It only took David and I about a year and a half to make this collab happen, hope it was worth the wait! 😅 Get the library ► bit.ly/dsinterlaced David's video ► ruclips.net/video/OHoTzs3mtM8/видео.html Roland SH-4D ► bit.ly/3mLlUf1
I always find it ironic to hear about recording audio to a VHS as "lo fi" , because when I was making electronic music in a home studio in the 90s, this was seen as the cutting edge DIY workaround to get high fidelity recordings without super expensive studio time.We called it the poor man's DAT Because for us , it was either recording to VHS, or using a fancy Tascam 4 track tape recorder , and you felt lucky AF to have either.
Indeed, vhs hi-fi is near CD quality, it's probably not going to change it much, moreso just their playing around with intentionally clipped audio levels and such. Presumably the other VCR was recording on linear audio, hence the quality difference.
It is true that the audio of the hifi stereo vcr is incredible, just like that of a CD, I would say right now in 2024 I am still using it to record high quality songs, as you say, it is the poor man's dat or the poor man's reel to reel.
Back in the 80s and 90s before we had digital recorders I used 2 vhs decks for recording and overdubbing. It was cheaper than reel to reel decks which were the goto at the time. They worked great and I kept them in use until digital recorders and computers surpassed them. Loved this video. Thank you!
I know this goes against the grain of the lo-fi intent of this video but if you want to experiment more in the tape realm along these lines, look for S-VHS machines. They capture more frequencies... or ADAT - Digital recording which used S-VHS tapes as the recording medium--the clarity of digital with all the frustrations of analog tape!
Was gonna say, I did much the same. And I used the VHS for the master from which I'd transfer to the hi-tech world of cassette tapes. Worked like a charm. 😂
@Venus Theory one of the great features of VHS recordings was the counters. It made it easy to find specific clips. The quality wasn't exactly lossless but it was superior to home tape decks and recorders by far. Even at the higher speeds for better quality you could pack lots of recordings on the tapes. As always you get what you pay for but even high quality VHS tapes were cheaper than an equal reel of reel to reel tape.
A friend of mine went off the deep with VCR and tape. He got me out of hardware, and into DAW life, then 180ed hard into hardware himself for years, owning 4-5 VCRs, synths and MPC's
I've realised that it has become ritual for me to watch one of your videos before working on my own music. Not as musical inspiration but in a weird way of being inspired where I feel more free from the boxes I've put myself into while creating. It feels insane but i'm writing this so this feel stays fresh in my memory. Thank you Cameron.
SP is standard play-mode, LP is long play mode. Tape moves slower in LP mode. It results in lesser quality, but longer record time. Faster moving tape = better quality.
I worked in a studio in the 90s that switched from an 8-track reel-to-reel over to an early 16 track Alesis ADAT system (later 32 tracks) using S-VHS media. The ADATs used regular VHS transports. Prior to working at the studio I was as an intern/student technician in a shop repairing VCRs all day. Sounds like your dad did something similar. The skills served us well in the studio keeping the ADATs humming along as the internals were very similar to VCRs. Pretty cool to see people get excited about tape and the 90s sound again. Hard nostalgic vibes from 90s synth sounds with all the hiss and hands-on joy that comes with working with tape. Thanks for sharing.
There’s even a new sub genre of horror now called analog horror that’s made to look like found footage vhs tapes from the 90s so everyone’s getting into vhs now
Back in the mid-late 1990's, I used a HI-FI VHS deck to record some of my dj mixes before dubbing them over to cassettes. With a T-120 tape, that's good for up to a 2 hour dj mix. I didn't use the EP speed because one time I recorded one set off of radio at EP speed and the audio kept dropping out every 4-5 seconds (dodgy tape). So henceforth, I used the SP speed. Also with VHS, there are 2 types of audio tracks. 1 is "linear" and it is the original audio track. It's fidelity was basically equal to a type 1 cassette tape without Dolby B NR. 2. Then came "Hi-Fi" which used FM technology to record the audio. The S/N ratio was around 80 dB and the frequency response was a lot closer to 20-20KHz than with the linear audio which was more or less 60Hz to 8KHz.
@@Zawmbbeh VHS content in general was way less susceptible to speed issues, since every VCR also recorded a control track on the tape that basically ensured near to perfect speed of every VHS you played in any VCR.
@@Davis38 Is that why there's a high pitched tone on some VHS transfers? I'd imagine it would use something like that and try and make small adjustments to speed like you'd see a strobe light on a turntable.
@@Zawmbbeh The control track is not audible, I have never experienced that high pitch you're talking about. Maybe you're referring to the high pitched tone old CRTs produced? It was 15734 Hz for NTSC and 15750 Hz for PAL.
That oldschool lo fi is the reason I love my Akai S900. Magic happens when you drive the input just so so into the red. No VST bitcrusher/saturator can quite get you there.
Earlier Hi-Fi VCRs were a big deal for audiophiles in my later high school and early college years (early 1980's). I worked for 3M from 1990-2016 (first two years as a sponsored postdoc) and up until the Imation spin-off worked on various magnetic recording technologies, primarily computer tape but also some AV tape. The science and engineering in the magnetic recording field was impressive and interesting.
Oh, this had to have been so fun to do. Sent me back to my childhood in the 90s. Thank you for that, sir. ❤ This is one of your best videos so far. Your grumpy shell is totally dissolved here. Such positive vibe, throughout.
