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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)

Posted by msmash on from the it's-back-baby dept.

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."

4 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Are there many analog studios left? by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Are there many(any) studios that record primarily, in analog?

    Do many of them have analog components to them...ie tube amps, pre-amps, tape....etc?

    Wouldn't it really only sound the best on analog home play, if the source was also at least mostly recorded using analog technology?

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:Are there many analog studios left? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Here is my Tube Amp for guitar geeks with a shocking sense of adventure:
      https://www.aeronetworks.ca/2015/02/cool-amplifier.html

    2. Re:Are there many analog studios left? by Tapewolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Recording on 2-inch analog 24-track is different than digital. Tape exhibits saturation effects -- if I record a drum track onto tape, I can record it "hot" by turning up the gain so that the hardest hits saturate the tape. The result is a distinctive compression/limiting/harmonic effect. One of the reasons that people complained about sterile and thin digital sound when we shifted from analog to digital was that digital recorders don't behave the same way.

      Another thing is that the frequency response is nonlinear. Jack Endino has some rather interesting graphs of this in different models of 2" deck: http://www.endino.com/graphs/

  2. Millennials? by TJHook3r · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Who the hell is buying all this retro stuff? I love the tactile nature of physical media but you know what I love even more? Space! My collection has gone digital and I have a streaming account. That is an entire wall I have reclaimed. Millennials can't even afford houses so where do they plan to keep record players and tape decks?