What is the best Reel To Reel machine ever built?

Bifwynne, As you may or may not know, the better Crown tape recorders have interchangeable heads, can be modified therefore to use half-inch tapes. At one time, Crown was considered to be right up there with anything else made for home use and I think they were used in studios as well. And they are built "like a tank". My old and sadly departed boss used to have four, yes FOUR, Crown tape decks in his audio system, set side by side by side by side in his listening room. Then he had a spare bedroom entirely devoted to storage of first-generation master tapes he collected, floor to ceiling shelves with free-standing shelves in the middle of the room as well, all first generation. The sound was awesome. But when digital came along, some salesman sold him a bill of goods, and he replaced all that stuff with a Sony CD player, which sounded awful. Years later I asked him what had become of his tape collection; he had given it away!!!!

I don't know how a fully tweaked and top of the line Crown would compare to the Studers, Ampexes, MCIs, etc, that have come up in this discussion. But I do think that Ralph would have one if he thought it competed sonically with those big boys.

Thuchan, Several years transpired between the day I sat aghast listening to the horrid first generation Sony CD player that had replaced all those Crown tape decks and the day I asked my boss about the fate of his tapes. By then I was ready to jump on them myself, if he by some luck had stored them away. I forgot to say also that when I heard the Crown cum first-generation tapes, he was using Bose 901 speakers driven by a huge McIntosh amp. When later I heard the Sony CDP, he had also truly upgraded to giant Dunleavy's. So he had much better speakers in the latter instance, yet there was no comparison in sound quality to what I had heard earlier from the very lowly Bose speakers. The Dunleavy's enabled one all the better to appreciate the shortcomings of CD in those days.

He was a renowned scientist and a true music lover, an aficionado and patron of all local concerts, a man who entertained some of the great artists in his home, including conductors and soloists who might be performing at the Kennedy Center in DC. Sometimes they played for him. (All the names escape me now.) Yet he could not hear how terrible the Sony was and could not therefore appreciate his grievous error. He often made fun of me (in a nice way) for continuing to listen to vinyl. In turn, I could never bring myself to tell him what I really thought about his ultimate choice in source material.