Collected thoughts designed to mislead you
Because his words, like a teleportation tweak fail
Or magic pebbles that are on sale
Are outside the bounds of science"


Simply awesome. Difficult to suggest any improvements in lyric or scansion. Geoffkait should indeed be honoured by that loving tribute.

As Geoff seems to be not only a leading light here but also for the vanguard of alt/fringe audio community, perhaps he could use this as an intro when he finally steps up and embarks on an online head to head with his polar nemesis, Ethan Winer. 

Ethan seems to be the modern incarnation of the audio critic himself, the late great Peter Aczel, whilst Geoff seems determined to follow in the shoes of his hero, Peter W Belt.

That would be very much worth seeing.
I'd like to also think that Paul Simon would have no objections.