Hi Tom, I transfer these tapes all of the time. I transfer each side individually and check azimuth for each side. If the tapes were recorded at different speeds (not uncommon), I will check azimuth for the off-speed section and record it separately. Your description of "In fact they were recorded on all sorts of different machines" is the clue. Aside from the fact that you may have a jumble of recordings from different sources on one tape (also not uncommon with home recordings), transferring the tape all at once guarantees an out-of-azimuth transfer for the half playing backwards. Because the reverse track would not only be off-azimuth, but because it has to be digitally manipulated, possibly more than once (possible off-speed sections), I would think that it would not be considered an archival quality file. Cheers! Corey Corey Bailey Audio Engineering www.baileyzone.net On 3/9/2015 11:56 AM, Tom Diamant wrote: > I am going to be dubbing some two track � inch tapes to digital. These were > recorded with a two track head with one mono track going in each direction. > I was going to dub both tracks at the same time and then just flip the > backwards track in the computer. These are not being played back on the same > tape recorders they were recorded on. In fact they were recorded on all > sorts of different machines. It seems simple enough, taking half the time, > but then I thought is there some technical reason that I shouldn�t do that? > > Tom Diamant > > Arhoolie Foundation > > > > > > > >