Sound Engineering Explained, 2nd Edition

11 Recording

Part 2 – Editing

Why edit?

There are two general reasons for wanting to edit a recording:

1.   To shorten or rearrange the order of items on the tape.

2.   To ‘clean up’ a recording by removing things likes coughs and other accidental noises. Under this heading can come mistakes such as mispronunciations by a speaker who has immediately corrected them, excessive ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ and general ‘fluffs’. With ‘quarter-inch’ tape, the mechanics of editing are fairly easy. A skilled editor can remove the smallest imperfection, helped by the fact that such tape may be moving at 38 cm/s, so that an unwanted sound lasting only one fiftieth of a second will occupy several millimetres of tape.

In the case of cassettes it can be said outright ...