Discussion: Retrospective look at commercial reel tape releases

["Richard L. Hess" <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, now that I'm up to my ears in restoring all sorts of tapes, I was 
motivated to install a Nortronics 1/4-track stereo head in the record nest 
of my Sony APR-5003V recorder. My brand-new MRL test tape tells me that I'm 
getting +/- 2dB from 32Hz to 16kHz.  The machine is darned quiet without 
tape running.

I had previously gone to the trouble of setting up a Teac AN180 Dolby B 
processor with my Tandberg 3400X (another quiet machine, but without the 
transport finesse of the Sony--the latter costing about 15X more when new) 
On that combination, I transferred to DAT a Vanguard tape VAN D 10016 of 
Leroy Anderson "Fiddle Faddle and 14 other Anderson Favorites." This tape 
was from 1977, duplicated at 8x real time by Barclay Crocker and impressed 
me that if you had $1000 to spend then on the Tandberg and the Teac AN180, 
that you had almost CD-quality reproduction.

Now I just pulled out a Deutsche Grammophone recording of Die Zauberflote 
(Mozart) duplicated by Ampex and while the response is there (as far as I 
can hear, piccolos and all) the noise is horrid. Even though I'm now having 
trouble hearing 16kHz (12 I do fine), this is close to unlistenable to me. 
I found a used copy of the same recording on CD at Amazon's Z-shops for $12 
and just ordered it.

I would be curious as to people's impressions of commercial reel quality?

In general I think with a few exceptions the level of hiss makes most of 
them an inferior listening experience to LPs, although the absence of other 
annoyances does weigh in their favor. It's easy to see why this format 
didn't catch on considering cost of media, cost of equipment, bulk, and 
hassle of threading. I think the Dolby reels were pretty much audiophile only.

Did non-Dolby reels ever make it into mainstream or was that audiophile 
only as well?

Anyone have thoughts on commercial (mostly 1/4 track) tape releases?

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess                              richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Glendale, CA USA                           http://www.richardhess.com/
Web page: folk and church music, photography, and
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