What makes tape sound better than vinyl ?

f you are saying that transferring cd's or vinyl to tapes sounds better then you are saying that the transfer is not an accurate transfer and that the distortion that the tape is adding is one that pleases you. There is nothing wrong with that but you do have to admit that you just introduced a uphonic distortion.

Many years ago when I had CD and cassette in the same system, I used to tame the bright, hard, cold sound of CDs by recording them to cassette. That worked fairly well. Back in those days my theory was that the CD could not record the ultrasonic noise that was part of the digital experience (while my speakers could do it easily); these days my theory is that the cassette limited bandwidth and so was unable to reproduce aliasing (which is interpreted by the ear as brightness and hardness).

I'm certain that the cassette was not true to the original, but it rendered the CDs listenable, so it was useful :)

Maybe this has to do with dithering? The background noise introduced by the randomness of the magnetic alignment might.... might do something to increase resolution and naturalness.

With tape everything stays within the domain of electromagnetic energy, with vinyl there is a conversion of mechanical energy. Do you think nothing is altered in the conversion ?
We really need tape and vinyl experts here. Maybe we should invite Walter Davis of LAST and others I don't know who to clarify it all and explain in more or less plain English.

@inna not sure I go along with you 100% on your detective work. The reason I say that is tape is a magnetic medium inasmuch as the tape stores information magnetically, not electromagnetically. And the tape head reads the information on the tape magnetically, not electromagnetically. Obviously somewhere along the line the information is converted to an electromagnetic signal for output to headphones or speakers, like any other medium. Digital is optical to electromagnetic signal. Vinyl is mechanical/magnetic to electromagnetic signal.

There was a long intelligent discussion by people who actually owned reel to reel decks and were still using them. The OP was handyman 05-26-2010 9:02pm. You can find facts about the reels those people owned.