Last night I started off listening to my new music server as I had just downloaded a ‘new’ album by Bill Evans from HDtracks. The album is “New Conversations.” I thought it sounded very good and the album was definitely recorded to showcase the piano. Next I played an LP from RR which was the Dick Hyman “Swing” which some have reported as sounding ‘thin.’ Third up at bat was R2R playing Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” 15 ips 2 track.
There is no doubt that in my house, in my room, in my system that R2R is at the top of the pecking order with regards to having the highest fidelity. Once a good tape starts playing music, the muscles in your body voluntarily relax without you even thinking about it. It’s like your body is saying “Ahhh.” Some of you will get what I’m saying and some of you are taping up your boxing gloves and are getting ready to step in the ring with me. But, if you don’t have a decent table/arm/cartridge that is functional and a R2R deck capable of playing back 15 ips 2 track tapes, please take your gloves off and go sit down. And I only say that because if you don’t own all three source materials and components to play them back on and hear them on a regular basis, then you really don’t know what you really don’t know.
If you could imagine that your preamp, integrated amp, or whatever you listen through that has a volume knob on it had a knob to the left of the volume knob that says ‘realism,’ the realism knob on good R2R tapes is pegged at 10. The realism knob on both vinyl and digital doesn’t quite go that high. I personally think the realism knob goes higher most of the time for LP than it does for digital, but sometimes really good digital surpasses not so good vinyl. But, neither digital nor vinyl hits 10 on the ‘realism’ knob.
I would say really good examples of both are more around 8.5 on the scale of 10 and occasionally hits 9. Vinyl will normally be at least a full number higher on the ‘realism” knob than digital. In the spirit of full disclosure, if we had a noise meter on our preamp or integrated amp, the meter would always be at the lowest with digital. However, well made tapes playing at 15 ips 2 track are damn quiet. Certainly LPs would come in last on the noise meter scale. The good news is that once the music starts, the noise on good source material is way below the recorded music. The other good news is that I enjoy all 3 sources for the different things they bring to the table. If I could wave a magic wand over all of my source material and turn it into a single source, it would be tape. There is no doubt about that.
There is no doubt that in my house, in my room, in my system that R2R is at the top of the pecking order with regards to having the highest fidelity. Once a good tape starts playing music, the muscles in your body voluntarily relax without you even thinking about it. It’s like your body is saying “Ahhh.” Some of you will get what I’m saying and some of you are taping up your boxing gloves and are getting ready to step in the ring with me. But, if you don’t have a decent table/arm/cartridge that is functional and a R2R deck capable of playing back 15 ips 2 track tapes, please take your gloves off and go sit down. And I only say that because if you don’t own all three source materials and components to play them back on and hear them on a regular basis, then you really don’t know what you really don’t know.
If you could imagine that your preamp, integrated amp, or whatever you listen through that has a volume knob on it had a knob to the left of the volume knob that says ‘realism,’ the realism knob on good R2R tapes is pegged at 10. The realism knob on both vinyl and digital doesn’t quite go that high. I personally think the realism knob goes higher most of the time for LP than it does for digital, but sometimes really good digital surpasses not so good vinyl. But, neither digital nor vinyl hits 10 on the ‘realism’ knob.
I would say really good examples of both are more around 8.5 on the scale of 10 and occasionally hits 9. Vinyl will normally be at least a full number higher on the ‘realism” knob than digital. In the spirit of full disclosure, if we had a noise meter on our preamp or integrated amp, the meter would always be at the lowest with digital. However, well made tapes playing at 15 ips 2 track are damn quiet. Certainly LPs would come in last on the noise meter scale. The good news is that once the music starts, the noise on good source material is way below the recorded music. The other good news is that I enjoy all 3 sources for the different things they bring to the table. If I could wave a magic wand over all of my source material and turn it into a single source, it would be tape. There is no doubt about that.