Back in the day when duplicating tapes was a day job for me, they said that side 2 of cassettes duped ay high speed both sides at once would sound better than the side 1 would. Never made much difference on cassettes, especially at 64 or 128IPS dupe speed, but some people told me copying 2 tracks worked better in reverse too... They said the electronics could respond to transients backwards better than forwards. I have no empiric evidence of this though. Just old tape tales by now, but this had me thinking back... or backwards! I have transferred some quarter track tapes doing all four tracks at once top a four channel A/D, and not noticed a significant difference, but it is easier to do them one side at a time as then they end up tails out, as long as it is an hourly job and not a mass flat fee transfer project. Hope this isn't irrelevant! Lou Lou Judson Intuitive Audio 415-883-2689 On Oct 8, 2009, at 1:59 PM, Richard L. Hess wrote: > >> It's not the digital realm, its the way the reel electronics >> handle transients and phase > > There appears to be waveform differences between playback in the > two directions after accounting for the polarity flip. To my ears, > this is an acceptable tradeoff for copying oral history tapes in > half the time. This is especially true of mid-to-low-fi recordings > such as some 3.75 and most 1.88 in/s reels. > > Cheers, > > Richard