Gloria - Laura Branigan

Thanks for the tips and information, very helpful! I am using audacity and it
has its good points and bad points, for sure. For example, i can never seem
to create a pleasing fade-out... maybe I'll look into adobe.

Ah, that makes sense; the timing difference, if any, depends on whether the channel offset on the playback head matches the direction of the cut. I imagine, then, the cut can sometimes be in the opposite direction, and played on a deck with an offset, resulting in an even greater offset. And 30 vs 15 ips tape speed may affect this timing when dubbing, as well.

I think this explains why I see so much variation in splices when looking at the waveforms & spectrograms. The vast majority have the left and right transitioning at the same time, or the music is such that I just can't tell. The rest have a visible offset. I've tried replicating the bigger offsets in my reconstructions, but to be honest, I don't really hear the difference.

But as for choosing a 90° cut for the non-offset heads, I'm doubt if that was universal. A 45° cut was still ideal for keeping the transition smooth within each channel, the tradeoff being that timing difference, especially at lower tape speeds. But my understanding is that it comes down to the personal preferences of who's doing the edits, as well as what kind of material they're working with; there was no universally correct way.

Some blocks have a 60° option as well!

Thanks Ron, that's very interesting. I'm going to try that! I've never done it
that way before.....

Yeah, I rarely see fades that are perfectly linear or perfectly sinusoidal. They're usually either aggressive at first, then gentle, or vice-versa. There's always a bit of experimentation to try to get a match. Sometimes I have to just say "close enough". Also I try to be clear in my filename & tags when a file is a "fan reconstruction", which I think implies "probably not perfect"! :)

Interesting stuff here. I never knew about these 45 & 90 degree angles. I
simply use crossfade in Wavelab, and often times the edit is better than the
45, but I don't consider that a bad thing.

And I'm sure there are ways to fade an LP version to match exactly the fade of
the single version, but I just look at both WAV forms and do my best to match,
but I'm sure it's never perfect. I guess people can subtract one from the other
until they've got the exact right curve that was used to fade the 45.