Rediscovering the Joy of Digital?

Yes Plato, the everlasting problem with R2R - aside from its particular brand of impermanence, which is in actuality likely no worse in its way than the real-world impermanence of LP's (and who knows? maybe even CD's) - was always its lack of commercial success as a prerecorded medium. It may have blossomed in this capacity if not for the upstart cassette (and really, the 8-track too, at the time), since it was once quite popular as *the* home-recording format, and obviously the possibility of superior fidelity was always there.

I don't play R2R and haven't since I was a teenager - the only machine I owned wasn't even very good, and I never owned any prerecorded tapes - but anybody who's been exposed to properly maintained studio-quality machines running at 15 or 30 ips realizes that the prevelant consumer formats, while they may be convenient, are like but toys in comparision.

Audiophiles tend to forget this, and equate analog with vinyl, whereas the LP has no monopoly on the claim. And it's intrinsically true that analog disk/electro-mechanical cutter and pick-up technology can never fully impress/recover all the information into/from the grooves that is available on the analog mastertape, while introducing a heaping helping of added distortions and noise along the way.

If/when digital recording processes ever improve to the point where engineers agree that they can capture/preserve enough original event information to render the analog mastertape definitely second-class (we might be close now, but we might be closer tomorrow - time has a way of reevaluating these things), then possible consumer digital media at least hold the theoretical promise of being able to transmit virtually all of that digital mastertape information, uncontaminated, directly to our playback systems in a convenient format - something LP's could never do vis-a-vis the analog mastertape.

But stop salivating guys: Despite the above rant - and come what may - my record collection ain't never going anywhere... :-)

Yes Zaikesman, your points are well taken. But if and when there is a consumer level digital format that truly is better than analog mastertapes there are two likely scenarios that could follow. One is that the music business people will insist on a copycode that will render it second rate and delay its release for about a decade; the other is that there will be a substandard "MP3" version of it that will ultimately be less costly and will dominate the marketplace...

Prerecorded tapes face a great economic problem relating to their manufacture. To record a tape you must draw the tape past a recording head (a serial data transfer). Although the tape speed can be increased (at some cost of quality) it still takes a while to record a tape. LPs and CDs are stamped out (a parallel data transfer). The whole symphony gets recorded in one quick operation.

Plato and Eldartford are both correct, but I'll add:

Of course I don't think that any analog tape medium will be making a comeback in the consumer marketplace, but the serial-transfer problem didn't prevent the industry from embracing the cassette as the replacement for the LP and 45 once upon a time (lo-fi high-speed tape-duplication standards notwithstanding).

And I wouldn't be (pleasantly!) surprised if the recording industry actually embraces and promotes hi-rez digital from here on out, simply as another tool to try and combat easy file transfer/storage, or to at least help differentiate the prerecorded medium from what's available online.

with the latest generation on cd/sacd players, i think we are the entering the reniasance of the digital age.

digital has never been enjoyable or musical compared to a class c analog unit until the last year. i have a marantz sa 8260 and i can listen for hours without fatigue. it is the first musical unit that i have heard and have no desire to upgrade or tweak.

hopefully the manufactures will continue to make quantam leaps over the next couple of years and move into class a /b of analog playback.