4trackmind
RE: vinyl vs. tape comparison. There's NO WAY I've ever thought vinyl won based on anything which DIDN'T involve something related to vinyl's peculiarities ... the gobbs of vinyl's RIAA-eq midrange boost being (mis)understood as having "more presence" to ageing ears ...You sound confused. The RIAA curve is complementary - what is applied to the LP is inverted on playback. Good RIAA stages easily achieve accuracy to the curve within fractions of a dB.
THE most immediate difference between the sound of a record and, for example, a (good) 7 1/2ips reel ... records have this upper bass/lower mid "bloat" (because of a 500Hz boost) which often sounds like a phasey and hollow "fishbowl" sound and, it just suddenly smacks into this over-trebly/2k-4k region with a VERY ARTIFICIAL sheen smothering it. TAPE HAS NONE OF THAT.What 500Hz "boost" are you talking about? What phono stage are you using that suffers this issue?
... a common denominator among vinyl types seems to be: always a distaste of (10khz+) treble, bass, and wide stereo(?). Ironic, isn't it(?): three things vinyl cannot reproduce to the fullest extent.Actually, LP can have an edge over tape when it comes to HF, because it's not subject to saturation the way tape is. I'm not sure why you think LP can't produce the full frequency range in wide stereo, but it sounds like you're not using a good phono stage, so that may be your problem.