Reducing faint echo in voice recordings

Question

Have some voice recordings created around ’08 or ’09 that have a faint echo similar to print through, but the last phrase of the speech gets repeated very faintly about a second AFTER the speech stops....
Basically, the last word of the speech is repeated about 500ms into the inter-sentence lull.  Don’t know how the source material was created, but it was in a pro studio, so don’t think its room-reflected echo, believe its digital tape and don’t hear any echo or other processing effect in the audio stream.  Can you get print through on digital?  Any ideas on how these echoes got into the recording?

Answer 1

hhansard wrote:
isn't that why some folks wind analog masters tail-end? 
Well sort of - the reason is very much to do with print-through, but it's slightly more complicated than that. What's really at stake is trying to minimise the print-through mechanism itself from working more effectively. It's claimed that by moving the fields apart fast, you can even potentially reverse the effect of print-through - although personally I've seen no real evidence to support this. Moving them fast will certainly increase the immediate field strength for an instant, but on the face of it, this would increase the chances of magnetic interaction, not reduce it; I don't see how a polarity reversal occurs, hence the reason for being a little sceptical.
So the idea is that if you spool the tape before playing it, you end up with less print-through when you actually play it. As I said, I'm not convinced that it makes that much difference, although there are other advantages to the practice, especially with tapes that haven't been well stored. Winding through them first displaces any dust and loose oxide quite effectively, so you reduce the chances of things sticking up. And the chances are that because of tension changes, the tape will end up with different bits sitting on top of each other the more you wind it, so you will at least end up with different print-through!