4-Track on a 2-Track

[Drone]

I thought there was a topic on this before, but I can't seem to find it.

How feasible is it to play back 4-track tapes on a 2-track system into a DAW?

I have a friend with a bunch of old 4-track demos he wants digitized, I have a 2-track deck hooked to my DAW. Is it as simple as playing the tape forward, then backward and reversing the second pair of tracks?

[A.David.MacKinnon]

That would work but getting the 2 sets of tracks in synch would be a nightmare. You might also run into weirdness on the backwards tracks if there is some kind of noise reduction involved. I'd expect DBX noise redux would react differently to backwards audio then forwards. It's compression and expansion.

[Drone]

You mean difficult because of finding a common point, or difficult because of wow and flutter causing the two sets of tracks to drift?

[A.David.MacKinnon]

You mean difficult because of finding a common point, or difficult because of wow and flutter causing the two sets of tracks to drift?

Tape in general isn't super consistent in terms of playback speed. Cassette is even worse. You may have luck lining up short sections but over the course of a song or whole cassette you'll have a fair bit of drift.