LCP INVENTORY

Console
Yamaha DM 1000 digital console TAC Scorpion Analog Console Mackie 1406
MOTU 896 Pro Tools Digi 002 / Pro Tools 6.9 Audiomedia III card

Computer/Peripherals

Mac G4 dual 1.5 GHz, 120 gig HD Mac G5 dual 1.8 Ghz Power PC, 150 gig HD Mac 23" Flat Screen (2) ViewSonic 17" Flat-Panel screens Granite Digital 160 gig HD Belkin Cable Internet Router (3) Maxtor 120 Gig FireWire drive Granite Digital RAID set (w/gig drives) (4) ATA 120 gig drives in trays

Software

Barbabatch CND NetMix pro/ RipIt Pro Digital Performer 3.2 Logic Express 7 Peak LE 5.2 Sound Designer II Soundminer 3.2 Toast Titanium Waves Platinum Bundle

Converters

Apogee PSX-100 Focusrite Octopre

Recorders

(4) Alesis Adats-20bit (2) Panasonic 3700/3800 DAT's Fostex E16 Fostex 4050 Locater Revox B77 MK11 2trk Teac X-2000r Alesis BRC Controller Alesis AI-1 Naikamichi 680 Casette Player Sony CDP-210 Cd Player Glyph CD Duplicator CDX-2 Denon DCD 815 CD player

Mic Preamps

GML 4x Pre-amp Drawmer 1960 (2) Avalon737sp

Monitors

Celestion 111's Genelec 4011's JBL 4408's Urei 811-B's Yamaha NS-10's

Effects

Lexicon PCM 70 Lexicon 300 Eventide H-3000 DS/X Yamaha SPX-90

Outboard Gear

Pendulum OCL-2 Serial # 1 (2) DBX 160a compressor Valley Dynamite Gate (2) Crane Song Trackers

Ampliers

Adcom GFP-555 II (2) JBL SR6630 Power amp BGW 75 (2) Aphex 120 4x Distro amps Peavy amp KB 300 Tandberg 3016 Alesis RA 100

Microphones

AKG " 414-ULS " 451 " 452 (2) 460's (2) 125S (2) c1000s Altec 639B (2) " 670 A American D-22 " D4T Amperite RBM-200 Astatic 10-D " 104 (2) " 30 " JT-50 Audio Technica 125 (2) " " 4060 (2) Earthworks TC-40 Omni's (2) EV 441 (2) EV 409 Sennheiser 441 (3) Sennheiser 421 (2) EV 664 (2) EV 671 EV 720 EV 950 EV RE 20
EV V-1 (2) EV V-2 Microtech Geffel UM 92 (2) " " SM-71 (2)Neuman U-87 w/ new tracy Korby 3-micron capsule (4) " KM 84's (consecutive serial #'s) (2) " KM 184's " U-47 fet w/ new 3-micron capsule (2) " 149 " UM 57 (2) Oktava MC 012 RCA Velocity Ribbon mic-rebuilt (2) Schoepp's 221B's (4) Shure SM-57 (2) " SM-58 Shure Beta 52 (2) " SM 81 " ATM-25 " 331 (2) " 51S " 5201 (2) " 530 " 55 (3) Silicon Entourage C-101 Static 77D Stromberg Carlson MC41 (2) Turner 33D (2) " 95-D (2) " D-98 " S 34 X Universal 7204XX

Instruments

Yamaha C7 Conservatory Piano Pro-Piano midi interface

Midi-Synths/Samplers

Yamaha KX-88 Korg- Triton-rack (2) Roland 1080 w/ 8 sound cards EMU E-64 EMU Proteus 2 Oberheim Matrix 1000 Korg M3r Emu 21- Disk Library Sound Ideas 1000 thru 10,000 SI- Speeches SI- Just Birds & Animals Nightingale- The Voice Box " - Just Kids Lucaslm Warner Brothers International S EFX 1-28 Hollywood Edge -Premiere 1, 2, 3 HE-Foley S EFX HE- Signature HE- The Edge HE- Cititrax HE- Animal Trax