Videotape width was still measured in inches when I started using it in a live TV studio in 1974. These latest-of-game consumer decks were marketed with “hi-fi” or “CD-quality” or “digital” sound starting in the 90s actually. 80s models would still use directly modulated audio exactly as audio tape would. This meant in a consumer format like VHS or Betamax you would be limited to a tape speed that was an even divisor of usually 3 3/4 IPS. I think Betamax could record at 7 1/2. At the SLP (super long play) speed that would mean analog audio recorded and played back at 15/16” ips. Barely voice comms grade frequency response. We used to have 1/4” quarter track open reel tape decks modified to that speed to record the air feed and three phone lines to the station in case of threats phoned in by lunatics or any other liability issues. That’s where you get your juicy analog tape artifacts right there, I tell you what. These end-game VHS decks specifically employed a method of recording essentially an FM radio upconversion of the RF signal for the audio onto the tape. Yes this is indeed pretty geeky. It produced these main benefits: elimination of tape hiss by the exact same technique used in FM radio to “eliminate” hiss, extension of 20-22050 Hz flat frequency response to compete with “CD QUALITY” sound (because technically the method wasn’t actually constrained by the 19kHz notch for the “stereo” pilot light on an FM receiver, so they could Just use that all the way up to the end of the range), and essentially preventing “transport artifacts” such as wow & flutter, at al, because you weren’t listening to audio modulated directly to tape but to audio modulated into an FM frequency range, as for broadcast FM which was recorded analog to the tape. Basically a tuned FM antenna signal to tape (well IF probably technically) some models “digital” would actually resynthesize the raw FM carrier off the tape which would allow corrections for wow flutter etc. the general idea was to preemptively nukemurder the possibility of tape artifacts. I believe the youngsters today would call this “hella complicated.” Yes… yes it was. Apropos to your video this means any audio recorded to the deck will play back pretty much indistinguishable from CD audio “quality” BUT… Commercial VHS duplication outfits were hella cheap and in a hellfired 3 Shifts 7 days hurry all the time because they could only dub VHS tapes in real time. So as far as digitizing baked in analog artifacts from a recording, a commercially dubbed tape especially from earlier rather than later in the 90s is probably your best bet for finding analog tape artifacts to digitize. They would run their duplicator deck farms into the ground and tend not to replace them until the thing had become merely an automatic tape mangling machine. This meant some duplication runs might actually contain the FM encoded audio variety or not, labelled as such or not, especially on a big commercial release where it was all hands on deck. Or all decks on hand I mean.
Your ability to create such beautiful sounds, as well as how you articulated everything (9:20 onwards) really is one of the most inspiring things, and you do it consistently every video. I'm gonna go try and make something awesome. Thanks Cameron
I might be wrong, but to me it seems like you have recorded your sounds in VHS HiFi Stereo mode (which sound like a high-quality DAT recording because it uses technology very similar to DAT, which has much wider dynamics and freq range than normal VHS audio!), while David recorded his sounds on plain VHS audio channel, which is "true" analog tape recording (VHS HiFi is completely different and would not produce desired LoFi sounds but rather very high quality sound). I used VHS HiFi sound at LP speed for mastering my demo album mixes and archiving CDs and tapes to VHS back in early 90s since I could have 8 hours of CD/DAT-quality on one 4-hour VHS tape. I am just guessing that's where your LoFi sound differs so much from David's since his VHS machine has only 1 mono analog audio track (see his white and yellow connector in his YT? white is audio, yellow is composite video), and your VHS recorder has both L+R stereo channels in HiFi mode. Ah yes, I enjoyed that part where you taped the plastic bit to enable recording ;). Check if my theory is correct, Cameron - and let us know.
I used to drag my mid/hi end consumer level hifi vhs vcr with me to NYC to record BLS and RKS fm stations that featured live djs like Red Alert and Tony Humphries back in the day. I preferred to record at regular speed, but sometimes I had to go out so in order to get the entire evening I'd set it to record on slow! My machine did have a way to set input levels. It also had a set of level meters. At the time, I was under the assumption that the quality was between cassette and reel to reel.
Well, even if "VHS was never designed for making sample libraries", we used it that way back in the 80s. CD-R didn't exists yet, so there were both shops/hobbyists, who used to share "sample libraries" on Hi-Fi VHS tapes, so you could SAMPLE them in your own Sampler. It was better than having to deal with floppies with already chopped samples for every sampler out there, and you could store up to 3 hours of samples on a cheap 180 minutes VHS tape, which you could sample in any way you wanted and make your sound set for your own sampler. Those samples contained both acoustic instruments, but also samples from the hugely expensive synths you couldn't afford, like Fairlight, Synclavier, PPG, Moog, etc. I think I still have one of these tapes somewhere.
In 1986, I did an internship at Universal Recording in Chicago in the film sound division downstairs. One of the machine room operators (more on that later) would take out a certain VHS deck and a portable PCM converter box and record sound FX after work. The results were fed into the Synclavier studio upstairs. You should look at a Magna-tech recorder 35mm film recorder. Usually a full stripe setup with a thick magnetic layer on top of a 35mm acetate base instead of film emulsion. The magnetic layer was so thick that it had tons of headroom. Gunshots recorded on this stuff sounded amazing! Our machine room was stuffed to the rafters with these Magna-Tech machines.
I also left a comment on David's video, but wanted to leave you a note, too. Great project. As I mentioned on David's channel, I'm not really a LoFi guy, but the library the two of you have created is wonderful -- perfect for tones to float through an ambient piece, or even as featured parts in more ... "normal" ... music. Thanks to both of you!
A few years ago before my parent's sold the childhood home I used the same model of VHS player to do the same thing! I fed signal in from my MC-505 and used a really well used cassette. Same machine my sister and I watched Jurassic Park on maybe a hundred times. And The Crow... Something I loved about this technique was how the recorded compressed the signal when it got too hot. I also recorded a couple of hours of audio from one of the tapes. Mid-Late-90s advertising was fucked up...
I remember my brother also crying his eyes out to the fox and the hound! Fun to see this process since I had the intention to doing the same thing this year!
8:52 _Simba, let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the fleamarket VHS tapes, and the antelope turn us into sample libraries._ _And so we are all connnected in the great Circle of Life._
GREAT video VT, thank you. I grew up with VCRs and so much of my formulative experiences with recording come from this technology. I hadn't realised how unique the sound of VHS audio was until I watched your and David's videos - I didn't expect to be taken back 30 years with such a jolt - and then your poetic ramblings and that beautiful synth vamp you played at the end.. goodness I'm tearing up with memories of my childhood now damnit.
What an amazing video! Thank you so much! Cartoons on tapes on them old huge TVs and the nostalgic warmth and carelessness of our childhood is one of the most deep and majestic and intimate feelings ever.
You never cease to inspire me to create or think deeper about my own creative process. Thank you for this homage to a childhood many of us here experienced.
I used to use VHS hi-fi for audio recordings; they are quite good for audio in two hour mode; far better than cassettes (tracking aside). Audiophiles back in the day used them all the time for vinyl recordings. Still have mine, and they sound great.
