Tape Delay System
Instead, Townsend came up with a system using tape delay, after similar principles already in place for echoes applied via tape during a song mixdown. In essence, Townsend's system added a second tape recorder to the regular setup. When mixing a song, its vocal track was routed from the recording head of the multitrack tape, which was before the playback head, and fed to the record head of the second tape recorder. An oscillator was used to vary the speed of the second machine, providing more or less delay depending on how fast or slow the second machine was run relative to the first. This signal was then routed from the playback head of the second machine to a separate fader on the mixer. This allowed the delayed vocal to be combined with the normal vocal, creating the double tracked effect.
Read more about this topic: Automatic Double Tracking
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