My first week using REAL TAPE (vs plugins) – Page 4 – Effects Forum

I think there is a huge point being missed in the thread. We like to bring always older technology and frame it outside of its time to compare it to newer things, but the comparisons are and will never be on the same footing. One thing Reel to Reel tape revolutionized was the fact that for the first time audio was being manipulated physically – slicing etc –
That was the reels major wow factor in its time.

Allot of advancements were made to decks over the following decades – they all wanted cleaner sounding, and more defined audio. It was never our pinnacle, just a mountain top.

I think the author should have noted that this thread is more about his first experiences with analog tape, but cannot be a comparison, such a thing is truly impossible.

Practically every machine is different, and every tape recipe is different. Was this tested using “baked” Ampex 456 Grand Master, or newer ATR master tape, these two items themselves bring differences to the table. Are we testing on a freshly biased and calibrated machine? Even then they not all handled the signals the same ways.

I guess what matters is that if you know tape, familiar with it, the machine, etc then you have a set of tools that can be added to your recordings not in a vanilla sense but by manipulating the medium and machine you can get some interesting results, not available anywhere.

What is referred to as warmth these days is mostly an eq curve that was consistent across most machines from high-frequency attenuation, the sane way tube saturation creates a warm sound from low-frequency amplification. Have you heard early digital releases? All thin and treble heavy sounding? Back in those days we had to compensate for what you all refer to as tape saturation by boosting the highs. We were so used to it that it was not immediately realized the reasoning. We fought the hiss with DBX and Dolby noise reducers, digital is the evolution of tape not a competitor.

Cheers!