Recently i've been trialling some recordings using different types of media and my conclusions are this:- 1st place goes to Maxell reel to reel recorded on a Revox B77 reel-to-reel recorder.
2nd place goes to Maxell Vertex Metal Tape recorded on a Nakamichi CR7 tape machine.
3rd goes to Sony ES DAT recorded on a Sony PCM-R300 DAT recorder,and lastly a Sony CDR-74 audio CD recording made on a Alesis Masterlink studio mastering recorder.
This was not a great surprise to me i usually record to tape anyway as it's what i'm used to,however,what did surprise me is that after all innovations made in digital replay over the years analogue still won through!
Recordings were made from either vinyl or radio sources. Just wondered what other members thought about my findings and also to ask the question,"am i the only one STILL recording primarily on audio tape?"

Kind of funny if you record a DAT at 48khz or 24/96khz sampling rate with no errors, assuming the source and you pre-amp are good quality, DAT would take the lead by a long shot, it blow away the best reel to reel deck on the consumer market and any tape recorder on the planet, tape decks even my highend Nakamichi dragon doesn't even come close to beating a good DAT deck let alone Nakamichi CR7 has no chance in hell. Reason why studios master everything on DAT

But then again I am using a Sony DTC-1000ES recorder that feature, 4 motor direct drive system (independent motors for supply reels) to do most of my recording with, also have a Sony DTC-690 that modded to do direct digtal copys from any source which has three motor direct drive.

Next best would go to reel to reel, then tape.

If you really want to get into sound, LP-vinyl would be the best if listen to with a good cartridge and heavy and good turntable so you don't get the rumble effects.

Interesting you should find otherwise.
My DAT machine can only record up to 48khz but my Alesis records up to 24/96khz and although i made recordings at this resolution i STILL found the reel beat it hands down! I let my ears decide which was closest to the source material.
Using the Super Bit Mapping setting on the DAT machine which helps clean up the digital harshness that sometimes occurs at the higher frequencies,i found that it sounded very stable but still there was a trace of 'glassiness' to the sound. The same was true of the Alesis recording at 24/96. The sound was exceptionally clean and detailed but still sounded a tad less real/faithful to the original.
The Nakamichi recorded without Dolby was remarkably faithful. Obviously hiss was a problem but with a tape such as the Vertex this was minimal and after a while you forgot all about it and just enjoyed the music!
The reel-to-reel was the icing on the cake! With some old Dub recordings especially,the low frequencies were frankly absent from the Alesis and the DAT,even at 24/96!
So,my conclusions remain that for the majority of recordings i'll use audio tape,reel-to-reel for special occasions,DAT for archiving older recordings and the Alesis for transfering recordings to CD if required,usually by third parties.
Recordings were made from a Linn Sondek record deck and Naim amplification,and also a Hitachi FT-5500 MK2 tuner.

I love Reel to Reel, don't get me wrong, use the Pioneer RT-909 deos have a very warm crisp sound and very detail sound to it.

The best way to put this is, Analog audio is reproduced while digital audio is sampled They both are going to sound different, as far as DAT vs REEL to REEL it won't be fair to compare them they both are good, just different.

I concur!
Just had a thought...i.m gonna try a few recordings on S-VHS just as an aside. I'll let you know how i get on.

are we talking analogue here, or what ?

i agree, RevoX B77, but not with Maxell, with TDK or Ampex-tape.
best tapedeck i ever had is my Nakamichi RX-505. never had the
chance to lay my hands on a Dragon, but that wouldn't bring more
quality than i can hear/ make it out, i guess.
2nd. best deck is a RevoX B710, shares it's ranking with a Denon
DR-M33. All those decks rock best with TDK/MaxeLL/Sony or Goldstar
metal-tapes, any CrO2 is undiscussable.

nothing can beat my B77, because nothing gives me the same pleasure,
there might be the odd other 26cm-spool-machine, my RevoX is best...

analogue sound ROCKS, love my vinyls, i seriously dislike digital
recordings / mp3...

Analogue all the way!
I also have a Revox B710 MK2 tape deck and agree that these are very fine machines.

quote:

Originally posted by dinosaur:
I concur!
Just had a thought...i.m gonna try a few recordings on S-VHS just as an aside. I'll let you know how i get on.

Wont matter if its s-vhf or regular vhs
as the hifi audio is the same on these machines.
Uses its own FM signal track on the tape.
They also use a dbx type compression-decompression.
Also quality of the tape has little effect as it uses FM signal to record it.

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I can only go by what I’ve experienced.

So I agree with some of what dinosaur said, but I would put it this way round

1 Reel to Reel

2 DAT

3 Tape (when coming of a Nakamichi or Revox)

I don’t know if anyone here has had a chance to listen to the 2 box Nakamichi 1000 DAT player, the best DAT player I have ever heard.

Also about the Maxell Vertex a very good tape but to me it throws the music at me rather then present music to me like the TDK MA-XG does.

By DrMR2000

Quote “my highend Nakamichi dragon doesn't even come close to beating a good DAT deck let alone Nakamichi CR7 has no chance in hell.”

