The "you" in that post can refer to either you or VP. Mostly VP, because he is thick.
Very plainly: tape works fine, but I don't think all tape is remotely equal. You don't think that either, but VP seems to think that any tape is better than any digital. VP continues to insist digital has all kinds of flaws that it doesn't. He admits he has never tested the HF fidelity of his digital systems (he's getting to that), but still he knows that something is wrong. Well, if there is something wrong he needs to upgrade his converters--consumer-grade stuff of the '90s did have more significant passband attenuation, but still nowhere near as bad as cassette, and probably as good as some better tape machines. Still, lower quality filters mean more aliasing. So buy something produced for at least the prosumer market in the last 10 years, or if you go older stick with the professional gear.
The Ampeg engineers? I bet they could provide me with measurements and I bet it wouldn't take them longer than a week when they already had a scope on their bench. I bet they don't say silly things about digital sampling that can be proven false with basic tests.
I am pretty sure the Ampeg engineers would agree that neither tape recording nor digital recording results in a signal with infinite resolution, because that's physically impossible. They would also understand that no audio signal will ever approach infinite bandwidth, and for an acoustic signal that is even more preposterous.
I am fairly certain they would agree that tape has an effective bandwidth and dynamic range, just like digital does. I also have a pretty good feeling they realize that digital jitter is several orders of magnitude less of a problem than flutter--I mean it's right there in the specification that they wrote. I would also guess that they know 24 bit digital recording has greater dynamic range than any tape recorder--this is also in the specifications. And less crosstalk and less distortion. They would also know that digital has better LF response. None of this is remotely controversial to a design engineer.
They would also understand that digital signal analysis gear works within its design limitations (bandwidth and dynamic range are always stated for scopes, because you pay a *lot* more for more of it). They would quickly understand the validity, again within the constraints of signal bandwidth and dynamic range, of the converter vs. cassette tests I did on page 2 of the other thread. Why did I test cassette? Because people on that thread were claiming it was better than digital. I am fairly certain the Ampeg engineers would not agree that cassette is a higher resolution, higher fidelity medium than CD.
They might argue that the best quality tape recorders rival and even sometimes exceed the resolution of CD, and I might even agree with them. That can be possible with NR, but that's not a fair fight because CD can use NR too (and there is a little-used AES standard for it). I don't think they can or would argue that tape can exceed the resolution of a good, modern 24/96 converter, although I am willing to see that disproven by miro's test.
What else is there to argue about? I've said probably a dozen times that professional quality tape recordings sound fine. Ty Ford did a test where engineers could only distinguish the two by paying close attention to head bump (if they were fastidious they could have EQ'ed that out, shouldn't have been more than a few dB). Bobbsy referenced an earlier study with the same conclusion. To me, that does not prove that tape is the technical equal of high-resolution digital, just that both systems can exceed the ability of the human ear to discriminate--which is all that really matters. Yes, the ear is the final arbiter, not because it is better than test gear but because it places a limit on how good a system needs to be (bandwidth, dynamic range, distortion). Once a system greatly exceeds that limit, further improvement is not really required.
What exactly do you want me to challenge the Ampeg engineers with? I don't care which medium people like better, that doesn't interest me in the slightest. I also take no position of the efficacy of tape emulation algorithms because they don't interest me at all. I don't own one and likely never will.
As a general rule I think DSP can be very successful, but often it isn't because implementation is compromised. Take my UAD-1 card, for example, their only compressor plug (as of 2009 or so, I stepped off their train years ago) that has an acceptable level of aliasing is their LA2A. I don't know or care if it sounds like the real thing, I just need a compressor that doesn't alias, and that is a pretty good one. So clearly they know how to write a compressor plug that doesn't alias (they are pretty smart) . . . so why don't all of their plugs not alias? Beats me . . .I actually started to write my own, I might just finish it someday . . . that said, with their UAD-2 they seem to be devoting a lot more DSP to their plugs, so presumably they perform better now, I don't have one of those so I don't know. I bet I could get somebody to test one for me though . . .
Back to Ampeg . . . please quote my exact statement from this thread that you think contains a scientific error to which they would object. Maybe it's the one that tape recorders can be fully described by analysis. That's not quite the same thing as saying they *have* been, but I feel comfortable that they are probably familiar with an immense amount of research on that topic--most of which isn't laying around at my fingertips, which is why I asked people to test their recorders. The Ampeg engineers probably already know all of those answers, and could tell me in one post rather than dodging the issue for over a week. Or maybe they don't care to, that is their prerogative, in which case I would continue to learn what I can the usual way, through research.
I don't mean that statement to a VP-level of "infinite" silliness. I don't need to try to describe it down to the quantum level, just within its practical constraints of dynamic range and bandwidth. Yes, tape may have some errors that are not periodic, but they can still be well described and understood.
How about the guy on the other thread who said (paraphrased) that tape engineers eventually gave up on accuracy and just went for euphonics? Would the engineers agree with that? I doubt it, seems to me the best machines were the last ones made (high-end, of course). That statement could be an insult to an engineer.