I was really surprised at how decent the recordings were! I was almost disappointed with how clean it was compared to recording with my crappy cassette decks, but I was really pleasantly surprised at how clean-ish things came out but had the little bit of VHS-y warble and warmth.
@@VenusTheorythis would be the FM radio signal that was actually recorded to the tape containing the audio. Some engineer had the brilliant realization of the vast disparity in analog signal bandwidth between analog audio to 3 3/4” tape, and the essentially rocket powered tape speeds created by the helical scan heads in a videotape recorder. Add two more heads to the heads armature and you have luxuriously capable bandwidth. The inventor of ADAT decided to double down on this and come up with essentially a proprietary VHS tape format for audio only with all that bandwidth from the rocket speed “flying tape heads” as I believe the patent stuff read. Edit: but I think ADAT despite its true innovations like optical interfaces, has been largely forgotten because it was a digital recording format that just happened to use analog VHS tape technology to store the 1s and 0s.
I had a very nice Super VHS deck - rack-mounted, the type you'd find in broadcast studios - for several years. This thing had a "use-time" meter on it, showing how many hours of use it had on it - and that was very low. I sold it at a garage sale for a ridiculously low amount of money to a very happy buyer in 2009, only because it was big and heavy and I was trying to off a lot of my big heavy gear. But I had used it to master a lot of my audio projects and get that "tape sound" on the final mixes. Watching this video makes me wish I'd hung on to that one big heavy box... Ah, well...
I have no idea why I never even had a thought about recording audio via a VHS player, even though I love lo-fi aesthetics and use it in my recordings extensively. I got one unit in perfect condition straight from my childhood and dozens of cassettes. Glad I never sold that stuff. Thanks for inspiration 🖤
Instant thumbs up. Also, I have that exact mug at 1:38. I drink coffee from it every morning, and the little rubber bottom part is so satisfying to put down on my desk.
great little essay here, cameron. I was born in the late 70s, so the nostalgia here really resonates. plus I, too, have that thirst for lo-fi warble, so... yeah!! great vid!! loads of inspiration. definitely buying you guys' decent sampler pack. yaaay!!
Haha, great video! My favorite effect in Ableton is the VHS Audio Degradation Suite for Reaktor 6. I use it on my master track all the time. It makes the general sound more lively and special, and of course a little lofi noisy and fluttery. I hate the standard "clean" sound of the DAW. But I'm doing dark ambient and drone with a little 80s twist, so it fits the "aesthetics" perfectly...
dude, you did literally the thing that i have been trying to do for 2 and a half years and im ECSTATIC! also i saw this teased in another one of ur vids dont think we missed that ;)
About the tab on the edge of the cartridge. Back in the day they did genuinely used to tell you to snap out the tab after making a recording. This would cause a lever in the machine to push forward and lock-up the tape erase head - it was an actual mechanical block to protect the tape. And then if you wanted to overwrite the tape again the advice on the box was to use a piece of sticky tape to cover-over the hole. So what you are doing on those pre-recorded tapes is 100% correct when you want to record over them.
Some interesting trivia: There was a duo called Tuck & Patty who recorded their albums on video tape. Tuck’s guitar was recorded to the tape’s audio tracks, and Patty’s vocals were actually recorded on the video portion of the tape. (And, no, I don’t know why they didn’t just use a regular multitrack tape machine.)
Probably because mortal ears wouldn't be able to take it. Their mashup of Castles made of Sand and Little Wing is one of myball time favourites ruclips.net/video/D7wzlQb8LXQ/видео.html
Our family rented a VHS machine in 1987... by 2007 VHS was already gone. At the time we hated it for its crappyness and flaws, now we love it for those same reasons!
@@MusicZeroOne Very true. I once saw a documentary on a company making silicone seals for (transverse) flutes. They worked really well, and lasted much better than the traditional felt material. In fact, it worked so well, that it worked too well- the players didn't like the sound! They had to artificially distress the silicone until it didn't seal quite perfectly before the players were satisfied!
You are one very creative person Cameron. Such a unique channel you have going. Really really cool content and coverage of your awesome process in making this collab with David happen. You stirred up so many childhood memories. Not an easy thing to make happen for your audience and I'm so very grateful that you did! This viewing/reminiscing experience was the high light of this week on plant earth, for me at least. Thanks man.
It's more than just the recording tab! Commercial video tape used a different formulation for the magnetic layer to make it more durable and less likely to degrade due to stray magnetic fields. This probably added a lot more 'character' to your recordings, since a VCR's erase head may not be strong enough to get rid of the previous content entirely.
You had me with the title and this video did not disappoint. I think there's an old VCR stored at my parents' house. Definitely gotta try this. Thanks for this Cam 👍🏿
I love the little detail about seeing where someone had stopped playing the VHS tape for the last time. We recently resurrected my wife's Nintendo GameCube and had the surreal experience of my daughter racing against (and beating) the ghost version of my wife as a teenager in MarioKart Double Dash.
Did this with my compact Phillips/Magnavox Hi-Fi VHS Player/Recorder back in the late 80s-90s... I cannot remember the model. It had VU meters and a knob for audio recording level. Used it too record my favorite mixes and music. Just hooked it up to the stereo and had a long play time of very good audio quality.
Well I said it on David's vid too but you and he are 2 of the few YTers I regularly watch so it's really cool you got together on this. As a grateful user of DS, I'll definitely be getting this.
Can’t click fast enough when you release a new vid mate. Good work, you said in the video it’s fascinating when music can give you a feeling. The music throughout including synth sample really nailed the nostalgia feeling for me. Keep at it friend.
I'm confused, as there's no talk about VHS stereo vs. mono audio. They're completely different technologies. Stereo is real hifi, FM encoded with the rotating drum, whereas the mono signal is recorded with plain tape head along the very slowly moving tape. Generally, you need a hifi VHS recorder to have audio inputs with the ability to record audio only. But you need the non-hifi mono track to do what's done here. It will always be recorded along the hifi stereo sound, and you can choose to play mono or stereo (or left or right). With hifi VHS you can also overdub: that's simple as it only records the mono audio while playing back the video and stereo audio as it is.
Great stuff, Cameron. I rather serendipitously happ cross to catch David’s own upload about this last night, so it's great to sere your side of the collaborative process - top notch video as always, squire! 😎👍
Yes in fact lots of radio stations in past used the approach to make backups of their program as the material had to be checked for legal things afterward. So you can put lots of hours audio to vhs. Good catch!
