The Sound Quality Of Commercially Pre-Recorded Reel-To-Reel Albums

My main experience with a pre-recorded tape was when Harry Weisfeld played the Mercury recording of Gershwin's Concerto in F, which I owned in its original vinyl version.  It was the first time I had heard the conclusion of the piece without any distortion and with full bass, as the record grooves went almost to the edge of the center.  Had we recorded the record, we would have also recorded that inner grove distortion and compression.  So for that reason, I'd have to think the pre-recorded tape version, if done well (and Mercury certainly did), should be better than the vinyl, as you can avoid the shortcomings inherent in the vinyl pressing.  

That said, I guess if you had a perfect, uncompressed vinyl record that you played back and recorded to R to R  with a particular cartridge whose sound was not flat but which you preferred, you might like the sound of the tape you made over the pre-recorded tape.

Original Moody Blues, Piano Based Blues Band, Denny Laine PRIOR to Justin Hasyward.

1st album: Go Now.

Dynamic Piano was is distorted on LP, and Later CD, the sound of the R2R was/is the 1st time I heard it all without distortion.

no bargain priced at the moment. NOS, $500.

a few used for $150 to $200.

Years ago I once balked at paying $8.00 at a record fair, got to my car, realized, ’you idiot’, went back got it.

Inferior. Pre records were manufactured at high speeds. I sold mine.

They sell for big bucks - not worth it.

Back in 1975 I had a 4 channel R2R and bought prerecorded tapes for it. The genre never caught on, but the sound was amazing. Live at the Fillmore blew me away and I have heard that music on every media it was released in except 8 track.

R2R beats them all, vinyl, cassette, CD, SACD included. I just wish more music had been available. I always wanted a Revox with the big reels, but $$ prevented that 50 years ago.

I stream now for convenience and at 75 my hearing is less than stellar due to many rock concerts in the 60s and 70s as well as being a machine gun crew chief in the Army in 1970.

It's easier to get good tape playback than equivalent vinyl playback. A good used Revox goes for 1-2K, whereas an equivalent TT, tonearm, cartridge, and phono stage will set you back 5-10 times as much.

But pre-recorded multi-track R-R has its own issues which are unique to the format: sound from one channel can bleed slightly into the adjacent ones. No big deal if it's 2-track; but if it's 4-track R-R, then the channels are arranged so that the slight bleed is the other side of the tape. Reversed. That can be audible and it's not high end.

Cassette tapes solved that problem with a more sensible arrangement of tracks on the tape.

The solution of course is the cost-no-object 15 ips 2-track stuff, at $1000 per hour - and that's pretty phenomenal, or so I've been told. So you've got a choice: pay big for the hardware, or pay big for the software. Since vinyl has rather more titles, it's vinyl for me.