[Rex Anderson]

I'm not saying it can't be a great listening experience or that it wasn't a great storage format for it's time. I enjoyed all of the work I did recording to tape and thought it was a great medium for many years.

I took a disk mastering class at the Institute of Audio Research in 1974 and learned how to cut master lacquer disks. After I learned all the limitations of vinyl and heard my master tapes turned into vinyl records, it was hard to listen to records vs master tapes.

My point was that unless you have a tape machine that is in good mechanical and electrical condition and well calibrated, the listening experience may not be as good as one had hoped. A great master tape played back on a machine in less than perfect condition may not sound very good. Proper alignment and calibration of the machine in use is crucial to the format.

I had no idea anyone was offering commercial material on R-R tape. It would be interesting to know the signal chain before the tapes were made available, i.e. was the recording done on a multitrack tape machine and mixed to R-R? Are the copies available to consumers made directly off the master? How many playback passes of the master are allowed before it is deemed the master tape has suffered high frequency loss? At some point, many engineers who recorded to tape because they liked the way it sounded (tape compression and saturation) started transferring to Pro Tools or some other DAW to avoid high frequency loss on the 24 track master tape due to playing it too many times.

I'll take a well recorded, mastered and manufactured CD played back via a good transport and D/A any day over all the distortions I know exist in the R-R format.