Surging Demand For Vinyl LPs Has Raised Hopes For Reel-to-Reel Tape Deck, Which is Returning To Sale For First Time in Decades (bloomberg.com)

It's no secret that sales of vinyl music are at the highest in decades. Even the lowly cassette tape is regaining popularity as some millennials embrace analog music over digital downloads and streaming services. But for the first time in more than two decades, a German company is reviving what may be the ultimate format: a new reel-to-reel tape machine. From a report: Dusseldorf-based Roland Schneider Precision Engineering this week will introduce four Ballfinger reel-to-reel machines, bringing back a technology that dominated professional music recording for most of the 20th century and is now making a comeback with audiophiles and artists including Lady Gaga. The sleek machines, some of them customizable, will retail from about 9,500 euros ($11,400) for the basic version to about 24,000 euros for the high-end model, which features three direct-drive motors, an editing system and walnut side panels. "Digital media is great, but experiencing music is more than just listening to a sound file -- it's sensual, it's reels that turn and can be touched," says Roland Schneider, the machine's designer. "When it comes to audio quality, nothing else in the analog world gets you closer to the experience of being right there in the recording studio than reel-to-reel tape."

Comments

Seems fair

[Joce640k]

If people want the "experience" of rewinding tapes, taking five minutes to change to a different album, etc. then nobody here should try to stop them.

All we need is a law to prevent them bragging about the "experience" in public places.

Those who have not heard the history of audio

[Anonymous Coward]

are doomed to hear it all over again. 50 years ago, vinyl (45 dB S/N at best) and 15ips tape (65 dB S/N at best, before DNR) were as good as it got. Since the early 80s, there's been CDs (100 dB S/N). That's already nearly 40 years. Going back is not something any person with normal hearing could ever consider. So when you see these things being labelled anything but noisy old gear, consider the source's hearing. No, not everyone hears normally, just like not everyone sees normally.

Let that be a lesson. Hear it.

Re:Those who have not heard the history of audio

[Anonymous Coward]

CDs *can* sound shitty. Cassettes and Vinyl are pretty much guaranteed to.

I'm not sure what your point is, to be honest.

I mean, if I recorded a 78 onto CD it's going to sound like a 78. And nobody thinks otherwise, so who do you think you're talking to?

Re:I don't see this taking off

[Powercntrl]

However, no hipster has $11,000 to spend

Most people couldn't afford reel-to-reel machines back in the day (when it actually was the superior format), hence the nostalgia for shitty ass vinyl. Today, even if it was less expensive, it's likely the hipsters wouldn't want it because reel-to-reel doesn't have that "warm" (which is really just the RIAA EQ curve and any other adjustments done to the sound to make it cuttable) sound they associate with "analog". If you wanted your music to sound true to the source, you'd just be using lossless digital formats anyway.

In other words, people buy vinyl copies of modern albums because they want the shitty music to sound shittier. There's no helping those people.