Tape Trail

Posted by Bill Way (A) on March 15, 2015 at 11:49:19

They're all out of my budget... except a little one with the Egmont Overture with Abbado and Berlin Phil, all eight minutes of it for thirty-five bucks. For that much I figured it was worth finding out if it was all worth it.

It is, and it's not perfection. This particular recording has some funky micing (violins to the left! basses to the right!) but the sound is a revelation. No digital medium, or any vinyl setup I've heard, comes close to the naturalness of the hall's sound, or the luscious decay that you can hear in a good hall. The "not perfection" part, on this tape, is something of a low-level thump occurring in one channel for the last minute or two, and it corresponds with the revolutions of the take-up reel. (I checked - it's not my deck; it's on the tape.) But it is very low-level. Oh... they cut off the recording before the last note had completely died out, which is and should be a Mortal Sin in any studio.

It has me wanting more. Maybe the old Otari will get Bottlehead repro amps someday, or maybe Dan Schmalle's upgrade kit for the deck. As it is, driving Senn 800's from its internal headphone amp gives both more detail than I've ever heard, while being the least hifi-ish. That's a pretty powerful combo.

WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922