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Is it possible to transfer analog tone and soundstage of vintage reel to reel to digital.

Sam here again. I have a hi-res digital rip of the rolling stones sticky fingers album from an original commercial reel to reel tape from 1971 and the analog warmth and soundstage is as good as it gets to my  ears. loudness war free sound.   https://postimg.cc/rDmzvR80

I realize there are many digital plugins that emulate the sound of analog tape and vinyl, however when I use them in post processing of digital audio I seem to get further away from the sound I'm trying to achieve? Now I may be naive on the subject, but if I want to digitally replicate the sound of vintage analog tape in the digital domain, why not go directly to the source? Heres what I did I extracted 1 second of analog tape sound between tracks and made an impulse file for the convolver dsp filter for foobar2000. I believe it made the digital download sound better, however, I'm not 100% sure.  Here are my audio samples (1) reel to reel (2) commercial digital download (3) commercial digital download with the impulse filter applied. I used replay gain to normalize the volume to 89db for all three samples.

(1) reel to reel (1971) 24/192 http://u.pc.cd/d2qrtalK

(2) commercial digital download flac16/44 2009 remaster http://u.pc.cd/4oditalK

(3)  commercial digital download flac16/44 2009 remaster.impulse applied http://u.pc.cd/99ActalK
guitarsam
roberttdid
534 posts
 
a TROLL is a person who starts flame wars or upsets people on the Internet by posting inflammatory and digressive,[1] **** extraneous, or off-topic messages ****
TOPIC:
Is it possible to transfer analog tone and soundstage of vintage reel to reel to digital.

Geoffkait,
The advantage of portable cassette playback - no angry PMs please - is it avoids all or most the pitfalls of CD playback, e.g., expense, power cords, speaker cables, interconnects, AC power, AC ground anomalies, fuses, transformers, Scattered light issues, fluttering disc issues.
One of these things, is not related to the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Of course they’re related, silly goose. They are both tape. That’s what the discussion is about. The differences in sound quality between digital and tape. And whether the analog virtues of tape are transferrable. Try to keep up, roberttdid, roberttcan, Ethan Winer, whoever you are.

Except for your numerous personal attacks on me your contribution on to this thread has been (incorrectly) stating that CD mixing practices are responsible for overly aggressive dynamic range compression.
jbrrp1
423 posts
 
Jackpot, Geof!  I see your day has been made.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
Are compact cassettes also considered reel-to-reel? They have two reels. At the same time, speed and sheer size may account for differences so, what are the opinions on that?

(this is my feeble attempt to derail boiling adversaries)
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
That’s very astute, glubson. You are to be congratulated. When, I don’t know. Or by whom.
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