By this point in the evolution of audio tech, vinyl was supposed to be old hat, cassettes long ago forgotten about and wired headphones consigned to the dustbin of history.
But times as they are, not only are all three enjoying a resurgence, there’s also another old technology enjoying an unexpected revival: reel-to-reel tapes (R2R for short).
Recording The Masters (RTM), a leading manufacturer of analogue audio tapes, tells me it’s enjoyed a 50-60 per cent increase in sales since 2023.
Finally, even after getting one into your home, just how much will it cost you to re-buy your record collection in yet another format? (Spoiler: it’s a lot.)
Going back to the source
We could spend all day debating which format sounds better – that’s what the comments section is for – but enthusiasts of reel-to-reel point out some technical advantages over vinyl.
Iain Betson is an ex-BBC engineer who services and repairs reel-to-reel machines for a living at Reel Resilience. He says R2R sounds better than vinyl across the frequency range.
“You’ve got a higher frequency response – a top-end tape machine will manage 18-20kHz flat signal response, whereas you’re very unlikely to get that out of a piece of vinyl,” he says. “The noise floor is a good 10-15dB lower than vinyl. And there’s greater channel separation – vinyl manages about 26dB, but tape is easily up in the 40s.”
This doesn’t just make recordings sound better; it reveals whole new sides to them. Betson says that on the R2R tape of A Day In The Life, Lennon and McCartney’s voices are hard over to one side because of the superior channel separation. Whereas on vinyl, they sound much closer to the centre.
Dave Denyer, a hi-fi PR who runs The Reel To Reel Rambler as a passion project, says that the step up in sound quality from vinyl to tape is akin to going from MP3 to vinyl. “It really is that much of a leap,” he says. “After all, it is the source.”
Tim Chapman, of tape manufacturer RTM, echoed Denyer's point. “What you’re hearing on reel-to-reel is the actual audio signal being captured in the magnetic particles, rather than a digital representation of it made up of zeroes and ones,” he says. “So of course, it should sound better.”
You’re also hearing the recording on the same kind of machine on which it was recorded – and the fewer steps involved, the purer the sound should be.
“Recording to tape is much more streamlined – it’s essentially electronic waves going into a box, going through the amplifiers, turning into a magnetic head, which induces magnetic flux into the tape, and that’s it, job done,” Betson says.
“It’s not then produced on something that waggles around in a glass master, which they then stamp out and mass produce, and then have a bit of diamond waggle around in that groove to get the audio off [as with vinyl]. That’s all gone.”
Or, as Mike Valentine from audiophile label Chasing The Dragon puts it: “I’ve seen a beef burger made from a cow, but never a cow made from a beef burger.”
At which point I felt like I'd contracted mad cow disease.
“Whoa!”
For the sake of argument – and I can feel the comments section lighting up already – let’s say that R2R does sound better than vinyl. But how? What’s the actual character of its sound?
“Reel-to-reel has more air and space and a higher resolution,” Valentine says. He thinks the brain has to do less processing to interpret the sound, which, in his experience, sees people relax their shoulders and become more drawn into the music.
“There’s a warmth, a depth and a clarity to it that you don’t get with any other format,” says Chapman. “I was in a studio in the US where Arctic Monkeys had recorded, and the engineer had recorded them both digitally and on a quarter-inch tape reel. He did an AB test for me – the tape recording just feels live, like if you close your eyes, they could be playing right there. There’s just another level to it.”
Betson is more hesitant when drawn on the actual nature of the sound – during our hour-long conversation, this is the only time he’s lost for words. He thinks there’s more to the format than pure audio alone.
“People do a lot of listening with their eyes,” he says. “And when they see that tape going around, they feel all warm and like it must sound better – and I’m not going to argue with them. There’s definitely something about it, but it’s hard to put it into words…”
Maybe “Whoa!” captures it best. At an audio show a few years ago, Betson pulled some strings to get his hands on a reel-to-reel pressing master of Billie Jean – that’s the definitive source from which copies are made. Even the pros were astounded. “A friend of mine is the audio technician for Sam Fender, and when he heard the kick drum on it, even he was like ‘Whoa!’" Betson says. "And I smiled at him and said, ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’”
‘Fresher’, ‘more open’, and ‘how the artist heard it’ are the phrases that I heard a lot when talking to these reel-to-reel experts. I was slightly disappointed to learn that the hiss you usually associate with tape is no more, as the tapes are much higher quality than they used to be. And some of the quality even survives compression into a digital format for streaming – “You lose the ‘hi-fi’-ness of it, because that’s the nature of compression, but the extra texture will still be audible, even on an MP3,” says Chapman.
But because it’s more revealing, reel-to-reel demands more of the artists when they’re recording. There’s nowhere to hide – there’s no auto-tune for off-vocals, no easy dropping in of notes to correct the timing. You can edit the recording with tape, but it’s a lot harder – you have to 'punch in' or even splice it using a razor blade. You can't just change everything on the recording, like with digital. A band has to have the chops to be able to perform.
“With digital, when you can do 300 takes for your vocal, it’s a very different atmosphere in the studio,” says Chapman. “They think, ‘Oh, no problem, we can just do it again.’ But with tape, the band has to get it right, and that brings an energy that really translates to the recording – it’s much closer to a gig performance. We have to say to a lot of bands – you have to rehearse more.”
