There's 1 major benefit to printing any compression/EQ/whatever-you-use to tape: If you compress the vocals on the way in, you aren't compressing the tape noise and the vocals, you're just compressing the vocal. If you EQ poorly miced toms on the way to tape, you're not EQing the tape hiss and the toms, just the toms.

I've found it's best to leave tape noise alone as possible. I'm perfectly ok with having it. But just leave it - alone.

sndo wrote:if there is any effect on tape hiss with high EQ boosts, it's that in mixdown you might want to reverse your change and reduce some high frequencies... in which case you would REDUCE the amount of tape hiss (i heard of this technique in a beginners guide to 4-track recording)

I believe that's basically the way Dolby noise reduction works.

Nick DiDia is the engineer and the person getting the sounds.