LP playback vs Reel tapes made from LP

Many thanks for the responses. My interests are not so much for archiving my LPs but to extract the best quality playback from my system.

I have a TW Acustic Raven Ac table with Phantom, triplanar, davinci arm; PC1, titan, XV1t and ultraeminent carts. My reel tape deck is a recently serviced Studer A810. It can do 7.5 and 15 ips.

Would transfer to HDD be a worthwhile undertaking comparing to reel?

Glai

Given the process will be near the same, merely the ability and ease of searching, selecting, and playing back the recored tracks would attract me to it.

Ummm....since you've got the gear all ready to go, why not just record some LPs and hear for your self? It's unlikely that you'll exceed the sonics of the LP, but you may come close to equaling it, and who knows, any accompanying rolloffs on the taped version may sound more 'musical' to you on your rig. This could especially be true for RBCDs. Plus, it's fun watching the tape spin, and you get to play with another medium. Win-win.

the answer though is no. Meaning that a generation down is a generation down and there should not be so much of anything going on with your lp playback as to change that.

Now, maybe your tape machine is aligned some way to make the recording more pleasant (maybe more rolled off or more compressed sounding, or maybe aligned for my high end) but if it does that, the machine isn't set up technically properly because the best you should be able to get is a close copy.

I agree with everyone here about doing what you want and listening yourself, but the process isn't magic.

As was noted: the only tangible "difference" will be the ability of playing back a tape copy of the recorded material AT A LOUDER LEVEL WITHOUT RISKING ANY ACOUSTICAL FEEDBACK or worrying about (otherwise) walking on proverbial eggshells each time you'd have to pull out the vinyl source.  Also, if you have the luxury of enough tape on hand to use 15ips: the 60Hz bass head bump MAY fatten-up the sound of the copy a bit as well.

To me, though: the ultimate shootout was always comparing a (good) vintage, 7 1/2ips pre-recorded reel to its Lp counterpart.  Before, ultimately, finding the original reel equivalent of two favorite '60s albums of mine: I'd recorded the vinyl version(s) I'd had onto a (when new) Maxell UD35-90 (while there was a NYC electronics chain called "The Wiz" still selling 1800" blanks for $15.99 in the mid-1990s!).  Equipment was: a Sony TC-458 rtr and a Technics SL-1700 DD (with an '80s Yamaha receiver).  The albums were: Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66s "Equinox" and, the Chicago-rooted '60s "garage band" The Buckinghams' last Columbia studio album (from 1968) called "In One Ear and Gone Tomorrow".

Anyway, that Sergio Mendes record was full of such sibilance and the "whirring" of some kind of cutting machine oscillation or defect....WHILE: that Buckinghams' album had the end-of-side tracks riddled in such muddiness (and since these were not any records of meaningful value: they WERE CLEANED with 409 cleaner, actually, in the sink with warm water until you could tell it ran freely through the grooves --- so they were NOT DIRTY).

Fast-forward to only three years'-ago: I FINALLY FOUND, "out in the wild", EACH OF THE FACTORY 7 1/2ips REELS OF THEM (cost me $40 for the two).  WHAT A REVELATION!  The Sergio Mendes album (ON TAPE) sounds like a top-notch, bonafide intimate Jazz recording you would not associate with 1960s Herb Alpert-related kitsch:  the mix (now) is so transparent, you'd swear it was in the league of Getz/Gilberto on Verve!  The Buckinghams' album tape became searing obscure Power Pop where, there was suddenly a mellotron appearing in a song....or: there suddenly was "air" around the crack of snare drums....and, lead guitarist Carl Giammarese's Strat screeched in full glory at the end of side 1 with no hint of grunge obfuscating it.

Before FLACs came along, reel to reel would've been the most faithful "archiving" medium for preserving another analog sound source's integrity; however, if there is a source of a recording from a much truer provenance available (which, personally, I've NEVER considered vinyl a proper facsimile of): copying records to tape is not going to recreate it.