How close to the real thing?

Memorex had the most hiss of all the tapes too.Maybe that's what broke the glass.

You are right about the 12Khz:( missing in action (more or less)and yet "live" and recordings remain distinctly their own sonically.

P.S. I used TDK, when I wasn't on the Thorens.....

This has been a very interesting discussion to follow!

I have come to think about these issues less in terms of some "absolute sound" and more as "is the system giving me as much of what the recording engineer intended as possible." As in, "Oh, so THAT'S what Paul Simon, Tchad Blake and Brian Eno wanted me to experience on that cut from "Surprise." My own rig has come progressively closer to this goal as I've tweaked and upgraded it, I think, although it's hardly take no prisoners/state of the art.

As for acoustic music, if a tweak to the system makes it more moving or involving, I'm pleased.

YMMV, of course!

I notice that the people who are claiming current technology is close to capturing and reproducing the sound of a real musical event are severely limiting the conditions where they have experienced this phenomena. It only happens on a few records, only when I'm listening on headphones, only for small groups or solo instruments or only when I have a studio quality tape recorder playing back a tape I made in my own house. So am I to believe that 99% of the time it doesn't sound that real, but all the other times it does?

I think some of you are confusing the fact that you like the sound of your system better than live sound. That's a very different issue than whether your system can so accurately recreate a recorded event such that you cannot distinguish it from the original.