An interesting asterisk in the 90s about those reviews you cited. The “tape noise” complaint would pretty much only have applied to commercially dubbed VHS releases because newer releases may have been made with the later FM audio track method that pretty much removed “hiss” for the same reason FM radio removed hiss compared to AM radio. In addition some TV models would have had fairly aggressive limiters and levels into those, to “even out” the disparity between what we would today cal the LUFS level of program material vs commercials (in the case of recording off-air), or in the case of “true” analog audio only commercial VHS dubs. In addition these older commercial dubs would have benefitted from a remaster to ride loudness especially in quiet dialogue scenes which is where reviewers of the time would have lit their hair on fire about analog s/n ratio. To make it more complicated the duplicator op would also tend to level the analog audio a bit on the low side so as to prevent returns of purchases due to analog print-through (which in the case of VHS tape could produce all sorts of weird repeating onscreen distortions). People love those today. Back then we lost sleep trying to figure out how to prevent the possibility of them. It was a lot safer to just back off the master feeding the distribution amps by 2-3dB and blame s/n complaints on the playback deck than risk having the distributor return an entire shipment of VHS cassettes as defective. Tape was hard.
Dude wow!, incredible job on this! Im really excited check it out. Ive been really wanting to learn to code so that I can create my own sampled instruments and what not. Would you be able to share what you used to code, and design the UI. and possibly some resources that teach you how to code specifically for Plug ins?
I've always found VHS audio fascinating and have been looking for an easy way to get a bit of that tape audio sound for my loops. I guess I'll start keeping an eye out for old VHS recorders.
Beyond all your excellent audio advice, I love the way you tell a story. I'm old enough for VHS to be new tech when I was a kid. I totally remember the tape hack. Wish I had the mixtapes I made from pirated MTV in the early 80s
Back in the early 1990s, Sony Betacam used PCM audio, so buying a used Betacam deck was a cheap way to get a digital stereo recorder that was cheaper than the dedicated digital audio recorders.
In the 90’s at my college radio station we used HiFi vhs tapes to record and later play back broadcasting to cover overnight and vacant time slots. It worked fantastically and still sounded way better than many stations digitally compressed automation you hear today on FM radio.
I dumped DAT for HiFi VHS as a mixdown medium in 1996. My HiFi VHS deck was great. No noisier than reel to reel (maybe less) but without the frustrating nuclear dropouts I suffered with DAT (I tried a bunch of different brands of DAT cassettes including Ampex and HHS with Sony being the least undependable). With DAT I had to print each version of a mix three times just in case a dropout hit. DAT dropouts are silence - not the momentary loss of highs of an analogue tape dropout. When I got my Korg D1600 muktitracker I rented a Tascam pro DAT machine and digitized those tapes. Recently I digitized my old HiFi VHS masters - not a single dropout among them and as good as the day they were recorded over 25 years ago.
VHS tapes and video tape in general have been used for pure sound recording for a _long_ time, actually. Back in the late '70s, the first home PCM adapters used composite video to output their recordings to a VCR; if you wanted to listen to a PCM recording, you popped the tape into the VCR, turned on the PCM adapter, and pressed play while running the VCR's output back into the adapter. If you watch the output on a TV - because it _is_ just a video signal - it looks like a mess of black and white pixels, but a PCM adapter would decode it; sample rate was around 14 bit, not quite Red Book CD but still pretty darn good for the time. Before the advent of CDs in 1982, this was the only way to listen to digital audio at home. Also, in the '90s, there was a standard called ADAT which debuted in 1992. ADAT used S-VHS tapes, a higher-resolution version of VHS which debuted in the late '80s, and could record 8-channel 16-bit audio; multiple ADAT VCRs could be linked together to record up to 128 channels simultaneously. ADAT was used for professional audio mastering in many studios up into the 2000s.
It’s weird to see the process in reverse. I built my first sample library from watching movies on VHS and sampling sfx and dialogue into my EMU e64 sampler. The EMU came with an installed floppy drive and very little ram. After many nights of waiting 5 minutes or more for my banks to load from the disks I installed a 20gig hard drive. A modern day miracle lol thanks for the video!
Congratulations to David and yourself on an amazing collaborative instrument! 👏🙌 Will try out the free version tomorrow, but this has to be a definite buy!
I remember having a lot of fun taking bits of video tape and passing them across cassette record heads - makes a weird and wonderful noise if you are into that sort of thing!
That's a HiFi VHS machine. Unless you are trying to record too hot, in which case the decks usually have an audio level limiter that intervenes. You were getting near CD audio quality if you kept the levels appropriate. No hiss, no warbles. In SLP speed you will get minute dropouts out of a very used tape. If you want VHS tape grunge you have to get a non HiFi VHS deck. You can tell because it ONLY has one audio output RCA jack. Then you're using the actual linear (Not HiFi) audio track on the tape which actually is LoFi.
Another good option for recording in a Lo-Fi style is using old Camcorders. Some take VHS and some may take VHS-C, but the main concept still remains. A lot of them have a mic Jack too, so just point the camera at a wall and start playing and boom, you’re done as quick as that.
My first "instruments" were a C-64, a few boomboxes with RCA line ins (and one that used RCA jacks for the detachable speaker connections), and a pair of home VHS decks... I truly believe you should try to insert a plug into a matching jack, regardless of what (okay, within reason) is one either end of the cable.
Very interesting! I recall that back in the day, Alexis made an ADAT deck that used VHS cassettes. Also, somewhere in the dusty corners of my mind, there seems to be an article written for Guitar or Keyboard Magazine perhaps that explored the idea of using a standard VHS deck as a tape deck, with audio being recorded along side a stream of blank video for stability. The idea being that the VHS head was spinning at high RPMs made the audio “sample rate” better, and thus made the recording of higher quality than standard reel-to-reel.
Congratulations. I think the methodical process you impose on this experiment has produced some remarkable sound artifacts. You are certainly right to marvel at the power of sound to invoke strong sentimental reactions but I think those will necessarily be discrete for each individual and their experiences.
I still have the last dvd/vhs combo I bought about 16 years ago. I recently was able pick up a capture card and component to hdmi converter dirt cheap. So I have been digitizing old projects from the early 90s. But I plan on reversing the process and running some music and video projects through the vcr to see what analog horror sound and video type effects I can come up with. Thankfully I still have a stash of 20 or so tapes on hand for this project.
