Reelin' in the Years
Chances are that a certain small percentage of this readership remains faithful to the audio fidelity of reel-to-reel tape. Such "tape heads" celebrate the superiority of analog to digital recordings and seek a listening experience as rich and unadulterated as that enjoyed by recording engineers. The Tape Project caters to this diminishing yet adamant constituency with a slowly growing catalog of reel-to-reel editions of such classic jazz albums as Sonny Rollins's "Saxophone Colossus," Bill Evans's "Waltz for Debby," and Mose Allison's "Creek Bank"; blues guitarist Robert Cray's "False Accusations"; and classical works by the London Symphony Orchestra.
They aren't cheap, either. Each tape costs $200 via one of their subscription plans, or $329 retail. So why do they do it? As they explain in their FAQ:
Most people have not had the experience of hearing studio master tapes. Many formats have been introduced with the promise of bringing master tape sound into the home listening room.Yeah, right.
We don't expect that this tape project will replace any of your other favorite formats, so we see no need to dwell on the drawbacks of any other format. Suffice it to say that we don't offer an 'analog-like' listening experience. We are offering a chance to have in your own listening room an actual analog listening experience as close to the original master tape as practical.
[via Boing-Boing]