Well, I've done my first live recording: The recital for a summer voice master class program which my wife took, taught by a friend who is the director of the college and community choirs we sing in. I used the Microtech Gefell mics, Audio Note Vx cable into the Pendulum mic pre, with Telefunken and Siemens tubes in place of the Chinese dreck it came with, into the Otari. 7" reels of BASF 456 running at 7.5ips in-line. Mics on one stand using AER spacer bar at ORTF distance.
It was a small group, small audience, so everyone was on stage, facing the rear of the stage where the audience sat with its back to the rear curtain facing out toward the main seating. The mics were about 6' high in the center of the row of seats. Each singer was accompanied by a 7' grand piano, lid closed.
The sound is very real, very immediate. Listening is a lot more fun when you're not clenching the arms of your chair approaching peaks waiting for the digits to bite or the stylus to mis-track. When I played it back over headphones I kept jumping when a truck drove by the stage doors which were open since it was a hot August day.
The real revelation came when I transfered the recording to my MacBook Pro via FireBox. Some of the fine detail and more of the life than I care to think about fell out of the recording. I told the director, who always complains about how the recordings the college makes of the concerts don't sound like the concerts to him, that he has to come over and hear the reel-to-reel original.
Long live tape! Now if only the dam* deck didn't weigh about 50 lbs. Wrenched my back hauling it around, which has never happened with my MacBook Pro! ;-)
Those were the results without cleaning, aligning and/or tweaking anything since I bought the deck on eBay. Time to do all of the above and build the NAB/IEC modded Seduction. I also need to sell off a piece of spare audio gear so I can buy a selective sub to the Tape Project! I'll want to be properly equipped for VSAC '08.
(Doc - when do you think the site will be up for registration? I'm leaving for Milan today and would love to get formal commitments from Peter QAudio Note/UK to exhibit.)