Reel to Reel decks

Here's what I think is happening in my case with the "copy" sounding better, through headphones at least. My TASCAM deck at 15ips is flat to 23Khz and with 3m/996 tape, has a 9db Headroom. Cutting out the room, the speakers, the speaker cables, the Cary monoblocks, the Transparent interconnects and the EDGE preamp, reduces a lot of aberrations done to the "original" down the chain and compression of headroom. A drum thwack I've heard a hundred times literally made me jump and, go ahead and laugh, I just love watching those huge, pro-grade VU meters on the 42B slam to the pin with no distortion with 996 tape.

I know what you mean.

I used to love to watch the VU meters jerk around to teh music back in the day when most tape units had VUs for playback as well as record.

My Denon CD recorder has LED meters but it just ain't the same.

Also my Roku Soundbridges have a VU like display mode, but I generally prefer to have the source track info show instead of jumping bars.

Okay, I understand that what I'm hearing is impossible. But the explanations aren't cutting it either. The most dramatic example of what I laid out above is a Gerry Mulligan tape, "Feelin' Good" on the Limelight label, a 3 3/4 ips "mistake" (I didn't know it was recorded at the slow speed before I bought it on Ebay.

Now, this is Mulligan with strings, and at 3 3/4 ips, the strings define "shrill" and "wiry" and have made the tape mostly unlistenable. Yet the 2-track 7 1/2 ips dub (from one Otari to the other) simply transformed it. And the 2-track dub of Miles' "Sketches of Spain" has transfixed everyone who has heard it. Cue the Twilight Zone theme.

One always uses headphones when making a tape. Vibration degrades all analog. If you are playing a record, and listening at the same time, the sound is degraded to a minute degree. If you record in silence, this does not occur.