Editing voice recording on the 'fly'

[Pondering]

Is it possible to edit on the 'fly'? As in doing dictation where you may be recording and want to quickly back up, and change the recording and then keep going.

[kozikowski]

No. The best you can do is pause recording and then pick up exactly where you were.

You can simulate that by letting Audacity create all new tracks and then cutting and pasting them together as appropriate, but it's not real time.

Koz

[Pondering]

Thanks for the response! Please bear with me as I followup with more of a theoretical question...is the inability to do a quick "rewind" and record at the rewind point a feature that is just not needed by most recording software, or is it difficult to do with digital media. I've looked at a number of packages (and physical digital voice recorders) and, except for the very high end (and very expensive) such a feature is not available.

Thus, my curiosity has gotten the better of me and I'm wondering if it is just a supply and demand thing where folks just no longer need the quick rewind feature like we had on the old tape recorders, or is it the nature of the digital media beast?