A recording head is a magnet built to leak in exactly one place. What happens in that gap — and what the tape does about it — explains every specification, every compromise and every sound people now buy plugins to imitate.
Recording sound onto tape is three conversions in a row. Air pressure becomes an electrical signal; the electrical signal becomes a magnetic field; the magnetic field leaves a pattern in a coating that will hold it for decades. Everything people describe as "the sound of tape" happens in the second and third of those, and none of it is mysterious once you know what is going on in a gap a few ten-thousandths of an inch wide.
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