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.
