What makes tape sound better than vinyl ?

@raymonda    

You can't share anything of your vast experience with Geoff (or get him to admit he is wrong) even though your experience with compresion and punch is standard audio industry practice. Geoff is as slippery as the snale oil he purveys liberally on this site.

@inna

In order to avoid confusion, why dont you make another thread as this one is stated to be about Cassette tape recordings of Vinyl and how they sound better.

The purpose of this thread is to call attention to the tape and tape machines. Whatever anyone has to say. I think, many agree that there is something that makes the tape sound more natural. As for the cut-off frequency extremes that somehow make the sound more pleasing, I disagree. The biggest difference is in the midrange itself.
Vinyl playback is a very 'bumpy road' if you imagine the way stylus moves, not to mention the transformation of the mechanical energy into electrical. Tape is quite different, though there is a tape movement. Studers are first of all famous for their transport. I said that I use LAST head preservative when playing cassettes, I didn't say that it slightly improves the playback, you can easily hear it. In a manner of speaking, it improves the transport. I am not sure it's a correct way to put it but tape appears to give more 'sound saturation'.

I'm not going to get into why tape sounds, or does not sound, better because I really have no idea why. But I can tell you via first hand experience at many audio shows, R-T-R just sounds excellent. That's why dealers like MBL bring them. You can hear the resolution and air jump up on master tapes played at 15 IPS. At the LAAS, I remember the Evolution Acoustics room with Dartzeel and a Studer playing Peter Frampton's "Lines on my Face" just blew everyone in the room away. So dynamic and beautiful; very live with a ton of air. I also remember that the monobloc amps had power meters on them and though music was playing at perhaps a few watts per channel, there were some peaks in excess of 500 WPC and it just sounded amazing. Never got fatiguing in any way and for me, I just wanted more. It was an amazing demo and it proved the very significant importance of the source and the source media.

Yeah, Studer and monoblocks. You may not need a preamp, you've got it in the deck. I think, 7.5 ips two track is also acceptable in many cases. One pair of interconnects and a pair of short speaker cables, and nothing between speakers.