Can we finally put Reel to Reel out of its misery? Put it to rest people.

Hi,
far from dead, most expensive media yes but not difficult to repair, not impossible to find spares not difficult to calibrate and better sounding than any other tape format, and better looking also!

There is something very cool about a 10.5" RTR running at 15ips. It just looks wonderful IMHO. I sold my Revox B77, 2 track HS MK2 deck about 10 years ago and regretted the decision ever since. I noticed at this years Axpona there were quite a few vendors demonstrating equipment using RTR decks, all sounded fine to me. So in then end, if owning/using a RTR deck makes you happy, go for it.

Nakamichi made some very fine cassette decks. I have a Nak Dragon rebuilt by Alex Nikitin with a full set of ANT 4066 mods. But seriously this is nowhere as good as 15IPS tape on a proper studio machine. If you can source a production or distribution master like this then even better :)
https://i.vgy.me/hWJJn1.jpg

@topoxforddoc not many vintage decks have 15ips settings. There are few high end cassette decks with variable speeds that sound phenomenal. Telefunken tc300 and Nakamichi 680

@vinny55 There are lots of professional R2R machines with 15 IPS. The thong about professional machines is that they are built like tanks and calibration and line up is easy to do; after all a decent tape tech would line up the machine every day in a studio, back in the heyday of tape. Having had a couple of domestic machines (Revox A77 and a high speed G36), I wouldn't go back to one now.
Checking the repro head azimuth on a tape is probably the most important part of line up, as the high frequency losses are significant, is the repro head is not aligned correctly to the way that the record head was aligned when the tape was made. This is something that most people don't worry about on a domestic recorder with commercial 3.75 and 7.5 IPS 4 track tapes. But that's another story.