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

I did some recording at 15 IPS and considered it to be a waste of tape for recording LP's; 7 1/2 is quite sufficient.

As much as we tout R2R, I don't think this is the time for someone new to get in.

@orpheus10 

The point of entry to reel to reel is so much more affordable than getting into vinyl.

For me, the point of entry is getting a machine capable of playing the new 15 IPS master tape dub. A Tascam BR-20, Otari MX5050 BII, or Technics RS-1520 playing an Opus 3 sampler tape would be a good entry point to where the new owner can really appreciate how good tape can sound and superior to many vinyl setups.

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.

For me, it's more about transistors versus tubes as amplification than it is "digital".  The PC can reproduce analog quite well; it's the SS amplification that's my primary problem in reproducing music.

It seems that only a real music lover can hear the difference between SS and tube amplification.