Sound Effect Libraries

HE- Cartoon Trax HE- Historic HE- Super Single BBC- 1-40 Hanna-Barbera 20th Century Fox SI DigiEFFECTS H Series SI Wild World of Animals SI- Sci-Fi 8000 Thrillers, Fantasies & Hauntings

Superior Audio Ultra High End Audiophile Equipment Review Article Magazine

July 2008

An Interview With Bob Witrak, Owner of HDTT

Article By Nels Ferre

Recently, I mentioned High Definition Tape Transfers
(HDTT) in a piece that I wrote on my views regarding the current state of affairs in the music industry. Bob Witrak, owner of HDTT, sells high definition digital transfers of out of print classical music, sourced from old open reel tapes. These tapes are consumer releases, not the master tapes, and yet sound incredible. The more I listened to my purchases, which I downloaded from the HDTT website, the more curious I became about Bob's operation. I really encourage our readers to check out HDTT the recordings Bob offers are truly special. I decided to ask Bob some questions, and share the answers with our readers. NF: Tell us a bit about you and how you came up with the idea of selling very high quality digital transfers of old reel to reel tapes. BW: What happened was I got into reels about seven years ago I was always a big vinyl guy and I started to hear attributes I wasn't hearing in vinyl, like the strings on reels just sound "right" to me, as I was collecting more and more tapes I noticed many reels contained

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forgotten performances of historical importance, with unusually good sound quality. Then I started to make copies for my own enjoyment and people in the high-end audio industry heard them and convinced me to sell them to the public.
NF: Most of the recordings you offer are copies of 50+ year old tapes. Are there any special challenges these tapes present as far as working with them (brittleness or oxide shedding?) BW: The one thing you do not want to do is rewind or fast forward the tape and then stop in the middle of the tape: it will break almost all the time. You really have to invest in a very good tape deck. Our reference deck is a Studer 810, which has the ability to FF or Rewind at a 1/3 of the speed. This really helps tremendously as far as breakage. The Studer is a great tool for the archivists I also have a Nagra 4 which is also very easy on tape, and its mechanism is a work art. As for brittleness, you just have to handle the tapes with a little TLC. Shedding really isn't an issue, the sticky back tape syndrome didn't happened until the late 70's and early 80's, the tapes I use were made way before that era.

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NF: Right now I am listening to Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, which your website states is from a 1956 performance. While I guess Stravinsky isn't my "thing" musically, sonically this recording in awesome. Headphone users will really be amazed. This is one of the best stereo recordings I have ever heard. I always thought stereo came out in 1958, was it released earlier on open reel? BW: The Stravinsky is without a doubt one of the best stereo recordings period, also the recording took place at the "old" Carnegie Hall which should tell you why the recording is so special. I believe if I'm not mistaken that the first Stereo Release was on a RCA 2- track tape in 1954 it Reiner's Ein Heldenleben, I have a copy and it's still a tremendous recording minimally mic'ed and very natural sounding.
NF: When I think back to when I bought my first cassette deck in the late 1970s, I remember that I could make far superior quality tapes at home by using LPs as the source. With the exception of Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs and their real time copies from the original master tapes made on specially modified JVC decks, prerecorded tapes just were

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not very good. It is not unlike the difference today between a CD and an MP3 or, to some, CDs and LPs. Your offerings are copies of commercially available tapes. Why do these recordings sound so good? BW: All the equipment we use in our mastering process from the electronics to the cables, digital conversion right down to vibration control. (Vibration control is super critical, and a special shout out to Peter Bizlewicz of Symposium Acoustics who has helped out with HDTT from the outset. Also, his vibration control devices are the best in the industry.) All of the equipment has been matched and tested for the best sound quality possible for reel transfers. As for the all important analog to digital conversion, this a very critical part of my releases. I use Weiss digital components we have found them to be the most accurate and transparent electronics for digital conversion. (As a side note Daniel Weiss owner of Weiss Digital is one of the nicest guys you can meet in the pro audio world and has really helped me in achieving great sound.)
NF: Can you explain how these recordings are so quiet (no hiss) and have really good dynamic range when they were made long before any type of noise reduction was available? BW: This has all to do with the choices I made and the long experimenting that was done with selecting the right components in the mastering chain, most of the big commercial mastering houses don't pay any mind to audiophile techniques such as cabling, power conditioning, vibration control etc. Pro audio people think audiophiles practice voodoo and most of what we do to achieve audiophile sound is dubious. Many audio reviewers have been delighted with our releases because of the clean, transparent musical sound we get from

