Why not magnetic tapes in stead of vinyl records?

Convenience is one reason. I am a big fan of tape but have vinyl,cds and SACD's. Total collection is about 25,000 pieces of media. I have over 5000 tapes, R2R and cassettes. My R2R collection has many commercially recorded tapes in both two track and four track formats, including some at 15ips, 7.5ips and 3.75ips. I have quite a few titles in all formats, so I often get to compare the sound quality of each medium, like Miles Blue. Playback equipment is all high end, so most of the comparisons are pretty revealing. Which media is the best? Depends, its complicated. For Miles Blue the SACD is the hands down winner, which was mastered from the original master tapes. Which leads me back to what is best. The most convenient always wins as it means you listen to more music, and for me that is what it is all about.

Thank you Atamasphere. Onhwy61
I thought we were talking about Home audio products NOT professional gear? Who the Heck bought a REVOX tape player back in the day??? No one for home use. Sony,Akai,Tandberg,Nakamichi,these were the brands in stores for consumers. The only people buying professional tape decks were using them in studios to record live music! Not for LP to Tape transfer.The only reason you would record your LP to tape was to make a custom recording of all your favorite songs or to record a few sides of a record so you wouldn't have to get up and flip after 20mins.

I believe Ralph K. was referring to direct to disc recordings as having better performance than analog tape. As a format I believe direct to disc's popularity ranks well below DVD-As and only slightly above Elcaset. In other words, it's really obscure. In the normal record production process all vinyl discs were sourced from analog tape so it would be impossible for the vinyl copy to exceed the performance of the tape original.

Revox made and sold any number of home oriented reel to reel tape recorders. They were more expensive than the typical Sony or Pioneer and generally had better transports, but did not necessarily sound better. One of the major uses of home reel2reels was recording FM concert and classical music broadcasts.

Nobody loves open reel tape more than I do, but it's a really impractical medium unless you DO love it. You can't find any particular track on a 7" reel without searching endlessly and you sure can't find it on a 10 1/2" reel. So you pretty much have to play the whole thing, like it or not. If your back-coated tape is attacked by "sticky shed syndrome" you might as well throw it out (yeah, I know, there's a fix, but still).

All the commercial reels date from the 60s to 80s (Jim Nabors vocalizing, anyone?) and many have had their high frequencies destroyed from being played with magnetized tape heads. New raw tape is expensive. The machines are mostly 30 years old AT LEAST and tend to be finicky and in need of regular service by too-few tape techs. If you still want to get into this "hair shirt" medium, don't say I didn't warn you :-)

So why do I love it? Because some of the tapes are simply stunning sonically. The sound of open reel tape in general is addictive (but stick to at least 7 1/2 IPS tape speed; slower-speed tape tends to really suck). And you can't beat the sight of those spinning reels.

I thought we were talking about Home audio products NOT professional gear? Who the Heck bought a REVOX tape player back in the day??? No one for home use.

No one? Really?

I did, soon after college in the late 70s. Others I've met here did too. Perhaps you've been hanging with the wrong crowd. ;-)