Chasing The Dragon records its tape sessions in one go, all the way through, so if there’s a mistake, they have to start again. “That's why we always use very high-quality orchestras and musicians – they don’t just play the right notes, they give a performance, which is what it's all about,” says Valentine.
Despite this, more bands are discovering the joys of recording to tape – Black Pumas and Man/Woman/Chainsaw are particular advocates. Because while it might not be as perfect-sounding as a digital recording, it is more authentic and more human, and will help them stand out in a field crowded with AI slop and auto-tuned ephemera. It will even make them a better live band, in some instances.
Get reel
If you’re looking to get started with reel-to-reel tape, you’ll need to do your homework. This is high-end hi-fi, and so nothing is straightforward. Tapes come in different widths, materials, lengths, diameters and equalisations.
You’ll also see the initialism ‘IPS’ – that stands for inches per second. So with 15 IPS, you have 15 inches of tape moving past the record head every second. You can also get 30 IPS and 7.5 IPS, but 15 IPS is pretty standard. While 30 IPS is slightly better quality, it uses twice as much tape, so it isn’t as practical from a recording perspective.
You also get different magnetic formulas of tape, which will affect the sound. For example, RTM sells the SM 900 and SM 911 (SM stands for Studio Master). Because the SM 900 is thicker and has a different formula than the SM 911, more audio signal can be recorded onto it, which makes for a really clean sound. But when you hit the SM 911 with the same amount of audio signal, it distorts a bit.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing – some people love it. And it really depends on what you’re recording. For a band like Nirvana, you want that crunchy, distorted, grungy sound, so you would use the SM 911. But a string quartet would record onto the SM 900, as it has a lower noise floor and more headroom.
Until recently, reel-to-reel releases were limited to jazz and classical – typical audiophile fare, in other words. But 2023 saw The White Stripes’ Elephant released on the format, and last year Rhino (the archive division of Warner) released two rock albums to test the water: T.Rex’s Electric Warrior and Yes’ The Yes Album. Both were limited runs of 500 copies, and both sold out.
Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead followed last month and sold out in 10 days. This year, Rhino plans to release 15 classic rock albums, and while the exact titles are still under wraps, I’m promised there will be plenty of big names. Rhino holds the rights to Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Ramones and ZZ Top, among others.
Tapes aren't available from high street retailers, so you'll need to head to specialists like Chasing The Dragon and Audio Affair (there's a handy directory on The Reel-To-Reel Rambler on where to buy tapes, and even where to buy blank tapes to make your own recordings ). And keep an eye on the reel-to-reel section of the Rhino store for new releases.
Obviously, you’ll need something to play them on, and here too we’re seeing a resurgence. Ten years ago, no new reel-to-reel machines were being made. Now, a handful of companies have re-entered the market. And the good news is they’re better than the vintage machines of the 1970s and 80s, principally due to better electronic architecture, newer components and a lack of wear and tear.
The bad news? They don’t come cheap.
Probably the best known is Revox’s B77 Mk III (the B77 Mk II was hailed as a classic during R2R’s heyday). That costs €16,995 (around £15,000 / $20,000 / AU$28,000). But that’s chump change compared to what else is available.
The Analog Audio Design TP-1000 costs around £20,000, and the Ballfinger M 063 series costs an even higher £23,000, for example.
But the biscuit is comprehensively taken by the Metaxas & Sins Papillon, which, in certain finishes, looks like something worn around the shoulders of 1980s wrestlers Legion Of Doom. That costs in the neighbourhood £70,000.
You don’t have to buy a new machine, of course. You can pick up a decent model on secondhand auction sites for around £300-400. But you’ll then need to have it serviced, especially if it’s sat doing nothing for years.
From an experienced engineer, this will cost between £600 and £900, depending on what needs doing (if it needs new heads, which will also need to be aligned correctly, the cost rises to around £2000). The machines will then need servicing every two or three years to keep them running smoothly.
The tapes themselves are also not cost-of-living-crisis-friendly. While the Rhino releases sold for $300, Chasing The Dragon’s bespoke recordings go for £450, with double albums setting you back up to £850.
Everyone I spoke to assured me that the tapes themselves are expensive in the first place, and that recording to the format is a very labour-intensive process, all of which I’m sure is true. But that kind of money is a tough sell to all but the most avid of audiophiles.
A growing niche
The cost means R2R is never going to be mainstream, but then not everything has to be.
Whether it’s nostalgia, digital refusenik-ery or something else altogether, there’s definitely a growing demand for better sound quality and a return to the analogue ways of the past – just look at the vinylphile format that launched recently.
Of course R2R will never compete with vinyl. The tapes come in a bewildering array of types, they’re prohibitively expensive, and there’s a very limited selection of albums available.
The players are also a pain to set up and fussy to run. Even Betson, an unashamed fan with a vested interest in their success, describes them as, “a bloody inconvenience,” that, "like grand pianos, don’t like being moved.”
The whole format is completely impractical. So the fact it’s enjoying a resurgence goes some way to restoring my faith in humanity. Sometimes the good things in life are worth a little inconvenience, after all.
MORE:
The best speakers to listen to
The best record players around
Forget speakers and amps – this is the best upgrade I’ve made to my hi-fi listening room in years