Learning to experiment i see. We used to do this to give old beat tapes a special character. Im not sure why youd think its difficult. We used to pop the tops off and really mess around inside. Dirtying/cleaning the reel, tweaking with the character even more. Fun times messing with fuzz. Another character trick we did was running thru basic radio transmitters.
I kept all of my VHSs, in fact, I have some still-wrapped doubles: Grease, Friday The 13th, Many Disney, etc. I actually got a lot from watching your channel, from tips to free, amazing software, I'd be happy to send you a package with whatever doubles (or inherited items from my ex that I never watch) as my way to say thank you for your content ;)
Great video! I'm an old guy who used to wonder just how well a VHS recorder could work with the short-lived VHS Hi-Fi (or whatever it was called) format that the recording engineers in Mix Magazine were so crazy about at the time. I never attempted recording audio on one, but now that you have brought it to mind... I think I'd like to try it. Give my computer DAW a break. Maybe even incorporate a cassette recording into it. Thanks for the inspiration!
From 1984 until VCRs stopped being made(indeed the very last model in 2016 supported hifi audio) isn't exactly short-lived. It was basically standard for much of that time, on anything other than budget decks.
showing my age remembering that, "tape hack" and thinking someone watching this would have no idea. Then I think back to being a kid, and hearing someone my age say the same thing. The cycle repeats.
It would just be too cool if you were able to get your hands on an old mixing console with tons and tons inputs and outputs for everything under the sun, and stuff like multi band eq, compression, and reverb. You could modify this to hook up a bunch of random sound sources like a modified vcr, effect pedals, and other obscure things. Maybe even something like a dial up modem and an old rotary telephone. You could mess with all this stuff to create crazy echo effects, sequencers, and delays. And if the mixer has a patchboard you can basically set it up like a modular synth where everything can go anywhere and everywhere. You could even add in other synths or hook it up to a computer.
Somebody probably already made that comment, but VCR machines in the early 90s were a genuine audio recording solution for audiophiles willing to make high-quality mixtapes. Back then, the mainstream technology for home audio recording was the cassette tape player, which was a very poor audio reproduction technology: the amount of white noise and of stereo crosstalk were maddening, and you could at best record 90 minutes worth of sound on a single medium. However, pretty much everyone had a VCR machine at home, and it soon became clear that VCR machines could be used as hypertrophied audio tape machine. By recording your audio on a VHS tape, you had access to a much wider tape than the small, regular audio ones, and you generally could also adjust the recording and reading speed among a few preset values on the machine (thus allowing some degree of adjustment of the overall quality) Finally, the longest VHS tapes allowed for four-hours recording time on a single medium, which was simply unheard of before that. Therefore, we were quite a few among audiophiles to use our VHS machine as a tape recorder for music. Early digital music and the advent of the famed WinAmp player a few years later put an end to that trend, by allowing you to make arbitrarily long playlists without the source medium degrading a little on each new play.
Interesting 💡 We recorded those looong DJ sets back in the day onto VHS cassettes, because we could record up to 8 hours in Longplay onto a 240 cassette AND they could be programmed. Lots of #HR3clubnight sets or Mayday from the Dortmunder Westfalenhalle 🤪
Cool stuff! Back in 1992'ish we used an Akai VS-F600 Video Recorder to tape audio demo's & practice sessions with the band I was in xD Still have a box full of those tapes, I should look into that. Probably fun to listen back to.
It only took David and I about a year and a half to make this collab happen, hope it was worth the wait! 😅
Get the library ► bit.ly/dsinterlaced
David's video ► ruclips.net/video/OHoTzs3mtM8/видео.html
Roland SH-4D ► bit.ly/3mLlUf1
You explaining the workings of video tape made me feel rather old but also it brought smiles to my face for the great memories. Thank you Cameron.
The way I see it, we're now considered 'vintage' units.
I was thinking the same thing.
*Eyes the derelict VCR sitting in the corner*
Hmmm....
Hahaha same old feeling here
I always find it ironic to hear about recording audio to a VHS as "lo fi" , because when I was making electronic music in a home studio in the 90s, this was seen as the cutting edge DIY workaround to get high fidelity recordings without super expensive studio time.We called it the poor man's DAT
Because for us , it was either recording to VHS, or using a fancy Tascam 4 track tape recorder , and you felt lucky AF to have either.
Indeed, vhs hi-fi is near CD quality, it's probably not going to change it much, moreso just their playing around with intentionally clipped audio levels and such. Presumably the other VCR was recording on linear audio, hence the quality difference.
It is true that the audio of the hifi stereo vcr is incredible, just like that of a CD, I would say right now in 2024 I am still using it to record high quality songs, as you say, it is the poor man's dat or the poor man's reel to reel.
@@DoubleMonoLRclose is very little is the same
Back in the 80s and 90s before we had digital recorders I used 2 vhs decks for recording and overdubbing. It was cheaper than reel to reel decks which were the goto at the time. They worked great and I kept them in use until digital recorders and computers surpassed them. Loved this video. Thank you!
Haha that's brilliant. Maybe if I can find another one sometime I might give that a shot, could maybe make for a cool generation loss style sound.
I know this goes against the grain of the lo-fi intent of this video but if you want to experiment more in the tape realm along these lines, look for S-VHS machines. They capture more frequencies... or ADAT - Digital recording which used S-VHS tapes as the recording medium--the clarity of digital with all the frustrations of analog tape!
Was gonna say, I did much the same. And I used the VHS for the master from which I'd transfer to the hi-tech world of cassette tapes. Worked like a charm. 😂
@Venus Theory one of the great features of VHS recordings was the counters. It made it easy to find specific clips. The quality wasn't exactly lossless but it was superior to home tape decks and recorders by far. Even at the higher speeds for better quality you could pack lots of recordings on the tapes. As always you get what you pay for but even high quality VHS tapes were cheaper than an equal reel of reel to reel tape.
VHS Hi-Fi tape is so misunderstood as an audio format. There’s something very special about how it saturates and compresses sound.
