Magic and mystery of master tape

regarding life span of tape, and of time-span of optimal tape playback; not all tape is created equal. I'm an amateur with only anecdotal experience but I have about 150 master dubs all done with modern tape formulations. quite a few of them are now going on 7 years old, and some have been played many dozens of times with zero apparent degradation.

possibly part of the issue is that I play my tapes exclusively on a pair of Studer A820's which do have remarkably gentle, smooth tape handling. my tapes are stored in a climate controlled (cool, dry) environment. I keep my tape path clean.

I'd say that my tapes are sounding better than ever today and I'm now going thru my collection to re-calibrate their relative sound quality in my mind as I've not played tapes much since I made changes in my system a few years ago. they all sound new to me now and I'm really enjoying the journey.

spend time with some high quality tape dubs and they will really pull you in.

there is really nothing like a great tape.

Sunday night I played a very fine 15ips 1/4" master dub of the RCA LSC-2603 Heifetz, Bruch 'Scottish Fantasy' which literally blew me away. I've had this tape about 6 years and had only played it once previously and it had not stood out nearly as dramatically at that time. I don't know it's provenance. but it surpasses the Classic 4-disc 45rpm version quite nicely (and in some places shames it) which I've always liked. it was as enjoyable a listening session as I can remember and I was just so full of joy afterwards.

tape will do that to you.

I only have 150 of these tapes, and i'll likely never have more than 200 of them. vinyl still dominates my listening time. but like a great expensive single malt once in a while it's great to sit back and 'go there'.

added note; most of my master dubs have 2 reels for one album; some titles have 4 reels. so my 150 'titles' likely equal 250+ reels.

when buying tapes you are going to pay 'per reel'.

tapes are not cheap. however; if you compare the entry fee to tapes with the very top level vinyl the vinyl hardware will cost you much, much, more to really play at the top level and approach the performance level of tapes.

it depends on how many tapes one might plan to own how that would work out.

So, as more high-res albums are offered for download, there seems to be a question regarding how high the resolution of the source can ever be. If master analog tapes were archived digitally, what was that resolution? Where's the weakest link in the album's history,especially the older ones?

The degradation of tape i was referring to is the 40 or 50 year old masters and dubs, usually produced by major labels. Poor storage conditions, temperature, humidity are factors and they're usually put in a room not setup for archiving. Or sent to a warehouse and not even cataloged.

I,ve seen the recording side of tapes flaking off and it was hit or miss trying to dub down a 2 inch tape to 1/2 inch for preservation. The old tape decks also put a lot of wear on the tapes during a recording session.

Lowrider,

I've had a few dozen older vintage tapes in the past, seen the 'sticky shed' and related issues, and after trying to mess with them I returned them to the seller as I realized that was not the part of the hobby I was prepared to deal with.

those tapes were likely recoverable by someone with the requisite patience, skills and tools. i'd rather just get the modern formulation dub from those efforts.

one problem is that the transports they were originally recorded on are not the most tape friendly. later master recorders had much advanced levels of tape handling.

i'm a plug and play kinda guy and the reality is that if you commit sufficient assets to tape it can be real world easy to use and sound superb.