Reproducer is the historic name for a device that plays back or “reproduces” recorded sound. A tape recorder having playback capability is technically known as a recorder-reproducer, while a machine configured for playback only is a reproducer.

The technology might be obsolete, but the recordings that were made with it are not.

A reproducer has no recording function for two important reasons:

1. To prevent damage to recorded tapes (especially original master tapes!)

2. To obtain the highest audio quality in playback

A recorder’s ability to erase and over-write disqualifies its use for the playback of high-value master tapes. Further, tapes can be subjected to dangerously high tensions and abrasive wear when played on a standard three-head studio recorder.

It’s equally ill-advised to use tape machines having fixed-pin lifters or forced-guidance anywhere in the tape path, as these cause harmful tape wear and could inflict permanent damage.

The audible benefits originate mainly from improved time-base stability including reduced high-band flutter. Additionally, far better speed, tension, guidance and azimuth control can be realized with a reproducer incorporating a single-head tape transport architecture.

Studer was practically alone among manufacturers to conceive and build tape machines incorporating precision guidance, all-rolling element straight-line bypass spooling, servo-controlled capstan motors and servo-controlled constant tension. Their flagship A80 and 820 transports had all of these costly features, now recognized as essential to the conservation and preservation of heritage master tapes.

By the late 1960s, three of the world’s leading manufacturers of professional audio recorders (3M, AEG-Telefunken and Studer) had independently discovered that playback on a two or three-head recorder-reproducer would be inherently compromised and that highest quality playback could only be realized on a single-head platform.

The correct way to meet this need is by having interchangeable headblocks. Mounting multiple playback (or read) heads in the same headblock is seriously misguided, as it destroys the benefits of a SHRO reproducer.

SHRO is Single Head Read Only, a headblock architecture found on any reproducer designed for delivering both highest audio quality and lowest tape wear.

No, we simply were the first to give it that name twenty-five years ago. Our reproducers employ our own developed quick-change, high-precision, ultra-low-flutter SHRO headblocks and our reproducer rack towers can be fitted with headblock storage drawers.

During the analog recording era, few people could justify the expense of owning a dedicated reproducer. They instead used their recorder-reproducers for playback, deeming the audio quality “good enough”.

Following the digital recording revolution, thousands of professional analog recorders were given away, so that anyone needing analog tape playback could find a free tape machine, nearly one-hundred percent of which were recorder-reproducers.

Most surviving original master tapes are experiencing long term chemical degradations rendering them increasingly fragile. In 1987, after observing under microscopy the damage to a calendered oxide layer that occurs when tapes are pulled over fixed-pin lifters, fixed guides, or multiple heads, we began warning against using tape machines having these construction details for master tape playback. That caution also applies to Mylar-based tapes that have been thermally-treated or “baked.” First do no harm!

It could appear so, but we hope they aren’t working with irreplaceable legacy master tapes. It’s hugely irresponsible to play these tapes on vintage studio tape machines.

It might seem intuitive that playback on the same machine that originally recorded a tape would be ideal, but this notion is far from correct. Analog recording and playback are independent yet inter-related processes fraught with a variety of amplitude and time domain distortions that compound. It follows that optimum playback should add no (or only minimal) further distortions.

What’s desired then is a reproducer having amplitude and time domain error contributions that are lower by an order of magnitude than those of the machine that originally made the recording. Using the original recorder for playback could instead nearly double the distortions.

Absent playback on a state-of-the-art ultra-low-distortion reproducer, you can never know the true recording quality of the tape you’re listening to.

We can build ultra-high-quality recorder-reproducers by special order. However in most recordings archives there’s almost no justification for having one, as the practice of making analog-domain preservation masters is long obsolete.

No. Recording functionality is not needed to optimally align or test a reproducer. There are modern, more accurate test and alignment protocols for the items you mention.

The A80 and 820-based transports in our reproducers are high-precision mechanisms. Constructing them as separately-housed components is, in our view, clearly the best design approach and perfectly logical. A further argument for separating the transport is that it becomes vastly easier to ship. Not well-known is the fact that Studer recommended A80 transport mechanical re-conditioning no later than every ten years. (This is also true for the 820.) Many A80s are over fifty years old and some 820s are now forty. Today almost none of them will meet their original specifications for time base accuracy (flutter) which is what audibly distinguished them from their competition when new. Our transport re-conditioning addresses this.

The sophistication and high-precision of the A80 and 820 transport mechanisms and the requirements for special training and tools demands that transport re-conditioning is trusted only to a recognized specialist.

Reflecting a design philosophy of modularizing sub-components for performance optimization and ease of long-term serviceability, playback amplifiers are not built into our reproducers. They are instead housed in their own rack-mounted enclosures, fitting into the the rack tower that functions as the machine base.

We also do this with the power supply, control logic and motor control modules.

Our modular construction architecture assures that reconfiguration changes are easy.

Our products are intended for professional use in sound recordings archives holding high-value collections where uncompromised, state-of-the-art playback is demanded. Accordingly, we build our machines to industrial-grade standards. The pricing reflects the high cost of the skilled labor as well as our insistence on using only the highest-quality components, many of which we manufacture (or re-manufacture) in-house. Additionally, we source hundreds of new parts from Europe, or have them manufactured for us here in California.

We begin by completely dismantling, cleaning, inspecting and then expertly rebuilding and updating many heritage Studer components removed from core machines that we purchase world-wide.

An example is our in-house capstan motor re-manufacturing, where Studer’s original sintered-bronze bearing designs (which are no longer supportable) are converted to high-precision ball-bearing, for guaranteed serviceability far into the future.

Also noteworthy are the superb Studer transport foundation castings, which after cleaning and expert visual inspection are dimensionally checked on a CMM before being accepted for assembly.

Completed ATAE re-manufactured tape transport assemblies are then Manquen flutter-tested in our lab to confirm that they exceed the excellent time-base stability specifications of the Studer-built originals.

Finally, we assemble the new reproducers into all-new, high-grade furniture, including rack-mounted enclosures for the logically-grouped ATAE-built electronic modules, a design improvement insuring that ATAE machines remain easily serviceable into the future.

If you have an A80, A800, 816, 820 or 827 recorder-reproducer needing factory-level reconditioning,

you’re welcome to contact us. However we limit outside service work in order to concentrate on

manufacturing our reproducers.

Yes, domain transfer for CD re-issues began as early as 1982, but there’s never been agreement that those transfers were performed optimally.

Today in 2025 the labels are again ordering retrieval of heritage master tapes, for such things as producing re-issues on vinyl. This work is again putting irreplaceable tapes in danger from improper handling.