Editing Audio Tape With A Razor Blade And Splicing Block
| Field | Radio and music production |
| Went Obsolete | late 1990s |
| Made Obsolete By | computer-based audio editing |
| Knowledge Assumed | Use of a reel-to-reel tape recorder, acoustics, and which end of a razor blade to hold |
| When useful | This was good for removing extraneous “er”s and “um”s, or for things like rearranging songs. |
In the days before widely-available computers became powerful enough to edit audio, audio editing was accomplished with a reel-to-reel tape deck, a block of metal with grooves in it known as a splicing block, and a sharp razor blade. You would typically slice the tape at a 45 degree angle, as this distributed the shift in sound from one piece of tape to the other in time; straight edits were more likely to produce an audible “pop” and were typically also weaker. After lining up the two sliced pieces of audio tape, a thin piece of sticky splicing tape would be applied to the top.
Demagnetizing the razor blade using a tape demagnetizer before cutting the tape was another way to reduce the audio level of any pop due to the splice.