I pick on this line because so many people think that a Nakamichi Dragon is better then a Nakamichi CR7, just because the Dragon has more controls, does everything for you and cost more it must be better. No Not true I have a CR7 and my friend has a Dragon and 1000ZXL. I have compared them side by side the CR7 is a far better machine than the Dragon and the 1000ZXL just kills them both.

Most of the above is my personal opinion but the one about the Dragon and CR7 are shared by more than just me, see link below

www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/hfw/oldew...l/nakamichicr7e.html

My Set-up that I use for listening and recording is

Acoustic Solid One to One turntable with Dynavector 507 Mk II arm and Roksan Shiraz cartridge into a Rega Ios phono stage.

Spectral Pre-amp going into NuForce 9SE V2 mono block amps via spectral MI-350 interconnects

All into Peak Consult speakers via more Spectral cables

This set-up can pickup the slightest amount of change in the system, hence very at telling differences between sources

quote:

Nakamichi CR7

The Nakamichi dragon is better then the Nakamichi CR7 "A" version not to sure about the "E" since I never heard it, or seen this deck, Nakamichi dragon is better when it comes to playback and it not because it cost more or has more controls!!

The Dragon is the very best playback deck ever made. Period! No other machine that I am aware of automatically corrects for azimuth errors of the tape being played, and the dual direct drive capstan mechanism ensures about the lowest flutter of any cassette deck ever built! And it is certainly up there in the top 10 for recording too. If you like to tweak your recordings by hand to the nth degree, only a handful of other machines offer the same degree of flexibility over exactly how you set your bias and dolby calibration as does the Dragon.

But the general consensus is that the CR-7a is slightly better for recording. I think that this is for two reasons: 1: The auto calibraiton feature elimiates the human error factor that exists when calibrating the Dragon. 2: The record head azimuth is adjustable on the CR7A (but not playback head azimuth), whereas this is fixed on the Dragon.

Nakamichi 1000ZXL Cassette I give you that one, as it was there Top-Of-The-Line deck from 1980 impressive unit, I alway wanted to get a hold of this deck, never could find one for sale in good shape.

Nakamichi 1000 DAT recorder, of course it beat out any tape deck made period! Don't need to go into detail on this one.

Some people do say the CR7A and CR7E are different but I don’t know about that, as I have not compared the 2 side by side. I don’t see why Nakamichi would the same machine for Europe and America then make one better than the other, don’t make sense. The only difference I know is the voltage CR7A 120v, CR7E 240v

The Dragon may have the auto azimuth correction but how annoying is it when it hunts around during playback, how bad is that?

Yes if you want to tweak to the nth degree then the Dragon is for you, I don’t and the CR7 does a better job without all the bells and whistles. Why complicate things when simple will do.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on CR7 / Dragon. Since I have had a chance to listen to all 3 side by side, I know which way I and most other people rank them.

I always wanted the Nakamichi DAT player but it was out of my league at the time, plus the recording industry made sure DAT never took off as a home recording / playback system for domestic use.

...all Nakamichis with "E" are made for the european market, means made for 220/240V, 50Hz,
they have a different main-transformer than the "non-E"-models, those have a plain 110V-transformer (as my RX-505 wich i use with an extra 220/110V transformer...)

You could listen to two different Dragons and have different results. The electronics being discussed here for magnetic media are old and stored in different enviroments and have different histories of use. Different decks may be calibrated for different tapes. Capacitors get old and lose some of their conductive and sonic properties as well. After a while, no two units with the same model number are really 100% alike anymore...

There are mods available which will improve all of these units, but be prepared to pay... Check out this URL: ESL Nak service

I know a guy in the www.tapeheads.net forum with two ESL upgraded Dragons (one cal'd for MA-XG the other for Maxell Vertex) and an ESL upgraded CR-7A. He sent me a Sony metal tape recorded on the CR-7A that sounds utterly phenomenal, yet he says his Dragons playback his CR-7 tapes better than the CR-7 does, and he insists that the Dragons are ultimately better decks. Not to take anything from the CR-7, but the Dragon's reputation is not based just on hype and cool name. There really is something to it...

But, seriuosly, at this level of audio the results are so incredibly subjective and often times you can blow thousands of $$$'s just to get an incrimental improvement. That point of diminishing returns kick in quite hard. Eventually I will have a Dragon of my own, but for now I'm really happy with the results I get from my current crop of Naks.

I've recorded direclty onto CD, DAT, minidisk, reel to reel with great results. Yet, I somehow always manage to come back to a good type II or type IV tape in one of my Naks. Maybe because it's just so easy and reliable. Even when I record on my CD recorder, I run a simultaneous backup onto tape, which has saved my arse a couple of times, too. Another factor to consider is that you can push a signal harder to analog without immediate distortion or clipping than you can to a digital recorder. My music choices are typically too dynamic for latent hiss to be much of a factor. Plus, I'm usually recording DJ sessions and tend to get louder the more I get into it. And my decks are in really good shape and I end up listening to stuff on my boomers anyway.

I'll shut up now. I could go on about this topic forever...

Just found this interesting comparison of Nakamichi’s on Tapeheads site
A Dragon vs CR-7 vs ZX-9 vs ZX-7 vs 682ZX

http://www.tapeheads.net/showthread.php?t=2308