This hobby always ups and downs

I was surprised as i was hoping that an even better front end like the vivaldi dac would bring an even better result from recording to tape, but it looks like my rossini was already above what they could replicate and the vivaldi is atleast 2 steps above that, will be even worse when i get the upsampler on the vivaldi

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What a dilemma :grinning:

Just buy the albums from Qobuz Dunc and get that R2R for when you want to playā€¦

I still covet a Technics RS1500 :flushed:

Itā€™s much cheaper, easier and better quality to do just that now especially as i have a melco that downloads straight too and i have the sublime account that gives nice discounts

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No I hadnā€™t seen Elcaset, however its speed at 9.5cm:s (3.75 ips) is only double that of cassette and still slow. As I indicated, every doubling makes a clearly audible difference - thereā€™s good reason why studio masters run at much higher speeds (30 ips for the mainstream ones, as you noted yourself.) When I had a reel to reel machine, using 1/4ā€ tape, 2-track I only used it on its fastest speed of 7.5 ips except fir special effects, as even 3.75 was noticeably inferior.

If you want the best from R2R then you need either the master or a close master copy, preferably recorded on and played back on one of these - a restored Studer C37;


The one pictured here is at Gearbox Records.

Would I like one? Oh yes pleaseā€¦

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If you record on it some tracks playing from the Vivaldi or another top digital source, will you have the similar level of sound quality?

What would you do that? A waste of valuable tape - better just play from the Vivaldi.

This is the deck you want when you dust off those master tapes or record an actual live performance.

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Having just spoken to a reel to reel guy, he has already told me not to bother with them.
Looks like its keep what i have and just live with it or sell them and forget all about them and just buy them if they disappear from streaming.

Looking at that red deck gives me an awful sense of deja vue from childhoodā€¦.

image

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A machine with possibly the coolest (yet dangerous) feature - the ā€œeditā€ button.

Press this and a tiny pair of motorised scissors appear from the chassis and cut the tape at a 45 degree angle ready for splicing :smiley:

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I understood that Dunc was recording albums on his tape deck, played from his Vivaldi.
@Mitch is doing that too, he shared in a past thread above that. He records his favourite tracks on his R2R , played from the Cd555 or Kuzma turntable.

the only difference is tape speed

Hi Dunc,

In addition to tape speed ( a R2R will move 2, 3 or 4 times faster, depending on the speed setting) the width of the tape is also twice that of a cassette ( if using standard 1/4", much more if using 1/2", 1" or 2").

Best,
Mitch

Thatā€™s the only way to have the original quality. If I were to stream online Iā€™d still keep a good part of my music collection, and buy any new gems, simply because that is the only way to guarantee availability at any time I want to hear, short term and long term.

Otherwise you could invest in a digital recorder, but it seems a bit pointless to me.

Hi mitch thanks.
Youā€™re right about the dragon but the elcaset is very different and a shame it never took off.

The elcaset is twice the width and twice the speed of a compact cassette, providing greater frequency response and dynamic range with lower high-frequency noise than the compact cassette.

So its like a reel to reel but in a more friendly to use cassette case. It just doesnā€™t run as fast.
I guess if it ran at say 7.5 or 15 inch per second you wouldnā€™t get very long on each side off the tape as unlike reel to reel you havenā€™t got 10 inch reels

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So it is 4-track, not as good sound quality as 2 wider tracks (Thereā€™s no such thing as ā€œeach side ā€œ, it is simply two tracks towards one edge of the tape, flip and tge other half width is used. 2 track 1/4ā€ reel to reel has wider tracks, and no ā€œother sideā€. Clearly the Elcaset will be far better than standard musicassette, latter having 4 tracks (two each ā€œsideā€) across half the width, and played at half the speed, but nowhere near serious tape capability.

I think the best reel to reel would be a Studer like in the photo.

I know someone in Scarborough that had two but recently sold one to someone in Hong Kong for Ā£25,000.

Although having said what would be the best and most expensive I went to a HiFi show a couple of years ago and one room was using a Reel to Reel that had cost about Ā£400 and it sounded fantastic, I spent nearly all afternoon in that room.

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I would think that selling both tape decks, related cables and media plus any Fraim levels would buy a hell of a lot of downloads on a sublime sub. I would think the cost of cassettes alone moving forwards would be more than the download costā€¦

You can always tinker with the meta data instead :grin:

Sharing pics of my broom cupboard under the stairs again I see.

Tape speed makes an enormous difference especially 15IPS. This was rammed home to me years ago when I bought an old valve based Brenell because I wanted a decent 3 motor deck to mate with my own electronics. Before the surgery I tried the machine as was and even at 7.5IPS the results were nothing special, probably the fitted Bogen heads were quite worn, but at 15IPS wow - it was like an open window to the source!

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Never heard of 2" for stereo mastering, personally Iā€™ve only used 2" in context of 24/16 track multitrack. (In theory I guess 16 should sound better as the tape width is shared by fewer tracks ā€¦ but never heard of any tests to establish this). At Virgin we mastered on 2" Studer 800ā€™s for 24 track, sometimes syncā€™d for 46 (48- less a sync track on each machine) / and Ampex 1/2" running at 30 ips for the stereo masters. Sounded OK to me! :slight_smile: