Audiophiles Bemoan The End of the Reel – Jeff Tweedy and Steve Albini aren’t going digital even though the last company that made hi-fi audio tape has closed its doors. Via Gapers Block.
Gotta love those Wall Street Journal drawings!
Looking ahead to a tape-starved future, Mr. Tweedy has a fallback: The band has an archive of around 100 reels of tape it has used in recording its various albums. By splicing out and saving the final version of each song, he figures they can maintain the archive and also generate a supply of tapes that can be recycled for future recording sessions.
Still, Mr. Tweedy jokes, if the tape scarcity continues, even some of the archived recordings might become expendable. “I’m just fearful that all the master tapes at the loft would be worth more if they were blank,” he says.
More discussion on this article at Albini’s Electrical Audio forum.
someone at another board posted this from TapeOp:
“Just got off the Phone with the guys from Lyndstrom/ATR services.
THEY WILL BE MAKING TWO TAPE FORMULATIONS, IN ALL FORMATS WITHIN TWO TO THREE MONTHS!!!!!!!
Carl Rusk is who I was on the phone with, he is one of the people in the “doom and gloom” Wall St. Journal article.
There will be a High Output formulation based on some of our old favorites, and a lower output formulation based on a very old favorite.
YES. FOR REAL. THIS IS IN MOTION, AND THEY WILL BE MAKING TAPE WITHIN THE NEXT THREE MONTHS!!!!!!
This company should be supported. Obviously this was a wake up call.
Tell anyone with a tape machine. The tape will be BETTER quality than what we have been dealing with lately.”
Whew!! Thank God, that those who have the means to do so can now continue on with analog recording. It’s still kind of a shame that it’ll cost more (at a base level, all other factors excluded) to record analog.