[yoganic]

Hi,
I am Markus and I live near Frankfurt in Germany.
Some years ago I re-entered the dungeons of audio tape and I am lost in there till now.
My gear consists of some stuff by Nakamichi, a Revox B77 and a Studer A807. All in perfect working order.
Also anything vintage is my interest, I have some old Sansui and Kenwood receivers, oh, and speakers of course, JBL, Braun, Klipsch, ATL...
So I guess I found the right place...

Hello to everyone!
Markus

[FullRangeMan]

Welcome to AC 
Usually these pre-recorded open-reel tapes are what speed?

[yoganic]

I am not into vintage prerecorded reels but as far a I know they come in different speeds, mostly I guess in 4track and 7.5ips.
Copys of original masters (or better duplication masters) are usually 2 track and 15 ips, so it is quite handy that the Studer has three speeds (3,75-15).
Most of the time I use the r2r to record from highres digital files.

[FullRangeMan]

Iam referring to the new ones they are selling now, not the vintage.
Seems some are 15ips and only 30 minutes.
https://elusivedisc.com/music/reel-to-reel-tape/

[yoganic]

Yes, the modern master tape copies are usually 2track 15ips and CCIR and they demand BIG money.
I recommend buying them from a known good source like https://www.horchhouse.com/mastertapes
There are many sellers out there, that claim to sell a master tape copy but they are just recording a FLAC to tape and charge big money.
A friend of mine has Claptons Slowhand and I swear it is just the CD copied to tape.
Whereas with a real master tape copy there is no comparison to anything else (FLAC, vinyl).
I have Dire Straits Love over gold and Doris Days Day by Night and these are just breathtaking!

[FullRangeMan]

Iam not surprised, an audio friend vinyl lover complain they made the same fake with vinyl.

[Phil A]

Welcome!

[ArthurDent]

Greetings & Willkommen to AC Markus   

[toocool4]

Welcome to AudioCircle yoganic 

[Norman Tracy]

Welcome to AC yoganic, I love that we are so international.

A year or so ago I became aware the well known reviewer Ken Kessler is an avid collector of reel to reel decks and the prerecorded tapes to play on them. The very expensive tapes available from Acoustic Sounds, Horch House, and others have been mentioned. One also has eBay where prerecorded reels tapes are available many for the cost of a delux reissue LP. These are the tapes sold by the major labels when the music was released. Someone will comment but those are 'only' 3 3/4 or 7 IPS. I advise trying it before lightly dismissing these, the stability of good reel to reel hifi is something special.

Kessler has written may articles about collecting these old reel tapes for PS Audio's 'Copper' online hifi magazine. Here is a link, enjoy.

https://www.psaudio.com/copper/column/natural-born-kessler/

[Norman Tracy]

Sometimes the pictures of his collection Kesler posts make me quite envious.

[findog3103]

I agree, though I am new to reel-to-ree, l that the 3 1/2 and 7 1/2 ips tapes sound very good. I fixed a Akai 4000DS mkii and have been very impressed.

[rbbert]

Note that Ken Kessler makes the point that sound quality with older commercially recorded R2R is variable and rarely SOTA.  He is in it for nostalgia more than absolute sound quality.  There are a handful of titles that were dubbed in the late '50's to early '60's in real-time at 7.5 ips, usually 1/4-track, and these are the only ones which really sound "good".  3.75 ips quarter-track dubbed at high-speed is generally not something worth seeking out if you are interested in sound quality.

However, there are a surprising number of actual "safety" copies that have escaped from label vaults over the years.  These are all 1/2-track, 15 ips or 30 ips, sometimes 1/2" tape rather than 1/4".  Many are also Dolby A encoded, which can present some challenges to accurate playback.  There are a handful of grey-market sellers with the ability to play these back correctly and dub them onto new tape stock (which BTW is of MUCH higher quality than what was available 30-40 years ago) at real time.  There are also a couple of studios recording new music to R2R (Jonathan Horwich at IPI is the most notable) and selling real-time dubs at a more affordable price than AS, Horch House, The Tape Project, etc.