Thank you both for your help and recommendations. I'm really just starting to think about this so I haven't thought of a budget. I've bought a few tapes from Acoustic Sounds as I do like the idea of the tape format and was worried about the buy now or cry later. The Mara machines at Acoustic Sounds are $10-$14k. Is that a good budget or does it need to be $20-25k? I'm in the rocky mountains of Colorado. |
The Mara machines are reconditioned MCIs which I remember from the ’70s in studios. I’m pretty sure they get credit for auto-locate- you could punch in a number and the deck would advance (or rewind) to that point. These were 24 tracks, with MCI boards, which weren’t super expensive at the time. I know the Ampex and Studer machines tend to be regarded as 1st tier; I don’t know enough about the MARA machines to comment, other than that the product they reconditioned was a relative bargain, and considered to be an advancement, in the solid state world at the time. It’s hard to translate studio to home-- I heard these things in a context where the tape was new, the recording was fresh and I was listening to multi-track. It’s 50 years later. It is an antediluvian technology and that can be addressed; to my knowledge, MCI was popular. back in the day precisely because it wasn’t considered "Swiss jewels." But from a home audiophile perspective, Mike and the others I flagged will be able to give you a more current perspective as a home listener/user, and perhaps, where you can find value. Here's a piece on MCI: https://museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org/ManufacturersMCI.html As to Otari, I understand it sounds good as a sort of interim step, like pro-sumer, but the deck will be the least costly part of this-- the tapes are gonna cost in today's market. |
