Dubbing "Backwards"

[stellavox]

Sorry if this has been discussed before and I missed it.  Just remembered something I'd heard yyeeaarrss ago.

Story goes like this:  Each time you make an analog tape dub, you "accumulate" time delays on the new recording as the tape moves across the head in one direction and is going "relatively" slowly.  When you play back the tape or make a dub, it's always in the same direction so these delays will inevitably accumulate.

So to help counteract this a bit; when you make a dub, why not do it "backwards"?  This would "reverse" at least one set of "delays".

Any sense to this / in this?

Charles

[docb]

Paul gave that a try when we started the project. Didn't seem to make an audible difference and it creates a problem of the duping engineer not being able to easily pick out any issues that might appear when monitoring during duping. We figured that even if the duper got the skills to hear any problems we would probably have to pay for a psychologist for them after they listened to tapes running backwards again and again and again, day after day.

[stellavox]

.melborp ruoy dnatsrednu t'nod I

selrahC

[c1ferrari]

Well,

Should the source tape be reproduced on the playback machine at an accurate speed, i.e., 15 ips, and recorded on the dupe machine at an accurate speed, i.e., 15 ips...where is the putative delay?

[High and Outside]

Charles,

Why don't you try duping something both ways and report back with your results?

I heard about this many years ago, tried it, and sure enough they sounded different. But I didn't think the backwards copy was a better representation of the original. And I don't have a theory for why they would sound different...at least not one I can stand behind.

I might try it again some time, just to get a more recent take on it. But if you get around to it before I do, please share,

Cheers,