What makes tape sound better than vinyl ?

I believe, best tape decks and turntables/arms/cartridges were made later than in early 70's. Or the tape itself, for that matter. He proved nothing.

That Direct to Disk thing really caught on, eh? The industry had a different idea in mind. Overly aggressive dynamic range compression. 😬

Even if direct to disc can theoretically sound slighly better in some respects, I think, tape will still have an edge in smoothness and continuity, perhaps in drive as well. And think of the level of the equipment that you would need to get that out of the groove. Continuum Caliburn with Ypsilon phono and SUT, anyone ?

Geoffkait,

Compression is added to get "punch". As a recording engineer I learned this from others and use it myself. If your kick sounds loose and flabby, add compression. It will give it punch. If the bass is a bit defused and lost in the mix, and compression it will give it punch and sit better in the mix.

Compression and punch in audio engineering terms and practice go hand in hand.

Ray

Maybe I’m wrong, but if your cassettes sound better than your turntable, then something is wrong with your vinyl set up or hardware. Cassettes can sound good but ultimately I find vinyl better. Now, if Dolby SR was used for all cassette mastering and releases that would be very interesting, indeed. The problem is it wasn’t.

I did an enormous amount of live to two track analog recording back in the day and cassette was only used as a convenience not as SOTA. Hey, but it worked and I made some nice recordings.