Reel to Reel decks

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.

Since bumblebees were told they can't fly, they could explain this phenomenon better than anybody.

Orpheus10 said;

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.

i agree that vibration and reasonance can degrade analog, particularly an Lp. but it's wrong to say that it is a problem in every case. some tt's are designed to effectively eliminate that issue.

i've recorded my Rockport tt with the speakers playing and while monitoring with headphones. there is no audible difference. in other words; feedback from speakers playing is not an issue for this turntable 'to the degree of being audible'. i would not argue that in theory there is some feedback, only that it's not significant enough to justify recording it.

which is why making a copy has zero value, even with top level gear. the copy cannot be as good.

my other turntables use mass and footers to reduce feedback and are effective if not quite as perfectly.

I've made some copies of vinyl on my mci jh 110 at 30ips and tascam br-20 at 15 ips, sound excellent but the vinyl sounds clearly better (wish there was not so much of a difference and think it could be tweaked to be closer..vpi aries/benz/george wright phono ag). Making copies of tapes is a something I still need to do (for sticky shed syndrome tapes, acetates or generally valuable/fragile tapes), tape takes a lot of time and effort, I think I have too many machines! Right now I am focusing on my mci jh110 which I feel sounds better than the tascam br20, technics rs1500 or otari mx5050 but no real comparisons have been made (just an initial impression), somehow I got sucked into the tape vortex (I just bought 5 boxes of 7" reels from an old radio station that I need to go through, they sit next to the 10 boxes of tape I got with the mci).