Mostly for going to 16bit CD quality from 24bit masters. It is possible to hear dither noise at 16bit in pathological conditions. It's possible to push the dither noise to parts of the spectrum where it's less audible. Simple 1/2 lsb noise is perfectly adequate though. Noise reduction bugged everyone. There was no other option with tape. You say: And: Those two statements..... Cmon, the tape hiss and funky eq should have been a giveaway. I think that what you are looking for is not fidelity but funk, vibe, feel, whatever you want to call it... the way that tape can make a sound be more like itself than the signal coming from the microphone. I'm only pointing this out as it's so easy to get lost spending loads of money chasing the highest precision lowest noise ultra wide band clean recording, when that will not make things sound *good*. Have you investigated dirtying the signal up a bit? No reason you cannot lay the initial tracks down on the 8-track, and then transfer to Ardour for overdubs etc. Or make stems from a digitally recorded Ardour version and transfer them to tape for the final mix. If you are not getting the sound you want with just digital, but got it from tape, use the tape as an effect. In my experience, even quite modest a/ds can capture the tape sound. Other ways would be to try some of the tube/amp sim ladspa plugins, low pass filters, using tape impulse responses with a convolver... be subtle with them and you might be surprised. Perhaps we should make a linux.audio.user.boring.old.farts.who.think.they.know.everything mailing list. I would be happy to expound at even greater length on these topics if there was such a list. :) That's what tape does. Yup. That's the problem with precision. This would be an interesting experiment.... Try setting your monitoring so you can switch between: 1: the direct microphone signal through your analog mixer. 2: the direct microphone signal though a single AD/DA conversion. (for all intents the same as digital recording). 3: playback off tape. I bet the difference between 1 and 2 will be very hard to hear, but the difference between either of them and 3 will be obvious. You have to balance the levels really carefully and not know which source is selected to make it a fair comparison. Me too. I'd agree with this as well. I just love discussing and practically trying out all kinds of recording related things.