Adolph Thal Audio Engineering (ATAE)

Ron Resnick

Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Jan 24, 2015
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Beverly Hills, CA
Fred -- please tell us about ATAE's current product offerings . . .
 

Fred Thal

[Industry Expert]
Jul 15, 2016
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Hello Ron, thanks for asking. As you know, we have have never marketed our professional analog tape playback hardware to the public, because with very few exceptions, the public does not own important music master tapes.

So we have attempted to market our expensive machines (called reproducers) only to the people we think most need them: the folks who do own important master tapes, the record labels.

Today there are three mega-labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. But it's been frustrating and we are often shocked at what tape machines are being used inside some of these companies for master tape playback and transfer work. Privately, they admit to us that they're not interested in capital expenditures for new hardware that would be used to re-issue from their back catalog.

Yet, any serious, aware audiophile can attest to the fact that far too many of the transfers or re-issues made from legacy analog master tapes over the past 35 years have been sonically compromised, sometimes seriously. While the technical reasons can vary, many times the labels have simply botched the job. So there is a strong argument for consumers demanding that the labels re-do many of the poor sounding transfers.

My message to the audiophile community here on WBF is that if you care deeply about preserving the musical artistry and the musical enjoyment that is lying dormant on the surviving legacy master tapes in the record label vaults, then you need to let the labels know that if they are commissioning any new transfers or re-issues from those old tapes, they need to do it absolutely right this time. Whether remastering for Hi-Res, or MQA, or cutting new lacquers for re-issue on LP, you cannot downplay the extreme importance of having only the very best analog tape reproducer employed in the mastering chain. Importantly, they need to do this work now, because the surviving tapes are deteriorating more with each passing year due to chemical changes from aging.

Not many people know how good analog master tapes can actually sound. We should all work now to change this.
 
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Mike Lavigne

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 25, 2010
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pssst....hey...Fred, i'll just whisper here since this is on the down low.

what us audiophiles really want is great performing tape decks to play our grey market and other tape collections. major labels don't and never will get it. forget them. not enough money in high fidelity to get them interested.

so maybe tell us what tape machines you might offer. thanks.

your appreciative customer,

Mike
 

Fred Thal

[Industry Expert]
Jul 15, 2016
161
11
123
Hi Mike, first, we probably should remind everyone that analog tape is not the new, best thing in high-end audio. Obviously it can't be, because making copies of analog tapes is fraught with serious quality degradations that are both plainly audible and easy to measure.

With that said, it is fact that some audiophiles have extensive tape collections. And a few even own real master tapes. So, as to what ATAE machine we might suggest to this community, the answer is it could be any of them.

As you know Mike, our message on achieving highest quality tape playback hasn't changed. For those who don't know ATAE, here's our checklist for building a proper reproducer: You need excellent dynamic azimuth stability with an absolute minimum of fixed guides in the tape path. That means you need a reproducer built on costly to manufacture precision guidance tape path architecture. Because scrape flutter is audible, you need a really good, single-head, read-only headblock design. (Obviously, you will never get highest quality tape playback if you're using a 3-head tape recorder.) Because you need highly accurate time base stability, you will need servo constant-tension and a servo-capstan.

Now, if you use the above checklist to develop and build something new from scratch, you'll probably burn through a quarter million dollars or more to arrive at a decent working prototype transport. So we think it's much more cost-effective and smarter to instead begin with a survey of the very best of what was done earlier back in the analog era. Using this same checklist, you'll soon arrive at the Studer A80, which is the tape transport design that is the basis for our product family known as ATAE Model Twos.

Our response to customer pressure for a lower cost offering is our upcoming Model 2e. Like all Model Twos, this is an ATAE modified A80 transport that has been completely re-manufactured by us. We greatly respect what Studer created with the A80 and we do not cut corners in our re-manufacturing and we sincerely believe we are actually improving on the original. We are spending about $31,000 to build each 2e and we plan to sell them for $39,000. But there's one catch. A purchaser of a Model 2e will be required to send us a complete A80 in trade. (It can be any model A80 and it need not be working.) This is how we can keep our Model Two transport re-manufacturing program re-supplied with the necessary core parts.

The Model 2e is brand new for us and there is as yet no mention of it on our website. The first two prototypes are presently under construction here and we will make these two available at discount to purchasers who pre-order them by placing deposits. We call this bootstrapping our construction financing. Mike, if you believe in our work and want to help support it, perhaps you'll tell any friends with significant tape collections about the Model 2e. Thanks very much for your interest!
 

Ron Resnick

Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Jan 24, 2015
16,017
13,346
2,665
Beverly Hills, CA

microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
20,806
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Portugal
Congratulations, Fred, on your new website! It looks great!

http://www.ataudioeng.com

It looks great, but an older version had some much more impressive photos of Studer machines - let us hope they will show again. Fortunately this one keeps a though provoking sentence that was debated long ago in the Fred Thal Studer list :" It's a myth that a master tape is best played back on the recorder that originally made it. Doing that would only add distortion."
 

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