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our sources we have been told that are releases are the most analog sounding digital they have heard. And this is all due to using audiophile practices.
NF: These recordings sound to me like a perfectly quiet LP played upon a very high quality analog front end. Is this due to your specially modified playback and digital conversion gear? How close could a hobbyist with a nice open reel deck, say a Revox B77 or a Teac X2000R, come to achieving this result with open reel tape at home? BW: I think it would be difficult to achieve high quality sound with a deck using the stock electronics that are in consumer or pro audio decks it would be advisable to use an external tape pre-amp like you would use in a high end vinyl setup and as always vibration control and cabling is always critical. As for the digital conversion this is the expensive part, lower end digital converters are usually not up to the task in making high quality transfers. Unfortunately, to make high quality transfers, the digital end can get extremely pricey.
NF: Listening to Beethoven's 4th Symphony, from 1962 fourtrack tape, I am amazed at the quality. This one, for me, is a winner all around both musically and sonically. This 46 year old recording makes me wonder if the older recording engineers have forgotten more than most of the engineers today will ever know. What are your thoughts? BW: I personally prefer the older engineers, having said that there are some recordings made today that are very good, but overall I prefer the older recordings the older engineers kept it simple and basically were interested more in capturing the event in a more natural perspective.

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NF: You don't offer all of your releases as downloads: some are only available as physical media. You state that all of your physical medial is burned, not stamped, for superior quality. Why does it make a difference? BW: We now offer about 90 percent of our releases as 24/96 downloads. The CD and DVD blanks are extremely critical for sound quality there is a huge difference in the quality of blanks. The reason for this has to do with many different variables such as the dye used the metal used and also the roundness of the blank, also the close tolerances that are used in the manufacturing process. We have auditioned many different blanks from many different manufacturers and I feel we have found the best for music reproduction, of course we are always on the lookout for even better blanks. Also the burning process is super critical and also the burner used. We also have announced a new product called HQCD (High Quality CD) which is a very high quality blank that is made special for the burner we use (which is a special pro audio burner made to make masters) the CD-R has extremely low jitter characteristics and each release is burned at 1x speed, it sounds excellent and is the best CD blanks we have heard, readers can check it out at our website.

NF: How many customers are downloading as opposed to buying physical media? BW: It's around a 60-40 split, with downloads ahead, CD and DVD orders are still very strong and I anticipate it to be

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and DVD orders are still very strong and I anticipate it to be similar in the future.
NF: Many USB DACs today are capable of 24-bit/48kHz maximum decoding. While your recordings sound fantastic at this resolution, how much is a customer missing by not being able to decode to 24/96? BW: Of course it is always better to playback at the highest resolution as possible and there is a difference between 24/48 and 24/96, but listening to our recordings at lower resolution you will probably hear about 80 to 90 percent of the 24/96 playback. And, as usual, the quality of the electronics plays a major part in this.
NF: How do you decide what recordings to offer? BW: We scour through many recordings, check for renewal of copyrights, and if they have exceptional sound and are also favorable renditions of that particular piece it might make it for release. It takes a lot of auditioning. Another thing I'd like to mention is that we really try to offer recordings that haven't been released or haven't been released for a long time, we are not in competition with the big commercial labels. As our ads say we offer "rare recordings in audiophile sound."

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NF: Understood, but is there any possibility of releasing Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition or Night on Bald Mountain? BW: If one comes along that makes the grade of course!!
NF: Thanks for your time and efforts. BW: Thanks, Nels for giving me the opportunity to introduce your readers to HDTT

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