The most expensive music format (in the world)

There are links in the video description text box if you need more information on anything covered (or not covered) in the video. You can also skip past the history section and get straight to the present day high end-tapes by jumping to

Having worked with plenty of professional reel-to-reel recorders back in the day, the only regret I have is not holding on to a couple of Nagras and Stellavoxes I had, to sell them to

Tape is honestly one of my favourite formats. It's a shame that it's become so expensive and unattainable for most casual listeners. It was such an elegant and yet simplistic platform.

"Getting into reel to reel tape, eh?"

Being an audiophile seems like a masochisticly expensive hobby...

The quality of that recording from 1958 was awesome! The technology may have progressed, but the direction of mastering has certainly gone backwards.

This brought back memories. I was a (mostly live) sound engineer in the 70s and Revox were the standard for semi-pro (and a lot of pro) work. I couldn't afford one so bought a Tandberg, which was surprisingly good and which I used to record live gigs from the mixing desk as well as using it for sound effects for theatre. Ws almost ready to buy B77 when of course Revox brought out the 700 series which was superb but way out of all our pockets. The quality of all these decks was excellent - largely because of the wide dynamic range - none of the compression and Dolby-ish processing which made cassettes sound so boxy unless you had a Nakamishi.

"The machine only plays One Direction" was a scary way for me to mishear.

Absolutely love this guy. Informative, down to earth language, and very dry humour. Really looking forward to visiting the next UK hi-fi show with my newly acquired knowledge of open reel machines.

being a producer in a former life, I've had the pleasure of mastering onto 1/2" 30ips, now that sounds truly great. Make a copy onto DAT is preferable to a hard drive to my ears. One problem with buying old tapes, is that they are falling to bits and ungluing themselves by the hour!

Sweet, sweet dynamic range

I had to smile, when you said "how good is my hearing" :-)

Excellent video presentation! A lot of time and effort went into producing this history lesson/audio analysis surrounding open-reel systems. Kudos!

looks like there is hope that VHS will be back in again soon

R2R was indeed awesome. There's also something mystical about watching the units play a tape. Not quite as mesmerizing as a needle tracking vinyl but still a thing

Great video; thanks! I’ve tried and tried (for decades) to think kindly about extreme audiophiles, but I have come to the conclusion that they care more about high fidelity than they do about music. (And yeah, I have an Otari Mk II 50/50 that plays 15ips.)

The Revox B77’s main home was in theatres for sound for shows. I still have three in my theatre I can’t bear to get rid of. Though having seen the prices they go for I’m tempted. When preparing the sound designs for shows very often you would have different speed machines for different effects. For example music and very specific effects on 15ips, background atmosphere that may run under entire scenes on 7 1/2 ips. Amazing to think we stopped using them as Minidisc was cheaper and faster to work with. Now we use Apple computers with QLab software that means we can easily do things that would have required multiple Revox playback machines and geniuses to operate them.

You make amazing videos! The footage, editing, background research, sound, etc is so great. Most importantly, however, is YOU! You are so well spoken, intelligent, and thoughtful. Thank you for these videos!

I heard my first reel to reel recorded audio as a teenager during the CD is king era. The tape was the Miami Vice soundtrack played at the 15 ips quality through a very nice sound system and my mind was blown. To this day the quality and warmth of reel to reel is superb.

I've got a vintage pair of ears that seem to be the limiting factor in my audiophile system. They haven't made ears like mine in over 40 years.