For tapes, I guess it has to do with the granularity of magnetic particles on the tape itself.
Just my two cents about it.
As far as analog delays goes, I would mention the EHX Deluxe Memory Man line also. I have a DMM with Tap Tempo; echoes are brighter than the Moog’s and feedback is consequently much more savage. Does not sound exactly like an original DMM though (according to some great comparison I saw on the tube…).
The Memory Lane II sounds more… middy than the EHX, thus than the MF-104 series.
Oh and another great analog delay, which has external feedback loop as well as tap tempo, is the JHS Panther. Plus it has a wicked face.
When you stripe a tape the frequency data manifests as domain lines. The higher the frequency, the closer the domains are spaced.
An analogy (no pun intended): You drive along in a car and have a paint can with a hole in it which drips out onto the road at a regular rate. The speed you drive at can be compared to the tape speed, while the rate of dripping can be thought of as the frequency of the audio being recorded (or played back). At high speeds, the drips are spaced further apart, while at slower speeds they are closer together. You can see how a combination of slow speed and high frequency will limit the bandwidth as the drips will start to “overlap”!
And with that, I am about to sell my Tascam MSR-24. Any takers?
I think you mean the wider the tracks the higher quality,assuming same speed (a 2" 24 track will be lower quality than 1" 8 track). But that’s not necessarily true either, since some machines’ electronics make the quality higher than other machines with less track width. My 1" 8 track (and most machines with decent track width) actually sounds better at 15 IPS than 30 IPS on most sources. The bass response is better, depending on the frequency curve of the electronics. 30 IPS is mostly a mastering format, as mixing and tracking 15 IPS is the perfect balance between quality, response, and tape consumption.
I don’t know if anyone has heard of Stephens tape machines, but supposedly they were the best around. It was all one guy, John Stephens who used 3m transports and built his own electronics/heads. He later built his own transport based on the 3m isoloop, because 3m didn’t like him making a superior product. He was able to cram 40 tracks on 2" tape without noise reduction and still get amazing quality:
These machines are incredibly rare, but someone just put one up on ebay (it’s a 2" 16 track, which is one of the highest quality recorder ever made or ever will be made):
