Why not magnetic tapes in stead of vinyl records?

I believe Ralph K. was referring to direct to disc recordings as having better performance than analog tape. As a format I believe direct to disc's popularity ranks well below DVD-As and only slightly above Elcaset. In other words, it's really obscure. In the normal record production process all vinyl discs were sourced from analog tape so it would be impossible for the vinyl copy to exceed the performance of the tape original.

Revox made and sold any number of home oriented reel to reel tape recorders. They were more expensive than the typical Sony or Pioneer and generally had better transports, but did not necessarily sound better. One of the major uses of home reel2reels was recording FM concert and classical music broadcasts.

Nobody loves open reel tape more than I do, but it's a really impractical medium unless you DO love it. You can't find any particular track on a 7" reel without searching endlessly and you sure can't find it on a 10 1/2" reel. So you pretty much have to play the whole thing, like it or not. If your back-coated tape is attacked by "sticky shed syndrome" you might as well throw it out (yeah, I know, there's a fix, but still).

All the commercial reels date from the 60s to 80s (Jim Nabors vocalizing, anyone?) and many have had their high frequencies destroyed from being played with magnetized tape heads. New raw tape is expensive. The machines are mostly 30 years old AT LEAST and tend to be finicky and in need of regular service by too-few tape techs. If you still want to get into this "hair shirt" medium, don't say I didn't warn you :-)

So why do I love it? Because some of the tapes are simply stunning sonically. The sound of open reel tape in general is addictive (but stick to at least 7 1/2 IPS tape speed; slower-speed tape tends to really suck). And you can't beat the sight of those spinning reels.

I thought we were talking about Home audio products NOT professional gear? Who the Heck bought a REVOX tape player back in the day??? No one for home use.

No one? Really?

I did, soon after college in the late 70s. Others I've met here did too. Perhaps you've been hanging with the wrong crowd. ;-)

Well here is one idea as to why: Stamping thousands of records take a lot less time and is cheaper than creating duplicates on to kilometers of expensive tape. I think it has little do to with the sonic attributes, or anything else other than cost/time/ease. I am not an expert, it is just what I always thought.

Large format tape done well blows away ANY other format in existence to-date. I think that is pretty much a well documented fact. Comparison demos with vinyl and CD format digital I have heard in recent years clearly supports that.

Hi res digital may have a chance to match or surpass it someday in terms of both sound quality and ease of use.

Too bad nobody ever figured out a way to make the format work well commercially. Most people would not want to have to deal with handling and care of raw tape reels, especially these days.

You do not realize the sonic limitations of the music formats used today until compared with a high quality large format reference recording played on top notch gear.