Tape at RMAF 2011

U47 · Oct 17, 2011

Lots of great tape to be heard at RMAF this year. The Otari MTR-20 1/2 inch was playing some Tape Project material in one room- these are super rare machines and the first I've ever seen. Two Nagra T decks with Tape Repros were in the Magico room(Q1) and in CanJam. Bruce had his A80 in the Usher room with a cool looking wood case(portable?!?) and there was the United Home Audio Tascam playing as well. Nick Doshi premiered his new tape stage in the Wilson Sasha room with this line stage and EL34 amps. Great sound in there- especially on Sunday after the speakers had some more time on them. Charlie and I had a rig in the Silbatone room playing through WE 757 and Silbatone 300b amp on Sunday. We were in the Volti(horn speakers)/Moerch/ZYX room Friday and Saturday. We alternated with the Tube Guru tape playing amplifier those days. The Amazon/Moerch/zyx rig was quite outstanding as well. Much fun all around.

Good to spend time with Myles. Only saw Ki for a brief time. He spent a while getting Bruce's A80 working on Saturday. Have soldering gun- will travel

Here is my short iphone video of Sunday in the Silbatone room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKhTM1D8oCY

Rich

flez007 · Oct 17, 2011

Indeed- I also liked what I heard at BH booth at CANJAM! Nagra T feeding various headphone amps and playing some series-3 material.... wished I had more time to compare.

Kara was kind enough to play some nice tunes as well via the 222 tape head preamp, cool sound as well!

MylesBAstor · Oct 17, 2011

U47 said:
Lots of great tape to be heard at RMAF this year. The Otari MTR-20 1/2 inch was playing some Tape Project material in one room- these are super rare machines and the first I've ever seen. Two Nagra T decks with Tape Repros were in the Magico room(Q1) and in CanJam. Bruce had his A80 in the Usher room with a cool looking wood case(portable?!?) and there was the United Home Audio Tascam playing as well. Nick Doshi premiered his new tape stage in the Wilson Sasha room with this line stage and EL34 amps. Great sound in there- especially on Sunday after the speakers had some more time on them. Charlie and I had a rig in the Silbatone room playing through WE 757 and Silbatone 300b amp on Sunday. We were in the Volti(horn speakers)/Moerch/ZYX room Friday and Saturday. We alternated with the Tube Guru tape playing amplifier those days. The Amazon/Moerch/zyx rig was quite outstanding as well. Much fun all around.

Good to spend time with Myles. Only saw Ki for a brief time. He spent a while getting Bruce's A80 working on Saturday. Have soldering gun- will travel

Here is my short iphone video of Sunday in the Silbatone room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKhTM1D8oCY

Rich

Don't forget Arian Janzen's ATR10 (modded Revox PR99) in Philip O'Hanlon's room or Greg Beron's modded Tascam decks! Some of the nicest sound to be found at the show was in Philip's room

Great dynamics with the magic of tubes in his tape deck! Know that the audience was really captivated listening to some of the tapes I brought by

Paul's 1/2 inch Otari machine was clearly the hit of the show playing back some of the Series 1-3 tapes from the Tape Project. The upcoming CCR and John Lee Hooker tape releases will soil many pampers. Great sound through the new VTL Siegfried Series 2 amps and TAD speakers! OTOH, found Alon's Nagra a little disappointing sounding.

Nick Doshi's modded phono/tape preamp was also really great sounding! Had to hear it on the last day--turned out the Wilson's were brand new and didn't sound good on Day 1. Utterly dynamically compressed and congested sounding on Friday. On Sunday, the speakers had started to open up and his tape pre sounded wonderful--great soul, density, staging, dynamics, transparency, extremes, etc. And after Nick finishes optimizing the head response, should sound even better!

Wish Kara had brought a 10" take up reel because would have liked to hear more of her repro

She played the four track/71/2 Everest recording of Corroboree and it sounded outstanding. Now if only someone can put their hands on that tape!!!

jazdoc · Oct 17, 2011

Myles-

Completely agree regarding Nick Doshi's room. Much, much better as the weekend progressed. I was sitting behind you Sunday when you played that delightful "We Get Requests" -- one of my personal show highlights!