A friend of mine went off the deep with VCR and tape. He got me out of hardware, and into DAW life, then 180ed hard into hardware himself for years, owning 4-5 VCRs, synths and MPC's
I've realised that it has become ritual for me to watch one of your videos before working on my own music. Not as musical inspiration but in a weird way of being inspired where I feel more free from the boxes I've put myself into while creating. It feels insane but i'm writing this so this feel stays fresh in my memory.
Thank you Cameron.
SP is standard play-mode, LP is long play mode. Tape moves slower in LP mode. It results in lesser quality, but longer record time. Faster moving tape = better quality.
Thank you!
I worked in a studio in the 90s that switched from an 8-track reel-to-reel over to an early 16 track Alesis ADAT system (later 32 tracks) using S-VHS media. The ADATs used regular VHS transports. Prior to working at the studio I was as an intern/student technician in a shop repairing VCRs all day. Sounds like your dad did something similar. The skills served us well in the studio keeping the ADATs humming along as the internals were very similar to VCRs. Pretty cool to see people get excited about tape and the 90s sound again. Hard nostalgic vibes from 90s synth sounds with all the hiss and hands-on joy that comes with working with tape. Thanks for sharing.
There’s even a new sub genre of horror now called analog horror that’s made to look like found footage vhs tapes from the 90s so everyone’s getting into vhs now
Back in the mid-late 1990's, I used a HI-FI VHS deck to record some of my dj mixes before dubbing them over to cassettes. With a T-120 tape, that's good for up to a 2 hour dj mix. I didn't use the EP speed because one time I recorded one set off of radio at EP speed and the audio kept dropping out every 4-5 seconds (dodgy tape). So henceforth, I used the SP speed.
Also with VHS, there are 2 types of audio tracks. 1 is "linear" and it is the original audio track. It's fidelity was basically equal to a type 1 cassette tape without Dolby B NR. 2. Then came "Hi-Fi" which used FM technology to record the audio. The S/N ratio was around 80 dB and the frequency response was a lot closer to 20-20KHz than with the linear audio which was more or less 60Hz to 8KHz.
does VHS Hi-Fi still suffer from speed issues being the format is still analog?
@@Zawmbbeh VHS content in general was way less susceptible to speed issues, since every VCR also recorded a control track on the tape that basically ensured near to perfect speed of every VHS you played in any VCR.
@@Davis38 Is that why there's a high pitched tone on some VHS transfers? I'd imagine it would use something like that and try and make small adjustments to speed like you'd see a strobe light on a turntable.
@@Zawmbbeh The control track is not audible, I have never experienced that high pitch you're talking about. Maybe you're referring to the high pitched tone old CRTs produced? It was 15734 Hz for NTSC and 15750 Hz for PAL.
@@Davis38 I might’ve gotten confused then, sorry. I definitely know some recordings have CRT frequency in them, particularly around the 80s and 90s.
That oldschool lo fi is the reason I love my Akai S900. Magic happens when you drive the input just so so into the red. No VST bitcrusher/saturator can quite get you there.
Earlier Hi-Fi VCRs were a big deal for audiophiles in my later high school and early college years (early 1980's). I worked for 3M from 1990-2016 (first two years as a sponsored postdoc) and up until the Imation spin-off worked on various magnetic recording technologies, primarily computer tape but also some AV tape. The science and engineering in the magnetic recording field was impressive and interesting.
Loved watching this. I learned a LOT - excited to use these samples. Thanks to both of you for bringing this to us. Gorgeous sounds...
Oh, this had to have been so fun to do. Sent me back to my childhood in the 90s. Thank you for that, sir. ❤ This is one of your best videos so far. Your grumpy shell is totally dissolved here. Such positive vibe, throughout.
Hard to be grumpy with all the nostalgia and how much fun this whole experiment was haha - full grump mode will return soon though 😅
@@VenusTheory Can't wait for the next one. You are a wealth of knowledge, musical wisdom, and ideas. All the best!
Videotape width was still measured in inches when I started using it in a live TV studio in 1974.
These latest-of-game consumer decks were marketed with “hi-fi” or “CD-quality” or “digital” sound starting in the 90s actually. 80s models would still use directly modulated audio exactly as audio tape would. This meant in a consumer format like VHS or Betamax you would be limited to a tape speed that was an even divisor of usually 3 3/4 IPS. I think Betamax could record at 7 1/2.
At the SLP (super long play) speed that would mean analog audio recorded and played back at 15/16” ips. Barely voice comms grade frequency response.
We used to have 1/4” quarter track open reel tape decks modified to that speed to record the air feed and three phone lines to the station in case of threats phoned in by lunatics or any other liability issues. That’s where you get your juicy analog tape artifacts right there, I tell you what.
These end-game VHS decks specifically employed a method of recording essentially an FM radio upconversion of the RF signal for the audio onto the tape. Yes this is indeed pretty geeky.
It produced these main benefits: elimination of tape hiss by the exact same technique used in FM radio to “eliminate” hiss, extension of 20-22050 Hz flat frequency response to compete with “CD QUALITY” sound (because technically the method wasn’t actually constrained by the 19kHz notch for the “stereo” pilot light on an FM receiver, so they could Just use that all the way up to the end of the range), and essentially preventing “transport artifacts” such as wow & flutter, at al, because you weren’t listening to audio modulated directly to tape but to audio modulated into an FM frequency range, as for broadcast FM which was recorded analog to the tape. Basically a tuned FM antenna signal to tape (well IF probably technically) some models “digital” would actually resynthesize the raw FM carrier off the tape which would allow corrections for wow flutter etc. the general idea was to preemptively nukemurder the possibility of tape artifacts. I believe the youngsters today would call this “hella complicated.” Yes… yes it was.
Apropos to your video this means any audio recorded to the deck will play back pretty much indistinguishable from CD audio “quality” BUT…
Commercial VHS duplication outfits were hella cheap and in a hellfired 3
Shifts 7 days hurry all the time because they could only dub VHS tapes in real time. So as far as digitizing baked in analog artifacts from a recording, a commercially dubbed tape especially from earlier rather than later in the 90s is probably your best bet for finding analog tape artifacts to digitize.
They would run their duplicator deck farms into the ground and tend not to replace them until the thing had become merely an automatic tape mangling machine. This meant some duplication runs might actually contain the FM encoded audio variety or not, labelled as such or not, especially on a big commercial release where it was all hands on deck. Or all decks on hand I mean.
