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Tape: Sonic Gold, or Something Worse Than Vinyl to Obsess Over?

Mountain Goat

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Is tape the king of "analog only"? Are there tapes available that haven't been digitized at some point in the chain that can be A/B'd against digital?

Show your systems and how much trouble they are to put together, feed, and maintain.
 

AnalogSteph

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Good R2R tape playback is closer to digital than to vinyl... up to about 80 dB of dynamic range or ~13-14 bit equivalent if memory serves. There is some debate over best EQ time constants but in general, tape at studio speeds of 7.5 ips up should have less issues with highs distortion than LPs have. Keeping heads, capstans and rollers in good shape is obviously critical. Our resident tape heads should be checking in shortly, I assume.
 

MarcT

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Go to AXPONA or RMAF and find one of the rooms where they are playing original recording R to R tapes at 15 ips. Some of these exhibitors have gotten access to these original master tapes, and have restored and/or modified the R to R tape machines. I don't know how it would measure, but the sound is pretty impressive. The sound seems much better to me than most of the CD based demos, not sure why.

This Joseph Audio system was at AXPONA 2018.
DSC_0658 by MDTshots, on Flickr

This one was in the Joseph Audio room at RMAF 2018
DSC_0032 by MDTshots, on Flickr
 

MakeMineVinyl

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Tape and vinyl are somewhat close in noise floor (crackling of poorly maintained records notwithstanding), and the low frequency extension is similar, but tape has worse LF extension as speed in increased. Tape has better high frequency headroom than vinyl and they have roughly equivalent HF extension with tape having a bit of an advantage here.

The main difference is that they have radically different harmonic distortion signatures - tape distortion consists almost entirely of the odd order harmonic distortion components which are harsher to the ear, while vinyl has a more natural (to the ear) mix of even order harmonics and odd order harmonics. The presence of stronger even order harmonics tends to cover up the harsher odd order harmonics; vinyl tends to sound 'euphonic' in a more pleasing way than tape.

Beyond this, unless you are willing to purchase current production pre-recorded tapes which cost >= $400, there is nothing to listen to. The old 4 track pre-recorded tapes from the 1960s-1970s were mass duplicated at several times normal speed; they were hissy, lacked definition compared to the vinyl version, and were duplicated on rather primitive tape formulations of the day. I collected these when they were originally made, so I know!

So unless you're just obsessed with getting a reel to reel, I'd pass and stick with vinyl.

Here is a spectrum analyzer plot of tape verses vinyl: note the almost total absence of even order harmonic distortion components in the tape plot. Their total harmonic distortion is almost identical at their respective reference levels, but the nature of the distortion is very different.

Tape Verses Vinyl Distortion.jpg
 
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rdenney

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Since this topic suddenly has current relevance for me:

As with any obsolete technology, it's driven by one of two things: 1.) the enjoyment of messing with the required apparatus (which is undeniably fun for some of us), or 2.) sustaining access to a library of material, at least long enough to transcribe it to something more sustainable.

I own a lot of vinyl LPs, so therefore I sustain a way to play them. And, now, I again own a lot of irreplaceable open-reel recordings, so it's time to re-establish a reel-to-reel playback capability. The best of the vinyl will get transcribed for playing in the car, but I'll still play it in the home just for the enjoyment of it. The tapes, once transcribed, will get stored as carefully as possible, and the deck itself will either end up as a decorative prop or go into careful storage itself. I'm sort-of hoping for the former :)

Rick "who thinks they look cool" Denney
 

audio2design

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Tape is like vinyl. No two machines sound the same. The same is true of the recordings. No two sound the same. I guess in that respect it is similar to vinyl. Critical to tape sound is how it behaves as it reaches saturation. It is an automatic soft limiting function, and that had a big impact at the recording end of things. There are many a digital plug in to emulate old tape machines and how they behave. As noted, maintaining a tape machine is even more work than vinyl, and worse, the tapes themselves degrade just sitting there. The only thing that makes a tape degrade faster than just sitting there ... is playing it. People talk about vinyl degrading every time you play it. Tape is much worse.

High levels of odd order harmonics come across as harsh. Limited amounts of odd order harmonics will result in a pleasing interpretation by many.
 

MakeMineVinyl

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As noted, maintaining a tape machine is even more work than vinyl, and worse, the tapes themselves degrade just sitting there. The only thing that makes a tape degrade faster than just sitting there ... is playing it. People talk about vinyl degrading every time you play it. Tape is much worse.
Tape longevity is actually more nuanced that that. I have tapes from the 1950s which are perfectly playable, and ones from the 1990s which cannot be played at all. There are essentially two failure mechanisms at play; urethane binders (oxide and back coating) which were used in the 1970s through middle 80s which were prone to 'sticky shed syndrome', and acetate tapes of any vintage which had a particular binder formulation (in other words, not all) and were prone to 'vinegar syndrome'.

