The Absolute Sound's senior Editor rates a 100 year old Technology in the form of a 100% new Kinetic Sculpture Tape Recorder as the Absolute Sound.

AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND, March 14, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- According to the Golden Ears, the ultimate playback source is 100 year old Tape Recorder Technology in the form of a Kinetic Sculpture by Australian artist Kostas Metaxas.

Papillon, which means “Butterfly” in French, is at once a superb audio recording device as well as a masterful work of industrial design. Kostas Metaxas, the creator of the Papillon, has a long history of innovation and achievement as an artist, designer and audio engineer.

Metaxas was drawn to this project after a lengthy search for a device that could equal the old reel-to-reel recorders’ ability to capture audio in its full depth. As he found, there was no modern equipment that could perform as well as the older technology. As he put it, “The most well-kept secret among the most elite of recording artists is that they still use technology from even before the 1940's to capture their ‘emotional essence’ or ‘spirit’ in their recordings.”

Indeed, as Metaxas, noted, “Nowadays, mostly recorders from the 60s and 70's are continually serviced by old-school technicians because there simply is still no way to capture the vivid reality and depth of richness that tape offers over the strictly digital medium.”

The Papillon is a 15" professional studio recorder which can handle tape widths from 1/4" to 1" and reels up to 14" in diameter [Standard professional reel are 10" 33min at 15ips]. Amongst its many innovative features are totally independant "Dual-Capstans" which are activated by two precision linear motors to make sure the speed across the heads is free of fluctuations and flutter. The Capstan "rollers" are only 4mm in diameter allowing them to spin up to 4-8 times faster than traditional 8-10mm diameter Capstan rollers and hence with much higher precision.

The ultra-hi-tech BLDC motors from MAXON [Switzerland] come from the recent cutting-edge developments in Electric Cars. Each of the 4 precision BLDC motors include 4096 increment tachometers and are driven by their own microprocessor/MOSFET drivers developed by MAXON before being controlled by the ARM-CORTEX main processor.

All rollers and transport parts are machined from 316 Antimagnetic Stainless Steel to ensure an extremely long life and are easily accessible for the fine-tuning of springs and bearings to be able to optimize the sound quality through individual "voicing" of each machine.

According to Jonathan Valin, an Executive Editor of the the most influential international Hi Fi publication "The Absolute Sound" [February 2022]:

"I’ve never heard anything quite like it. To put the cart before the horse (or maybe the horse in the cart), this is, quite simply, the most neutral and complete presentation I’ve heard from any audio component. This is the absolute sound in the definition of those words that makes the best sense to me: the sound that was recorded in the studio or the concert venue."

"The unusually natural and lifelike, virtually uncolored reproduction of the tapes therein discussed (Chet Baker Sings, A Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, and Joan Baez), the many new things that I learned about the singers, the instrumentalists, and the recording techniques, and the old things I re-learned about myself and about the way music has shaped my life are owed equally to the Metaxas & Sins Tourbillon T-RX, which is to tape recorders what the original Quads were once claimed to be to other loudspeakers—a clearer window on the music, a window through which you can not only look at the performers as they were when they were originally recorded,in the light of a day long past, but at the you

"I’m going to finish by saying something I probably shouldn’t say (and have never said in TAS before), but…if you’ve got the dough and the access to R2R tapes—then don’t even think about it: Just buy the T-RX. I did."

With the Papillon [and its partner - the location recorder "Tourbillon"] Metaxas & Sins is one of the very few companies in the world who can not only record a live concert but also produce a bespoke system to listen to it with the highest fidelity playback.

The Papillon will be available to view and hear at the upcoming Hi End Show in Munich Germany from May19-22 in Hall 3 Booth N09 .

Kostas Metaxas
Metaxas & Sins BV
+31644759190 ext.
metaxas@metaxas.com
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Papillon Tape Recorder

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