Your ability to create such beautiful sounds, as well as how you articulated everything (9:20 onwards) really is one of the most inspiring things, and you do it consistently every video. I'm gonna go try and make something awesome. Thanks Cameron
I might be wrong, but to me it seems like you have recorded your sounds in VHS HiFi Stereo mode (which sound like a high-quality DAT recording because it uses technology very similar to DAT, which has much wider dynamics and freq range than normal VHS audio!), while David recorded his sounds on plain VHS audio channel, which is "true" analog tape recording (VHS HiFi is completely different and would not produce desired LoFi sounds but rather very high quality sound). I used VHS HiFi sound at LP speed for mastering my demo album mixes and archiving CDs and tapes to VHS back in early 90s since I could have 8 hours of CD/DAT-quality on one 4-hour VHS tape. I am just guessing that's where your LoFi sound differs so much from David's since his VHS machine has only 1 mono analog audio track (see his white and yellow connector in his YT? white is audio, yellow is composite video), and your VHS recorder has both L+R stereo channels in HiFi mode. Ah yes, I enjoyed that part where you taped the plastic bit to enable recording ;). Check if my theory is correct, Cameron - and let us know.
I used to drag my mid/hi end consumer level hifi vhs vcr with me to NYC to record BLS and RKS fm stations that featured live djs like Red Alert and Tony Humphries back in the day. I preferred to record at regular speed, but sometimes I had to go out so in order to get the entire evening I'd set it to record on slow!
My machine did have a way to set input levels. It also had a set of level meters. At the time, I was under the assumption that the quality was between cassette and reel to reel.
Well, even if "VHS was never designed for making sample libraries", we used it that way back in the 80s. CD-R didn't exists yet, so there were both shops/hobbyists, who used to share "sample libraries" on Hi-Fi VHS tapes, so you could SAMPLE them in your own Sampler. It was better than having to deal with floppies with already chopped samples for every sampler out there, and you could store up to 3 hours of samples on a cheap 180 minutes VHS tape, which you could sample in any way you wanted and make your sound set for your own sampler. Those samples contained both acoustic instruments, but also samples from the hugely expensive synths you couldn't afford, like Fairlight, Synclavier, PPG, Moog, etc. I think I still have one of these tapes somewhere.
In 1986, I did an internship at Universal Recording in Chicago in the film sound division downstairs. One of the machine room operators (more on that later) would take out a certain VHS deck and a portable PCM converter box and record sound FX after work. The results were fed into the Synclavier studio upstairs.
You should look at a Magna-tech recorder 35mm film recorder. Usually a full stripe setup with a thick magnetic layer on top of a 35mm acetate base instead of film emulsion. The magnetic layer was so thick that it had tons of headroom. Gunshots recorded on this stuff sounded amazing! Our machine room was stuffed to the rafters with these Magna-Tech machines.
I also left a comment on David's video, but wanted to leave you a note, too. Great project. As I mentioned on David's channel, I'm not really a LoFi guy, but the library the two of you have created is wonderful -- perfect for tones to float through an ambient piece, or even as featured parts in more ... "normal" ... music. Thanks to both of you!
@2:58 "Happy Birthday!!!"
Nice work, Cam. I did this ages ago too - pretty fun.
A few years ago before my parent's sold the childhood home I used the same model of VHS player to do the same thing! I fed signal in from my MC-505 and used a really well used cassette. Same machine my sister and I watched Jurassic Park on maybe a hundred times. And The Crow...
Something I loved about this technique was how the recorded compressed the signal when it got too hot.
I also recorded a couple of hours of audio from one of the tapes. Mid-Late-90s advertising was fucked up...
Technic, art, poetry, philosophy...Uplifting, as usual! Thanks & cheers from Belgium! 🤝
Ayyyyyyy thank you!
I remember my brother also crying his eyes out to the fox and the hound! Fun to see this process since I had the intention to doing the same thing this year!
8:52 _Simba, let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the fleamarket VHS tapes, and the antelope turn us into sample libraries._
_And so we are all connnected in the great Circle of Life._
GREAT video VT, thank you. I grew up with VCRs and so much of my formulative experiences with recording come from this technology. I hadn't realised how unique the sound of VHS audio was until I watched your and David's videos - I didn't expect to be taken back 30 years with such a jolt - and then your poetic ramblings and that beautiful synth vamp you played at the end.. goodness I'm tearing up with memories of my childhood now damnit.
I bought it today and am blown away with how good this instrument sounds. Great work !
What an amazing video! Thank you so much! Cartoons on tapes on them old huge TVs and the nostalgic warmth and carelessness of our childhood is one of the most deep and majestic and intimate feelings ever.
You never cease to inspire me to create or think deeper about my own creative process. Thank you for this homage to a childhood many of us here experienced.
I used to use VHS hi-fi for audio recordings; they are quite good for audio in two hour mode; far better than cassettes (tracking aside). Audiophiles back in the day used them all the time for vinyl recordings. Still have mine, and they sound great.
I was really surprised at how decent the recordings were! I was almost disappointed with how clean it was compared to recording with my crappy cassette decks, but I was really pleasantly surprised at how clean-ish things came out but had the little bit of VHS-y warble and warmth.
@@VenusTheorythis would be the FM radio signal that was actually recorded to the tape containing the audio. Some engineer had the brilliant realization of the vast disparity in analog signal bandwidth between analog audio to 3 3/4” tape, and the essentially rocket powered tape speeds created by the helical scan heads in a videotape recorder. Add two more heads to the heads armature and you have luxuriously capable bandwidth. The inventor of ADAT decided to double down on this and come up with essentially a proprietary VHS tape format for audio only with all that bandwidth from the rocket speed “flying tape heads” as I believe the patent stuff read.
Edit: but I think ADAT despite its true innovations like optical interfaces, has been largely forgotten because it was a digital recording format that just happened to use analog VHS tape technology to store the 1s and 0s.
@@VenusTheory If you want a less clean output you can set the vcr to output the linear audio track instead of the hi-fi audio track.
I was so confused when you and david posted similar videos at the same time! now im so happy this collab has happened.
I had a very nice Super VHS deck - rack-mounted, the type you'd find in broadcast studios - for several years. This thing had a "use-time" meter on it, showing how many hours of use it had on it - and that was very low. I sold it at a garage sale for a ridiculously low amount of money to a very happy buyer in 2009, only because it was big and heavy and I was trying to off a lot of my big heavy gear. But I had used it to master a lot of my audio projects and get that "tape sound" on the final mixes. Watching this video makes me wish I'd hung on to that one big heavy box... Ah, well...
