Hi folks,
I have recently purchased several tapes from UltraAnalogue (ultraanaloguerecordings.com), based near Toronto. Ed Pong records young talented artists in his home studio with all tube equipment and sells copies of the master tapes. Ed shared with me pictures of his home and the area where he hosts concerts. Very nice. The releases are all classical chamber music all recorded within the past couple of years and so far, I have been very pleased with both the sonic and artistic quality. He prefers NAB EQ (but will do CCIR if you want) and uses Studer recorders with tube electronics built by Tony Ma. Prices per reel ($200 or so) are somewhat more expensive than TP tapes and you get artists that Ed has found – mostly prize winners at international competitions. Ed copies the tapes to order, and was very fast with my initial order, less than a week. So far he has a set of the Bach Cello Suites by Winona Zelenka, two violin recitals by Xiang Yu and three cello sonatas (Beethoven, Brahms and Rachmaninoff) and one cello recital by Seiste-Jan Weijenberg. So far I have 1 of the Bach Suites and all of the other albums except the Brahms which has just been released. I think the violin sound is the very best I have heard on a recording. The Meditation from Thais by Massenet is one of my favorite pieces and it is on both violin recital albums in different performances. The sound is as close to that which I heard when we had a professional violinist play it in our home for my 60th birthday. The violin sound is quite a bit better than the violin recital on Yarlung Recordings tape that I wrote about in another thread. To be sure you are not getting the Decca and Reference Recordings superstars that are on the TP tapes.
Larry