Tape Is Back
why you want to be taped
Artists, studios, labels, and others in the record industry have rediscovered tape. The reel-to-reel format is moving out of its niche with top performers insisting their work be taken out of the digital realm and onto tape.
Serious audiophiles pay serious cash for direct-to-tape recordings. This allows them to eke top performance out of their systems – and escape over-compressed, over-processed, and over-hyped music recorded and sometimes even generated by computers.
Only tape can capture the vast dynamic range and tiny subtleties of performances both in the studio and on stage.
By capturing music directly on tape, complex audio processors and – heaven forbid! – plugins are avoided that introduce artificial dimensions to sound.
HiFi Rediscovered
Direct-to-tape allows listeners a true HiFi experience. Over the years, the original concept of High Fidelity has been lost in a plethora of systems and processes that aim to provide the listener with a “passable” sound on MP3 and similar formats as it is being played through tiny speakers or transmitted over lossy protocols such as Bluetooth. This is how the newest generations have consumed music: it is, however, most decidedly not HiFi. Even ‘lossless’ recordings lose their essential qualities when played on sub-par systems.
Prerecorded reel tapes constitute a small but fast-growing market. Big companies such as Harman Kardon (owner of Revox/Studer) are moving in with new tape machines such as the reissue of the famous B77, now in its Mark III version and hand-build in Villingen, Germany.
This recorder, retailing for some €16,000, is but the first of a new generation of Revox/Studer tape recorders currently under development. Interestingly, Revox offers buyers a growing catalogue of prerecorded reel tapes with which the owners can get the most out of their machines.
Calling Musicians
ReelTape now offers jazz ensembles in Aragón, Catalonia, and Valencia an opportunity to get their sound on tape – and start making sales in this niche market. This is a market far removed from Spotify and other streaming services – and a market that steers well clear of artificial intelligence.
Located in Bajo Aragón (Teruel), ReelTape records your live performance and prepares and clones the resulting master tape for worldwide sale.
The recording process is entirely free of charge. Master clones are aggressively priced with 20% of gross revenue going directly to the artist(s). Master cassette tapes are also offered – another improbable niche market in the process of re-emerging.
For musicians there are no hidden costs. Artists receive a “lossless” digital copy of the recording or may buy, at (tape) cost, a copy of original tape.
Depending on the venue and the ensemble’s lineup, recordings are either made directly to a two-track master machine or to an eight-track half-inch recorder for post-production and transfer to two-track stereo.
Tech Talk
ReelTape only employs professional grade equipment and Dolby SR noise reduction for a dynamic range in excess of 90dB. This means that your performance is captured in full and with all its nuances.
The ReelTape facility in Bajo Aragón has been build on a human scale and prioritizes knowledge and technique over gadgets and wizardry. ReelTape handles most tape formats from quarter-inch 2 and 4 track to one-inch 16 and 24 track all the way up to two-inch 24 track.
Cassette tape is mastered on the industry-standard Revox/Studer B710 in its novel Mark III guise. This recorder has been fully updated by expert technicians in Switzerland.
For R2R mastering, ReelTape is spoilt for choice; from a high-speed Revox A-77 to an über high-end Tascam ATR60-2T with a Revox C270 and a Teac A7300RX plus a Revox PR99mkIII thrown in for good measure. All ReelTape machines have been restored, and are maintained, in-house to meet or exceed factory specs.
Musicians may obtain a copy of the 2-track master tape or a 4-track Dolby B copy made on an A77-Dolby. Cassette tapes are duplicated in real time on Revox machines (B710 & B215).
It is important to emphasize that ReelTape uses no digital formats or artificial intelligence in any of its recording or mastering processes.
