The "great" sound of reel to reel explained

Ralph,
To quote an Audiophile approved source, John Atkinson:

Perhaps his description of its sound being "analog-like" is a clue—for reasons that are not fully understood, a signal with very-low-level random noise added is sometimes preferred, on that it is more intelligible, to the same signal without such noise; See, for example, "Stochastic Resonance in Acoustic Emission," M. Friesel, Journal of Testing and Evaluation, 1999, and "The Benefits of Background Noise," Moss, Wiesenfeld, Scientific American, August 1995.

From the AES documents library:

Aural Exciter and Loudness Maximizer: What's Psychoacoustic about -Psychoacoustic Processors?-

In this study two so-called -psychoacoustic processors- are examined exemplarily by applying concepts, models, and methods of scientific psychoacoustics. Physical measurements of processed sounds and results of hearing experiments on speech intelligibility and sound quality (Aural Exciter) and loudness (Loudness Maximizer) are presented and discussed with regard to classic psychoacoustic models and potential new applications. Therefore relevant psychoacoustic facts, in particular the perception of nonlinear distortion, are reviewed.:

Author: Chalupper, Josef
Affiliation: Institute of Human-Machine Communication, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
AES Convention:109 (September 2000) Paper Number:5208

Right. The first has nothing to do with my comments as it addresses a different issue of digital gear. The second does bear some relevance and does not contradict the findings that GE made in the mid-60s.

Carlos, are you suggesting that digital process don't add their own colorations?

if its not real and does not sound exactly like the source, its distorted in some, often multiple ways.

Of course what the source actually sounded like is often unknown. What you here is what was recorded the way the recording engineer wanted to record it.

So, chose your distortions. Don't worry, be happy!

Dan,
No. Nowhere do I say or imply that; although I do have my thoughts on the matter. The discussion, on my part, was about what it takes to make digital sound like analogue.