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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- This is friendly competition between two great machines... their playback heads connected to the same head preamp.
You would like to say that the sonic differences will be totally due to different playback heads design... but in reality there might be some other, less obvious effects.
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Thanks a lot for your efforts in educating us. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
You are totally welcome!
As always, two lovely machines! I *definitely* want a Studer A80 within the next couple of years. And the Otari is a fantastic machine too! I would love to own one of those also.
Thank you, Victor!
It is not impossible not to fall in love with the A80 - its looks reflect the function, but even if they didn't it would remain one of the most beautiful machines ever designed.
When many, many years ago I first saw its promotional material the dream was born. :)
Even though it's far from fair to judge anything with the standard of TH-cam SQ, I can hear the Studer give the best separation of tones and instruments.
Such evaluations are always very personal, as we all have our favorite aspects to the sound quality. Someone likes the bass, someone else the dynamics, transparency and detail, they assign different weights to those. So there really is no right and wrong.
Studer A80 favorite!
Thank you, this was very interesting and your modified BAT head preamps sounds fantastic. These combos in my view beat every other machines in previous tests, including Crown.
And that is how it should be... after all the external preamps are huge beasts compared to the internal small PC boards. With ten tubes, and two power transformers, they weigh about 40lb and draw over 100W. I just got the circuit boards for their EQ circuits, which is going to let me switch between 5 options - four tape EQ's and the RIAA. If all goes well I might even think about making it a commercial product. :)
@@Foxbat9000 Sounds very good, you should make it a commercial product if they sound so nice. Do you also have the schematic for the amplification part?
@@szvencel The EQ circuit boards just came in, and the first one was assembled and is running. :) But it is specifically designed for BAT phono stages.
nice comparison. Both are really nice machines. The Otari decks were also offered with Butterfly heads. Also completely agree with your comments on outboard tape head preamps. And if a person goes nuts, the outboard preamp can exceed the cost of the deck.
Thank you! And speaking of Otari heads - I think a clarification is in order. The machine in the video has what looks like butterfly heads, but they are different. To the best of my knowledge Otari had two styles - one had the traditional parallel poles with wide guard band, and the other one has the poles shaped like a V, so they look kind of like the butterflies, BUT... they are truncated at their apexes, so as result they did not come as close together as the real butterflies, and as result they maintained wide guard band, or gap.
Like I said, I nave never see the real, narrow guard band, Otari heads, so if they indeed existed that would be an interesting information.
And yes, like anything in the field of high end, it is only the matter of time before the prices take off... there is already a $70K head preamp on the market.
Fortunately, however, one doesn't have to go that high to get wonderful sound quality - if you know what you are doing, $2K will get you into high percentile. One of the preamps I have can be found for about $1,500 on the used market, and... surprisingly... it is one of my favorites. :)
@@Foxbat9000 Thanks for the clarification on the heads. I have never compared so cannot offer any additional information. I have a deck set up with new flux magnetics heads but have never compared them to the stock MTR heads. Sounds like you have experimented with different tape head preamps as have I. Would agree with you on even a modest tape head preamp offering surprisingly good sonics. Thank you.
I strongly suspect that a Studer A-820 in decent condition connected in your tape-head preamplifier would be the finest Reel to Reel machine ever. Thank you very much !
Well, it certainly has great tape transport, no questions about that, but many people feel the Flux Magnetics heads are superior to the Studer ones, so I suspect there would be tough competition. And let's not forget the questionable quality small opamp based preamp sitting in the headblock... I will likely never find out, as I am reluctant to go ahead and butcher its headblock for direct connection, eliminating the small preamp, as finding a replacement headblock for that machine is like catching the Snowman... people have spent years hunting with no success.
those was the days the sound these things produce is undo-able today
Звук Штудера,- понравился больше. Отари больше акцент держит на фортепиано- но остальные инструменты, менее естественны, и взвешенны чем на
А-80
Very nice. Can you make a video comparison of how different tape machines change square wave signals at different speeds and levels?
Just by looking at how square wave changes on oscilloscope you can see how tape machine changes the sound.
But don't we already know at least the better part of the answer to this question? :) The visible distortion to square wave is what the Phase Compensation was designed to correct.
However, at least in the Studer line, the models with Phase Compensation - I believe starting with the A810... don't seem to sound all that great. They tend to lose in the sound quality competition to their older, more primitive brother - the A80.
To me this was the confirmation of my long time bit of philosophy - very often the obsession with trying to eliminate some visible defect damages the overall sound quality. So we end up in that "Looks good, measures great... but sounds bad" conundrum.
I am not at all against running some of that comparison, but I am afraid that you will face the need to explain how the Crown, with all its distortions, ends up sounding so much better, to our ears, than the far more advanced Studer.
I did a bit of that last night, among other things, and on my ATR-102 the square wave looked very good, actually... the clean fronts with just a small amount of ringing, some of it I am sure is my generator. I was expecting worse. So perhaps a video will be forthcoming.
@@Foxbat9000 Nice. It will be interesting to see how they perform. Square wave represents the frequency response of a system because it contains all frequencies in equal proportion. To avoid ringing and aliasing from a digital generator you can set your test tone frequency relatively to your sample rate.
If your sample rate is 48000, the test tones should be 480, 240, 120, 60, 30 hz
If your sample rate is 44100, the test tones should be 441, 220.5, 110.25, 55.125, 27.5625 hz
Setting the frequency low is generally better because you will see the wider range.
Also output/input Impedance mismatch can cause ringing because the reflections are not terminated properly.
Tape machine itself can cause ringing too depending on many factors.
Hi, I'm planning to adapt my DIY tube mc-phono pre for an ext. head amp for my Revox A77. I do not know yet what load should I give to the head and a 2nd thought comes as well, what happenes to the tape bias that has been recorded to the tape, but the bias trap is not included into my head amp... Maybe you could enlighten me in these topics as well? Greetings from Budapest!
The load issue is very simple, you just take your head inductance and calculate the LR pole frequency so it is well above your audio range, for instance, set it to 35KHz. There is no bias frequency on the tape, so don't worry about it. :)
@@Foxbat9000 Thank you so much! Kind regards, Feri
@@Foxbat9000 Hi, I prepared the modification on my RIAA MC-pre, and made a simulation, would it be too cheeky of me to ask you to take a look?
@@ferencgraca7574 Not at all, email me at 38sc@comcast.net
Why didn't you dub the audio direct into the video? Then a good comparison can be made.....
The reason is simple - I do all this in between other things, using my phone as the recorder. I actually bought a nice camera, but for some reason that did not work out, and I need to go back to it someday. So at least for now I hope the content overweighs some imperfections.
But there is also a philosophical aspect. Feeding directly would be akin recording the electric guitars plugged right into your mixer - certainly NOT my preferred way... as we know, the good recordings are done in the acoustic space, using the guitar amps and microphones. After all - when we are in front of a system we are listening to the speakers and the room.
I think both approaches have their merits and I would like to try the direct feed, but at this moment between a full time job and some family needs there are other priorities.
@@Foxbat9000 Ok. I understand.
Is that Vince Guaraldi?
It is the LA Network tape, their tribute to Brubeck.