Reel to Reel Tape

Dear @orpheus10 : ARC phono/CAT preamp degrades the cartridge signal even more than SS units. As more/additional links in the signal as more degradation to that audio signal.

R.

Your machine is frequency response limited and with higher noise level as is desirable  and no I'm not driven by specs as that gentleman posted. Facts are facts and some like those are important.

Anyway, that's the way you are satisfied and it's what in really counts for you. My comments are only that just: comments.

R.

The commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Under ideal laboratory conditions, humans can hear sound as low as 12 Hz and as high as 28 kHz, though the threshold increases sharply at 15 kHz in adults, corresponding to the last auditory channel of the cochlea.



Frequency response: 30Hz to 30kHz (15 ips); That's 10K above audibility.



But the bottom line can not be stated by specifications; it's all about the musical quality of the sound.

Frequency response: 30Hz to 30kHz (15 ips); That's 10K above audibility.

FWIW, LPs can do 15Hz to 45KHz; the lower limit described by tone arm mechanical resonance and the upper end by the intentional frequency limitation found in the circuitry of the cutter amplifiers.

Both LP and R2R have more high frequency response than digital at least so far...

Dont forget freq response is not the only answer. Need to ask how much data is coming through at a given frequency? sure hi rez digital has an upper freq of 40k or more, but how many samples are used to make that curve? 4 samples?

Also forgot to mention, for tape sources there is also a seller on ebay that sells NOS (new old stock) Ampex 632 in pancakes. If a person is trying to buy new tape and save a few bucks its an option. its a bit cheaper than 911, 900 or one pass 996. i tried a few of them and they were true NOS tape and were fresh. 

Not sure what his inventory is now, but the seller used to have cases of it. 632 is pretty trouble free, no sticky shed issues. Not quite as quiet or as much headroom space as some of the higher bias backcoated tapes, but sounds quite good if you are spinning at 15 or 30. If you do a search on ampex 632 you should be able to find him. 

Right before Quantegy ended tape production, they claimed they had fixed the binder issue, so I bought 4 cases of the brand new 456 with the binder fix in place. Was good for about a year, then the same old problems started to re-appear. At that point I had used 1 case out of the 4. Threw out the remaining 3 cases of tape. By that time, Quantegy had exited the tape biz completely, so really had no recourse. I still have 6 masters on that "fixed" 456 tape that I have not transferred over yet. so have to bake them just like the 1970s ampex tapes in order to play them.

and if you are doing any tape baking, forget the oven. one of the larger food dehydrators works very well, and has good temp control.