i tried to resist the urge, but forget it, i'm going to put in a reply to this post.

why would anyone bother tot ransfer cassettes to digital (CDR) if not to improve the quality? one word: PRESERVATION. like someone else said, analog tapes will deteriorate over time, and with a show on CDR/DVDR, as long as it's re-copied every couple of years (and on good media), it will be fine. oh, and there's not much chance of an audio CD getting eaten by a cd player; unlike a cassette getting eaten by an old tape player.

also, wow! as i recall, i read that CD-R technology wasn't even introduced until around 1988 or so. (and by "introduced," that would mean that not many people would have that technology.) maybe your friend/acquaintance had the prototype CDR recorder and the very first CD-R disc created...? i bet they felt bad because they spent $100+ for that CD-R disc. (that's right, CD-Rs used to cost $100+ per blank. talk about frustration when you burned a coaster.)

back to the topic at hand. my goal(s) are obviously different than yours with regard to analog transfers. my goal being, most importantly, to preserve the show. i like to pretty much transfer analog shows direct to hard drive, use a lossless compression and store them on data discs (all to preserve them). i don't do any processing at all for the data archive material (no splitting tracks, no fade ins/outs). that way, i always have the original transferred audio in its original digital stage. when i want to burn an audio copy to listen to, i just decode the show to WAV format, then do any track splitting and changing i want to do, and then burn it to audio cd. but those copies never go anywhere for trades or anything.

there are a lot of people out there ("cool edit kings" and "soundforge saviors") who really screw up recordings more than help them. audio mastering is not simply running a recording through a preset for a plugin. try hiss removal with a preset for a plugin, and you'll quickly find the music is likely screwed up totally.

there's really no way to stop people from remastering your transfers, except to not trade/share the transfer. since there are so many audio professionals out there (sarcasm intended) who remaster every show ever put out for download, why not just put out an original mostly-untouched transfer that way people can trade the original, and the "audio engineers" out there can screw up the recording for themselves however they want?