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I can't tell you which one is better because I think that's really an aesthetic choice that has to be made. But I will tell you that you don't need to slide anything around to make this work. There is a better way. If you using a DAW that allows VST plugins and has automatic delay compensation (don't they all at this point?), then you can insert the free Voxengo Latency Delay plugin on your input channels that are connected to the tape deck outputs. By doing a simple loopback test or by sending the same source directly to the DAW and also through the tape deck and then to the DAW you can determine what the delay is due to the record-repro head gap. You type that number into the Voxengo plugin. Now you can record tracks through your tape deck (output set to monitor repro head) simultaneously while recording additional tracks straight to disk. Because of the way the automatic delay compensation deals with the delay reported by the Voxengo plugin, the DAW will essentially pull all your tape tracks back in time for you.
Give it a shot. Let the technology do the work for you. Why more people aren't doing this is beyond me. Manually "dumping" tracks seems like a big hassle and waste of time in my book.
As for the AD and DA conversion....don't work about it. Enjoy the sound of tape and make music.
Brad
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