Using a dedicated (de)compressor and then piping that as input to a tape archiver makes perfect sense to me: tar cf - file | xz -9evc > archive.tar.xz xz

Using a dedicated (de)compressor and then piping that as input to a tape archiver makes perfect sense to me: tar cf - file | xz -9evc > archive.tar.xz xz -dvc archive.tar.xz | tar xf -