BTW, terrific to meet you guys (as well as everyone else) in person at dinner.

flez007 · Oct 17, 2011

+1 on Doshi's room, it ranked on my top-5 list as well.

Steve Williams · Oct 18, 2011

I also liked Doshi's room and IIRC when I was there on Friday John Giolas was doing the demo and I agreed about the speakers and wondered if it was the room as I am quite familiar with their sound

Ki Choi · Oct 18, 2011

Thanks for starting this thread Rich. Sorry we didn't spend any time together at the show... BTW, you forgot to mention your Revox 270 with Nortronics head was at the Volti Audio room. Although I haven't had the chance to hear any tapes other than to talk briefly with Greg Roberts, it was nice to see a tape machine in a room together with horns. (I still have soft spot on my audio heart for horns....)

Meeting all the tapesheads for the first time was a blast. Myles (and Heidi (sp) who showed lots of potential to be a serious tapehead), Steve, Mark, Neil and others...

I was in Bruce's room most of the Sat. morning listening to only his HD files that sounded very good and then when we were able to play his tapes properly. We both looked at each other and said "Oh, that's so much better."

mep · Oct 18, 2011

Ki Choi said:
I was in Bruce's room most of the Sat. morning listening to only his HD files that sounded very good and then when we were able to play his tapes properly. We both looked at each other and said "Oh, that's so much better."

That was my sentiment in every room I was in where they had both analog and digital to play back. I'm still wondering if anyone who was at the show and heard both feels the opposite.

garylkoh · Oct 18, 2011

mep said:
That was my sentiment in every room I was in where they had both analog and digital to play back. I'm still wondering if anyone who was at the show and heard both feels the opposite.

Nope - you haven't found anyone yet. I thought that analog playback in my room was far better than the digital. After hours, we even did some comparisons between the analog and high-rez digital versions of the same material (in particular Ella and Louis).

I'm sure that tape would have sounded better, but I'm too scared of shipping damage to one-of-a-kind rare vintage machines. I admire the bravery of those who do. I heard from Ki about the rescue operation that he had to do to get Bruce running again.

mep · Oct 18, 2011

What happened to Bruce's A-80 was just an "oops." Bruce removed the meter bridge so the A-80 would fit into the custom made wooden shipping crate. The meter bridge is part of the output signal path and without it, the output doesn't see the resisitive load it expects and basically outputs a very low signal as a result. Ki called it a "senior moment" that he didn't recognize the problem immediately, but the reality was more likely that Ki was tired from the trip like many of us were on Thursday night. Ki quickly determined what the problem was and bought some resistors to mimic the load the meter bridge presents to the output circuit.

And Ki, if I screwed up any part of this story, please correct me.

Mark

Ki Choi · Oct 18, 2011

Hi Gary:

Although we live in the same area, it was a pleasure to meet you at last in Denver.

There was another tape machine at the show. It was an ATR-102 in Jonathan's room 1117, I believe. I didn't get to hear the tapes in that room. They were crawling all over the Joel's new tonearm...and left no time to play the tapes when I visited the room.

It was a struggle to visit all the rooms. I would enter all the rooms and within few seconds I would decide to stay or not. Most rooms, I stayed for 10 seconds max. Considering I had also had to help out another friend - baby sit thier room in order for them to see some of the show on Sat., I bearly covered the rooms - only once.

garylkoh · Oct 18, 2011

Hi Ki,

It was a pleasure to meet you at last too! I usually never get a chance to go and visit other rooms when I'm at a show. I guess if I want to listen to more tapes, I'll have to come visit you or Mike in the Seattle area.

Bruce B · Oct 18, 2011

Yeah, Ki was my HERO!! We finally got it running Friday morning just in time for the show. In addition to the meter by-pass issue, he also had to do something to the cards because the meter bridge has an Input/Repro switch that it wasn't recognizing as well.