Ampex tapes from the 70s onward were particularly prone to sticky shed, but Scotch and some others were not - they used different formulations. The solution in getting a useful play from them is baking at 120 degrees F for 8 hours. Vinegar syndrome is fatal, but fortunately it is also relatively rare. Usually the worst thing which happens with acetate tapes is that they curl, but this does not particularly affect playback on a good machine. Polyester (Mylar) tapes (not including the above mentioned Ampex tapes) are completely immune to vinegar syndrome and can be freely played with good results.

So somewhat counterintuitively, the best chance of having a tape which is not degraded is from the early days - one of the old 'red oxide' tapes. The other is newly manufactured tapes from ATR and Mulann (Recording the Masters); they fixed the urethane problem long ago and will probably outlast most people on this forum.
 
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audio2design

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Yes, it can really get to the point of being the proverbial rabbit hole. My own stable isn't as insane as some people I know who have 24 track Studers in their living rooms... :oops:

When it became obvious that any euphonic improvement that tape could be emulated in the digital domain, I pretty much lost interest in tape, but by that point it was but a minor part of my career.

It is a beautiful setup by the way, but would interfere with my mantra of "If it requires excessive dusting, I don't want it."
 

L5730

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I've only got consumer 1/8" (ish) cassettes and I've had a little play with it.
It colours the sound. It can be pleasing, as in it smears transients, smooths and blends things and seems to make overly sterile voices sound a bit 'warmer'. However, I prefer the original digital counterpart, and better still slightly processed version of that with saturation and tape emulation plugins.

Running sound though an analogue medium for effect is a bit blunt. Sure, if you want distortion, then you can adjust gain for more/less, but tape colouration happens in a set amount. A plugin can be varied, and normally, one can dispense with the time based issues and keep things tighter.

Dolby NR seemed to just cause more issues than it solved. Yeah, lower noise floor, but music sounds stranger.
Perhaps, when we didn't have the luxury to AB so easily, or to re-digitise and sync. in the DAW things were more kinder to that medium.

Reel-to-reel tape, different story. I don't have one. I did listen to a bunch of samples where various instruments were recorded to them, both for saturation and as cleanly as possible, and compared to a digital recording. Piano stuck out rather easily.

Vinyl - who has a lathe to cut their own vinyl at home and compare? Probably more bits to fiddle with on vinyl playback. Starts to look less like a bit of equipment and more a work of art.
 

H-713

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Most of it depends on the machine and the tapes.

If you have something like a Studer, that is well-aligned and in good condition, I think it's fair to say that any differences between it and digital will be very difficult to discern, assuming that the tape itself was well recorded on a similarly good machine.

In the studio, it was customary to calibrate a machine every time you use it, using test tones at the beginning of the tape. That ensures that your machine is in (roughly) the same state as the machine that recorded the tape.
 

audio2design

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I would disagree as most recordings were / are pushed into soft saturation and there is a very telltale signature, and every brand and bias a bit different. It is very good, but not as pristine as digital. You may prefer it but it won't sound exactly the same.
 

MakeMineVinyl

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I would disagree as most recordings were / are pushed into soft saturation and there is a very telltale signature, and every brand and bias a bit different. It is very good, but not as pristine as digital. You may prefer it but it won't sound exactly the same.
Recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder pushed his recordings into saturation quite a bit according to this site dedicated to his legacy. Later recording tape formulations such as Ampex 499 and the current Recording The Masters SM900 were and are capable of 9dB greater level than tapes of the 60s. Still, analog tape is nowhere near the technical capability of digital; today, it can be considered 'processing' to achieve a desired sound.
 

H-713

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Some of this depends on who recorded the tape. Steve Albini, for example, records exclusively to tape, but is conservative enough with tape levels that the "tape compression" isn't apparent.

He is not the norm, since most people these days use tape as an effect. Used well, it's very transparent. A lot of the opinions about tape come from machines in poor condition, which aren't calibrated properly, and aren't being used in a way that makes them sound transparent.

Almost everything recorded before 1995 was recorded to tape.

I personally have a thing for it just because I think that professional tape machines (Particularly the Studer A827) are true engineering and manufacturing masterpieces.
 

H-713

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Except for classical music of course. I have very few 'ADD' or 'AAD' CDs from the 80s in my collection.

Release mediums are one thing, the medium used for recording is another. A few studios might have used digital tape solutions (Sony and 3M had offerings), and some things would have been recorded "direct to vinyl", and there were some very early DAWs being developed, but the majority of studios still recorded to tape well into the 1990s, and many into the 2000s. Some still do (Electrical Audio being an example).

The point I'm making is that for all the people who like to dis magnetic tape, so many records were recorded to tape, and a lot of those records sound fantastic.
 
OP
Mountain Goat

Mountain Goat

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Wonder how many classical digital masters from the 80s-90s have been lost due to format rot? Steve Albini at Electrical Audio Studio has talked about how many artists lost their proprietary digital masters in the 80s, and that's why he sends people home with analog tapes. Because there will always be somebody with an analog tape machine. Iron Mountain has an entire business based around it.

https://www.ironmountain.com/industries/entertainment
 
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