- Joined
- Jul 24, 2001
- Posts
- 19,043
I still have lots of tapes and reel-to-reels and listen to them from time to time. I've also recorded a mixtape not too long ago. With a good tape player, audio quality is decent enough, always liked the format. The tape saturation effect of a good reel-to-reel machine gives you some sort of natural organic compression that lets well-mastered tracks shine like gold. There are plugins for various digital recording programs that try to emulate it and some are quite good at it but nothing beats the real thing. Sometimes a bit of technical imperfection tremendously adds to acoustic perfection.
Modern technology got rid of the grit between the soundwaves, the barely audible hum, hiss, crackle and tiny inaccuracies that let the sound become alive. It's not nostalgia or anything, just listen to some Abbey Road master recordings done on EMI tape and compare the dynamics range with what we have now.
Modern technology got rid of the grit between the soundwaves, the barely audible hum, hiss, crackle and tiny inaccuracies that let the sound become alive. It's not nostalgia or anything, just listen to some Abbey Road master recordings done on EMI tape and compare the dynamics range with what we have now.