Good times were had by all.....

Steve Williams · Oct 18, 2011

Bruce

Even without the cabinet you built for it your A80 is the largest tape machine I've ever seen

Ki Choi · Oct 18, 2011

mep said:
What happened to Bruce's A-80 was just an "oops." Bruce removed the meter bridge so the A-80 would fit into the custom made wooden shipping crate. The meter bridge is part of the output signal path and without it, the output doesn't see the resisitive load it expects and basically outputs a very low signal as a result. Ki called it a "senior moment" that he didn't recognize the problem immediately, but the reality was more likely that Ki was tired from the trip like many of us were on Thursday night. Ki quickly determined what the problem was and bought some resistors to mimic the load the meter bridge presents to the output circuit.

And Ki, if I screwed up any part of this story, please correct me.

Mark

Hi Mark,
I was more embarrassed not to see the problem immediately than anything else. Although my butt was on airplane seats for about 13 hours to get to the RMAF, I shouldn’t have been too tired to see… I did put Bruce to unnecessary stress before the music flowed via tape.

Although the machine was still huge in size in comparison to other tape machines at the show, it was the smoothest running A80 I had seen. With its newly built motors, roller bearing and nice Athan’s pinch roller, it was one of the quietest A80 transports I had encountered. It was in much better operating condition than when it left my house months ago.

Actually Bruce's A80 was a minor challenge in comparison to other rooms with bigger “show jitters.” One of my friends’ room had made major investment in coming to the RMAF from Korea to debut their new 24/192 DAC/Preamp/Headphone amp unit for the best possible CD reproduction with the ML 31.5 transport. I had helped source the 31.5 from a reputable dealer in East Coast. We went overboard in making sure the transport worked properly by letting it operate before it being double boxed for FedEx Express journey directly to the Marriot hotel. Murphy struck as expected. The dealer forgot to reinstall the shipping screws for the transport after the verification test, and it arrived broken. All dressed up but no way to play the CDs properly. The room ended up using another lowly CD player as a transport but the show was far less than perfect…

Ki Choi · Oct 18, 2011

garylkoh said:
Hi Ki,

It was a pleasure to meet you at last too! I usually never get a chance to go and visit other rooms when I'm at a show. I guess if I want to listen to more tapes, I'll have to come visit you or Mike in the Seattle area.

Hi Gary,

You are most welcome to visit my humble house whenever you are ready.

Ki

Ki Choi · Oct 18, 2011

Steve Williams said:
Bruce

Even without the cabinet you built for it your A80 is the largest tape machine I've ever seen

Hi Steve:

Who said SIZE didn't matter?

rbbert · Oct 18, 2011

jazdoc said:
Myles-

Completely agree regarding Nick Doshi's room. Much, much better as the weekend progressed. I was sitting behind you Sunday when you played that delightful "We Get Requests" -- one of my personal show highlights!

BTW, terrific to meet you guys (as well as everyone else) in person at dinner.

To me, this was the only room where the Sasha's sounded good. Even on Saturday it was apparent they were the best of the Wilson rooms.

rbbert · Oct 18, 2011

mep said:
That was my sentiment in every room I was in where they had both analog and digital to play back. I'm still wondering if anyone who was at the show and heard both feels the opposite.

Well, the VTL / Tape Project room did NOT sound good, IMHO, although I'm not sure where the fault lay.

In good sounding rooms with both vinyl and Hi-res digital, I though the digital won almost every time. I know that's not a popular opinion here.

Bruce's Usher room sounded great, and I preferred the open reel to his digital sources.

The room with von Schweikert VR-5's and open reel didn't sound good to me (not all the source's fault, I think the amp/speaker combo just doesn't fit my audio preferences).

rbbert · Oct 18, 2011

I was quite impressed by Gary's Genesis 7.2f. At around $9k/pr these speakers are major contenders.

Tape at RMAF 2011

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