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The "great" sound of reel to reel explained

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I've been going in circles for decades wondering why the recordings that I made from my LP's onto my reel-to-reel machine sounded better than the original LP. Many arguments on this board have flared up from guys swearing that their recordings were better than the LP they recorded it from. I was and still am in that camp. Of course this defies all logic, but Wikipedia offers an explanation that makes sense to me. It explains why we love the sound of reel-to-reel so much.
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The Wikipedia explanation is below:
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Showing 2 responses by almarg

almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Power cords: a 2V drop across a power cord can rob a tube amplifier of as much as 40% of its output power!
Ralph, could you provide a technical explanation of why that would be so? I don't doubt your statement, but I'm interested in understanding why that would occur.

Re your other points, all of which strike me as excellent, I think that it should be stated that none of those points NECESSARILY mean, to cite an example, that a $2,000 power cord will outperform a $200 power cord in any given system.

Best regards,
-- Al
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Al, the reason a power cord can have this effect is simple. If there is a 2 volt drop in a power cord, the filaments of the tubes will run cooler and the B+ will be reduced. Since this is a voltage, the result is we get less voltage output out of the amp. Less voltage=less power. Depending on the amp this can be pretty profound. and I have seen it with my own eyes.
Thanks, Ralph.

That would also seem to say that the value of the ac line voltage at each listener's location can be a very significant variable in the performance of a tube amp (assuming it does not have regulated filament and B+ supplies).

Which in turn emphasizes how easy it can sometimes be for extraneous variables to lead to incorrect sonic assessments.

Best regards,
-- Al
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