I saw mention of this series on Tone magazine's e-newsletter today, eleven titles thus far, with one sold out, limited to 350 copies each.
Rhino High Fidelity R2R
- Thread starter MikeyFresh
- Start date
With a commensurate price tag (wish I had the scratch for R2R).
I purchased the Workingman's Dead , I am in contact with Rhino as the sound quality is really sub par to my ears. I did discover that my A7300 has NAB EQ, vs a deck with the ability to switch between NAB and IEC. I have spoken with two folks who deal with lots of decks and their description of what I might hear playing a IEC tape through a NAB deck is pretty nuanced. I have this same recording on CD and the sound is as expected. I expect Rhino /Warner Bros will follow up in 4-5 weeks, like last time I had an issue with vinyl (pressed a chunk of debris into vinyl . Anyone else here buy this tape?
SeleniumFalcon
Junior Member
Actually the differences will be quite noticeable on a wide range system. There will be a bright quality to the treble response even an aggressive response of 2.5 to 3dB increase centered around 10kHz. Also the bass will be rolled off as much as 6dB in the 30 to 50Hz region giving a weak thin quality to the low end. A technician may be able to add IEC EQ to your deck's playback circuitry, it would be worth it.
What I am hearing is significant distortion, buzzing, I tried switching playback to my secondary system to see if I could use tone controls on my integrated amp to moderate to no effect. Tried lowering the output level from the deck to no effect either If someone in the Seattle/Tacoma area has a IEC deck and wants to host a listening session.... thanks all.
Topper
Site Supporter
If you're slightly familiar with a soldering iron and perf-board you can make up a simple external filter that can get reasonably close to IEC from NAB. Never exact but a lot easier than modding your deck for one tape. Visiting someone with an IEC capable deck would probably be fun but won't tell you much about your situation other than that your Rhino tape is probably fine. Keeping your heads clean?
SeleniumFalcon
Junior Member
Outside of frequency response changes there shouldn't be buzzing or distortion. If other tapes play correctly then the problem very well could be a defective tape. The true test would be playing this tape on another machine, either NAB or IEC playback EQ.
heads clean and demagenitized. Thanks for your input. If I get a chance to listen to this on an IEC deck and it sounds fine, well then I know what I need to do. Put the tape on the shelf and find a deck with dual EQ modes, I'm in no hurry but that would be the end game. If the tape doesn't sound better, well I probably got a poor recording. My tape is #273 of a run of 300....hmmm
The sound quality reminds me of a record I recently purchased, Bill Evans BBC during record store days....played it once, ouch. Then I read the reviews, this never should have been released.....the sound quality of the recording was sub par. All my other recordings on the reel to reel sound fine. thanks for the input.
FWIW we just listened to this tape at our local Audio meetup on Monday and it sounded great. I'm in Portland, if you make the trek down, I have a deck that does NAB & IEC, so we could give it a listen here.
Limberpine, thanks. I'm booked up the next few weeks, I'll be in touch. That is likely the best solution to figure out a path forward for me. Cheers
Nice in northern NH this evening, too.
SeleniumFalcon
Junior Member
Since the subject of building a passive converter to allow an NAB deck to play a tape encoded IEC was suggested by @Topper here is a link to an article by Arian Jansen on how to do this:
Rhino mailed a new tape to me (they want the old tape back). I played it at home and it sounded "ok" not terrible, but didn't rock my socks off on a first listen. A pal in Tacoma has a new to him RS-1500 which just underwent a full restore by Curt Palme, he was free so I hustled over. Yes it is a NAB EQ deck, no option for IEC EQ. It did however eliminate a possibility of my A7300 having a problem and being the cause.
We listened to the new tape, it sounded much like it did on my home system. His system is different gear than I own, but a very nice high end system. His impression is that it was recorded a little "hot" some of the instruments (bass in particular) was a bit heavy (we had no tone control, so I'll chalk this up to not having the correct EQ)
Then we listened to the original tape, just to make sure i wasn't "hearing" things. Had to shut it down in 14 seconds, the distortion was to the point , even at a modest level, that we didn't want to damage a speaker. I doubt we would have done that, but it sounded awful.
Instuments buzzing, etc.
So how does Rhino ship 2 reels which sound so different? One is clearly a problem, the second one.... well the jury is out for a bit.
Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to connect with Limberpine and listen to this recording with the correct EQ.
My hunch is that the correct EQ will provide that last 5% of "performance" ...but I'll always be wondering if there is another copy out there that sounds 5% better on it's own.
We listened to the new tape, it sounded much like it did on my home system. His system is different gear than I own, but a very nice high end system. His impression is that it was recorded a little "hot" some of the instruments (bass in particular) was a bit heavy (we had no tone control, so I'll chalk this up to not having the correct EQ)
Then we listened to the original tape, just to make sure i wasn't "hearing" things. Had to shut it down in 14 seconds, the distortion was to the point , even at a modest level, that we didn't want to damage a speaker. I doubt we would have done that, but it sounded awful.
Instuments buzzing, etc.
So how does Rhino ship 2 reels which sound so different? One is clearly a problem, the second one.... well the jury is out for a bit.
Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to connect with Limberpine and listen to this recording with the correct EQ.
My hunch is that the correct EQ will provide that last 5% of "performance" ...but I'll always be wondering if there is another copy out there that sounds 5% better on it's own.
