The "great" sound of reel to reel explained

"Plenty of variables to play with tape (reel-to-reel playback)! These parameters introduce distortions of harmonic content (particularly at low frequencies), and frequency and phase-response irregularities, and they reduce dynamic range, mainly affecting high-frequency transients through magnetic saturation and ‘self-erasure’ effects" but some of those that have chosen to go back to tape still believe that they are on the Holly-Grail path of the audiophile "purist" approach, when it is just another case of ignorance, not having the technical knowledge to explain what caused the changes to the sound. The very same can be said of vacuum tubes as a generalization! and make no mistake about it that this is the same behavior and attitude towards, power-cords (cables in general), isolation devices, power-conditioners and other various tweaks that make up the Great Audiophile Swindle! There is much mis-perception, misconception, unguided souls, marketing spin and unfounded and unsupported claims in High-End audio that take advantage of gullible and technically challenge audiophiles with deep pockets!

Ralph,
I think that you simplify the matter to suit your needs. Let's review:

Reel-to-Reel(tape playback), tubes and transformers (to a lesser extend) all create distortion in the form of phase shifts and alter the harmonic structure often to increase clarity and enhance low-level details as a psychoacoustic effect that is pleasing in an aural way to our brain.

Second, while professional and industrial line regulation and power conditioning devices do offer benefits, supported through data, they are also priced and marketed in a fashion where the claims can be supported; that is not the case for most of the high-end audio's products.

I do not want to lose sight of the main discussion topic here with a sideband discussion so I strongly encourage you to educate yourself with the following article:

Analogue Warmth The Sound Of Tubes, Tape & Transformers

After you read it, we can go on but I think that you'll get the point!

Les creative edge,
Well said!!!!! I concur. The "purist" audiophile approach is just a flawed ideal and like other sacred things, some use it to extort or out of ignorance. I'm personally not "holier than thou" as I was there once myself but once the blinders where removed, it became a more enjoyable, less expensive, and a more intelligent world!

Ralph,
I think that you missed the gist of the article. It was not an analogue versus digital, which sound better? article; but rather and article concerning why added distortion, by way of phase manipulation and harmonic enhancement/restructuring, has pleasing effect that many qualify as sounding "better".

I have said it once (actually many times here and on Audio Asylum) and I'll say it again:

In a nut shell, my position is that:

The one-shot trial and error substitutions that are the current basis of the audiophile doctrine can be replaced by predictable, systematic, repeatable, scalable and defeatable operations.

The power of convolution processors, linear-phase filters, sampled reverbs and spatial matrix’ing is much more compelling and efficient than power-cord, speaker-cable, interconnect, cleaning solution, fuses, isolation/coupling devices, tonearm, cartridge or even source component swapping.

A simple way to test this approach for free is to listen to two different mastered versions of the same recording or to an original version compared to a re-mastered edition. Even XRCD's and K2HD CD's are products of re-mastering and see how much difference the process makes as compared to cable or fuse swapping, for instance.

Ralph,
The truth of the matter is that the only way to make digital sound like analogue is to add distortion. This is not confined to the studio/professional-audio world; have you seen the measurements in the review of the the Playback Design MSP-5 SACD player in Stereophile? There have been many AES papers written on how adding distortion helps increase clarity and enhances low level detail. It is also common fact that most Audiophile find equipment "clinical" or "analytical" sounding often are the same with low THD and great linearity measurements. You can arrive at the logical conclusion right????

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

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.