By Michael Miguest


My Blog from September 2013 introduced the High-End Audio world to Sound Design Labs. SDL is the brain-child of Donald Smith whose cables and power distribution products have no equal in the present high-end audio marketplace. My September 2013 Blog was about the revolutionary Joule Case Reference AE Hybrid power Distribution Unit/ Bias Power Supply employing their paradigm shift Active-Link Technology. 


In April of 2014, I reviewed SDL's HPC-4 interconnect cables. http://www.audiocognoscenti.com/blog/archives/04-2014

This year, Mr. Michael Fremer at AXPONA 2015, declared the Lakeview Audio Room which presented with David Berning components, Lahave single-driver Speakers, Artisan Fidelity Turntable, Lampizator Dac4, and Sound Design Labs cabling and Power Distribution products his favorite of the show.

Here is the latest vindication for Sound Design Labs, David Berning, Lahave Audio, and Artisan Fidelity courtesy of AV Showrooms.

Artisan Fidelity, Lake View Audio, LaHave Audio, David Berning Co , Sound Design Labs, AXPONA 2015                       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b91ydKjb7HQ   

Better Late than Never!

   

 
 

 
 
 
 

 

By Michael Miguest


Collectors of audio and recording equipment know the value of a vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder. I recently purchased the 1978 Teac A-6600 which in my humble opinion, is one of the finest Teac decks ever made. I owned the Teac A-2300SD thru-out the 70's and 80's. Reel to Reels were in use before the rise of cassettes and compact discs and offered fast recording and playback speeds without suffering a hit in quality. Recording at faster speeds also proved beneficial to the tape's signal; spreading the signal over a larger area decreased dropouts and various forms of background noise, so a reel-to-reel tape recorder still comes in handy for users who insist on perfect recordings. 



Like any magnetic recording medium, reel-to-reel recorders store the full analog wave by using a very small electromagnet (the head) to create a magnetic field, which magnetizes the ferrous oxide (rust) on the tape. During playback, the magnetic data on the tape creates a magnetic field that the head converts back to electrical signals.


Reel-to-Reel offers the advantage of being a quality analog recording medium. While many rave about the clarity of digital recordings, audio signals are analog, not digital. Any digital recording is a modification of the original sound wave that converts it to digital data. When it is time to convert the data back into analog sound waves, the wave is reproduced from the digital data. While this produces a very clean sound wave, it is not exactly the same as the original. For this reason, many audio enthusiasts prefer the true sound of analog recording methods, such as reel-to-reel.




The reel-to-reel provides the highest recording quality among the magnetic recording methods. The earliest form of magnetic recording was the wire recorder, invented in 1900 by Valdemar Poulsen. The wire recorder used a wire instead of a magnetic tape. It was not until the 1930s that magnetic tape was invented and perfected. However, when compared to Compact Cassettes, and 8 Tracks, it is the least convenient to use and is not portable. The higher quality of the reel to reel comes from a combination of the tape speed and width. The higher the tape speed is, the lower the signal-to-noise ratio is. The wider the tape is, yields a better frequency response and lower distortion.


With the cost of vinyl skyrocketing, I plan to use this vintage and superb sound quality technology to record newly purchased Lps thus minimizing wear and tear on the actual albums. In addition, I plan to record albums I don't have or can't find that my music lover circle possesses. For those interested in greater depth with regard to this medium:

 http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/taperecorderadvice.htm