Maybe that’s true, in which case examples of an equivalent or perhaps an even better quality of recording/playback should be easy to find. Can you recommend some? 
I’ve heard plenty of good digital. You know as well as I do that it’s more down to the care in recording/processing/mastering that is the issue.
I’ll wager that recording the tape to 24/96 via a really high quality A-D and playing back through a similarly high quality DAC will sound the same.
I have a super duper ADC, I’ll quite happily steal, I mean archive people’s tapes
1 Like
I’ve heard some quite good digital but nothing as convincing as source material as some of these recordings can be.
There are several factors involved here the first being, are people actually succeeding in making recordings that are on a par with the best of the late 50’s & 60’s? And if they are, and if the mastering is done properly, and if the medium for their delivery is lossless then what are they, where can I buy them & what do I need to play them back?
1 Like
Don’t disagree with that. You prefer the overall result of that recording/mastering/replay chain. That’s fine. What I do disagree with is ascribing the quality your hearing as being specifically and only down to r2r technology.
1 Like
Great, then let’s try & replicate it with some other means.
It’s not even as if the machine I’ve got represented the state of any art. But it’ seems to me that the combination of recording techniques/equipment, this format, the machines to play it and the fact that it was commercially available as a (of a sort) mass market product make it the pinnacle (now passed) of domestic playback. In my opinion we can’t buy any mass produced media/playback device that’s as good now.
It’s important to note that differences in mastering quality are just as evident among the pre-recorded tapes as they are among CDs or vinyl. But when it’s good, it’s very good.
Yes, you can. As you note above, there’s more to it than just the playback mechanism, the whole chain is important. As I said, I have no issue with r2r being preferable as an overall result. But rather than looking back, it’s more useful to look at why the same (or better) results aren’t being achieved today despite objectively better recording mastering and replay mechanisms being available.
Using your (terrible 
) Concorde analogy, no one would try to reproduce it as is, because it makes little sense to do so - there are better ways of doing things these days to achieve the same goal. If you don’t achieve it, it’s unlikely to be down to not using obsolete technology.
The point of the Concorde analogy was more about having the (questionable) capacity to move 100 rich cunts people across the Atlantic in 3 hours (at a price) something we don’t currently have the means to do.
Concorde was great. 
and actually cheaper than flying 1st class on a blunty.
You were lucky enough to have a ride on one.
For whatever reason, the quality of music reproduction achievable using good recording techniques, tape storage and R2R playback as the source doesn’t appear to me, to be available through any of the formats we have available right now (even if playing back recordings that were properly made originally) If, for example, I find the Kertesz VPO Dvorak New World Symphony I was playing yesterday as a CD or some other digital file it won’t sound as good as the tape however I try to play it back. (I do have it as a 1st press Decca LP)
The Concorde analogy was done by Clarkson when he reviewed the Bugatti Veyron.
Has the Veyron’s performance as a road legal car been surpassed since then?
I was! 
I completely accept what you’re saying I just think it’s a daft situation that you have to resort to obsolete technology and an just trying to make the point that it’s not simply the technology, but how it’s implemented and used.
Yes. And so has it’s ugliness.
Says the man with a 16a
4 Likes
Clarkson is a massive bell end, though.
1 Like
16A is pretty. In an H R Geiger kind of way.
1 Like
He hasn’t been surpassed yet although Trump & Piers Morgan are both giving it a good go.
1 Like
I bet that a decent digital recording of a 7.5ips tape would be indistinguishable from the original in a blind test.