MP3 players

That's Joe Gastwirt. What about Bob Ludwig and all the rest of the big timers? I distinctly remember him and several others mentioning the 2 inch tape in an article in Mix. I'll look for it sometime............I know it's better to edit on a DAW, that has nothing to do with what's available on the internet in MP3. I also know that pop music is big on compressor/limiters and panning a flat 2 dimensional stereo "image"...and short on concerns of "fidelity to the original", especially if there was no original to begin with. They like to make it "translatable" to car audio with the top down at 80 mph!................The DAW world is great for musicians that want to get their music composed and into the market place. But nearly all audiophiles like minimalist recordings done in a real acoustic space with no compression/limiting, no digital sound space processing, etc. IMHO, the best recordings ever made were done in the golden age of stereo, with 3 omni mics spaced only a little bit apart, and direct to tape (more or less). Once you've heard one of these, you'll know what I mean. Not that I don't like modern music, but it certainly is fatigueing to listen to, even on the best/most musical systems.

Carl, I think you need to re-check your information about 2" tapes. If you would like, go to Gatewaymastering.com. As I am sure you are aware, this is Bob Ludwig's Company. The master of mastering. I will quote word for word what it says on the site. "Reel to reel tape is the most popular format for sending audio to Gateway Mastering Studios. It has a different sound quality than digital formats and is preferred by many engineers. 1/2" and 1/4" sizes are used for mastering. Mastering facilities only use stereo (2 track)machines, NOT multi-track tape(i.e. 24, 16, 8 or 4 track)." I was positive I was right becuase there is no possible way for a tape head to accurately reproduce a signal over such a wide gap(1 inch). Imagine the voltage and bias that would have to be used, they have enough problems with 1/4" gaps. The voltage required would probably blow the magnetic particle right off of the acetate. You might as well try using a MIG welder. When I said "popular music" in my last post I really meant to say "modern music" because obviously more than just the "pop stuff" is being done. I have an incredibly wide taste of music styles, so please don't think that is all that I listen to. I am 29 years old and have been listening to Sheffield Labs and other great dirct to disc stuff since before I can remember. But that's not the only stuff in the world to listen to. Have you ever listened to Dead Can Dance? I guess they could be considered popular music, although they still are a bit underground still. Most of their last recordings involved computers, and Stereophile has had a coulpe of their recordings listed in the R2D4 list. Another good mention would have to be Planet Drum, Mystery Box, and Superlingua, all by Mickey Hart. These are perfect examples of what can be acoomplished.

I have both "Into the Labyrinth" and "Planet Drum". They're good percussion discs, but sound "processed/mixed", and are. Look, I know full well that 2 inch reel tape is not 2 channel tape, but I guess I need to look that article up. They were likely referring to archiving pre "mixed down" 16 or 24 channel master tapes, obviously. The point was that they didn't feel that any digital format was sufficient for archiving. That will probably change in the next year or two, though; who knows? Anyway, I'm not as uninformed as you might think. And Gateway does a few things wrong, I didn't mean to pronounce them as "almighty".

Carl_eber, I got a neat e-mail today from Bob Ludwig. I wrote him the other day and asked a couple of questions and he got back to me. He says he is doing a lot more digital now, mostly at 88.2/24. He said he owns a 1" 2 track using Tim da Paravinci tube set-up on a Mike Spitz ATR services 1" deck. He has deck #3, and Pink Floyd own machines #1 and #2. Tim created a special curve for 15ips that measures as flat as any machine he has ever seen from 8hz to 28000hz. He calls it his analog-digital machine because it sounds so analog but has bass that goes to DC like digital can. I thought you might find this interesting. He says if he gets a chance he will e-mail me a pic of the machine.

Yes, that is interesting. Also interesting that you might know Mr. Ludwig personally. I've not found the article yet, but if I remember correctly, it was a mastering engineer on the west coast (I forget who, but I'll certainly post this word for word when I find it) who said something to the effect of: "when we can get a digital machine to do 24 bit/400 kHz, it'll be more likely that we'll archive to a digital format". I think that idea has an underlying meaning, concerning analog-to-digital converters that could perform such conversion in a linear PCM (or similar) format. It might be a while before that occurs, from what I can tell. I could be wrong.