Anybody own any direct-to-disc LP's?

Mitch,

Vinyl, even at 45rpm, still has much higher distortion and less dynamic range than reel-to-reel. Believe it or not, back in the 70s' and 80s', vinyl was considered to be an inferior media. It was better than cassette and 8-tracks but reel-to-reel, particularly the higher speed ones, produce a kind of effortless quality that no vinyl can match.

Most all of the ones I own/have heard sound great. Al's recommendation of Sheffield Labs is a great place to start.

Sidssp, that is simply not true.I started in the early 60s and by the 80s reel to reel was essentially dead. I gave away my considerable collection of prerecorded tapes sometime in the 70s, despite using Revox, Tandberg, Ferrograph and several others I never got the same quality I got from LPs and my LP playback equipment them was primitive compared to now. If you are talking about 30 IPS half track I would agree that it was very good but only the pros used it and not that many of them.

Stanwal, I agree, and no one is a bigger open reel fan than I am I (Otari MX5050BII with outboard tubed tapehead preamp). The best tapes are indeed superlative but so are the best LPs.

idssp, you are right; LPs were mocked as not any good. It is also true that reel to reel tapes were still improving based on technology invented by the Germans. I will not listen to close to master copies of music on r2r as they will ruin you, and I don't want to have to deal with r2r again.

My experience with the Laser record player also troubled me in demonstrations at CES it was at least as good as tapes, but the normal tt was unable to keep up.

There is now the Tape Project with redone r2rs and excellent tapes. I did listen to one and loved it, but I got away without investing.