I’ve been wanting to make an album that deals with the past and Cameron, this is PERFECT for the sound I’ve been trying to find. Thank you!
I have no idea why I never even had a thought about recording audio via a VHS player, even though I love lo-fi aesthetics and use it in my recordings extensively. I got one unit in perfect condition straight from my childhood and dozens of cassettes. Glad I never sold that stuff. Thanks for inspiration 🖤
Instant thumbs up.
Also, I have that exact mug at 1:38. I drink coffee from it every morning, and the little rubber bottom part is so satisfying to put down on my desk.
In 1994, I recorded the Eagle "Hell Freezes Over" direct from MTV onto videotape. It sounded great on playback, lots of great analogue - i -ness.
Now THIS, is storytelling! Loved that it took me back ages and made me also realize that I don’t really miss it that much.
5:10 Ehm, next time, to avoid damaging the edges use a hard guitar pick. I like the Dunlop Jazz III, for this and also for playing.
great little essay here, cameron. I was born in the late 70s, so the nostalgia here really resonates. plus I, too, have that thirst for lo-fi warble, so... yeah!! great vid!! loads of inspiration. definitely buying you guys' decent sampler pack. yaaay!!
Haha, great video! My favorite effect in Ableton is the VHS Audio Degradation Suite for Reaktor 6. I use it on my master track all the time. It makes the general sound more lively and special, and of course a little lofi noisy and fluttery. I hate the standard "clean" sound of the DAW. But I'm doing dark ambient and drone with a little 80s twist, so it fits the "aesthetics" perfectly...
Back in 2007 I recoded a lot of drums to VHS tape -- you can hear it all over the first Lost Children album (Our Fallen Cities) :) Good times!
dude, you did literally the thing that i have been trying to do for 2 and a half years and im ECSTATIC! also i saw this teased in another one of ur vids dont think we missed that ;)
About the tab on the edge of the cartridge. Back in the day they did genuinely used to tell you to snap out the tab after making a recording. This would cause a lever in the machine to push forward and lock-up the tape erase head - it was an actual mechanical block to protect the tape. And then if you wanted to overwrite the tape again the advice on the box was to use a piece of sticky tape to cover-over the hole. So what you are doing on those pre-recorded tapes is 100% correct when you want to record over them.
Some interesting trivia: There was a duo called Tuck & Patty who recorded their albums on video tape. Tuck’s guitar was recorded to the tape’s audio tracks, and Patty’s vocals were actually recorded on the video portion of the tape. (And, no, I don’t know why they didn’t just use a regular multitrack tape machine.)
Probably because mortal ears wouldn't be able to take it. Their mashup of Castles made of Sand and Little Wing is one of myball time favourites ruclips.net/video/D7wzlQb8LXQ/видео.html
Oh, and Tuck is St Vincent's uncle I believe?
Why? Because an idea popped into our heads and we feel the need to prove it works. Once it works why change it. Lol
I did that in the 90s & the sound was so warm , it was the next best thing to a good turntable
Our family rented a VHS machine in 1987... by 2007 VHS was already gone. At the time we hated it for its crappyness and flaws, now we love it for those same reasons!
Replace “VHS machine” with most instruments… and it’s similar. Funny ole world
@@MusicZeroOne Very true. I once saw a documentary on a company making silicone seals for (transverse) flutes. They worked really well, and lasted much better than the traditional felt material.
In fact, it worked so well, that it worked too well- the players didn't like the sound! They had to artificially distress the silicone until it didn't seal quite perfectly before the players were satisfied!
20 years is a long time.
6:00 We used to use tiny pieces of wet paper, wadded up. When it dries, it is nice and snug. Great work! I look forward to checking this out.
You are one very creative person Cameron. Such a unique channel you have going. Really really cool content and coverage of your awesome process in making this collab with David happen. You stirred up so many childhood memories. Not an easy thing to make happen for your audience and I'm so very grateful that you did! This viewing/reminiscing experience was the high light of this week on plant earth, for me at least. Thanks man.
I'm so glad you guys tried it out! It's an idea I've been playing with for a little while and I love the nostalgic sounds
I just watched David’s version and now I’m here. So glad to watch you guys. Cheers!
It's more than just the recording tab! Commercial video tape used a different formulation for the magnetic layer to make it more durable and less likely to degrade due to stray magnetic fields. This probably added a lot more 'character' to your recordings, since a VCR's erase head may not be strong enough to get rid of the previous content entirely.
You had me with the title and this video did not disappoint. I think there's an old VCR stored at my parents' house. Definitely gotta try this. Thanks for this Cam 👍🏿
I love the little detail about seeing where someone had stopped playing the VHS tape for the last time. We recently resurrected my wife's Nintendo GameCube and had the surreal experience of my daughter racing against (and beating) the ghost version of my wife as a teenager in MarioKart Double Dash.
Cassette tapes used the same tab protectors to prevent accidental recording. A piece of tape over gap can enable recording.
Did this with my compact Phillips/Magnavox Hi-Fi VHS Player/Recorder back in the late 80s-90s... I cannot remember the model. It had VU meters and a knob for audio recording level. Used it too record my favorite mixes and music. Just hooked it up to the stereo and had a long play time of very good audio quality.
Tape saturation is brilliant 💌
Well I said it on David's vid too but you and he are 2 of the few YTers I regularly watch so it's really cool you got together on this. As a grateful user of DS, I'll definitely be getting this.
Can’t click fast enough when you release a new vid mate. Good work, you said in the video it’s fascinating when music can give you a feeling. The music throughout including synth sample really nailed the nostalgia feeling for me. Keep at it friend.
I'm confused, as there's no talk about VHS stereo vs. mono audio. They're completely different technologies. Stereo is real hifi, FM encoded with the rotating drum, whereas the mono signal is recorded with plain tape head along the very slowly moving tape.
Generally, you need a hifi VHS recorder to have audio inputs with the ability to record audio only. But you need the non-hifi mono track to do what's done here. It will always be recorded along the hifi stereo sound, and you can choose to play mono or stereo (or left or right).
With hifi VHS you can also overdub: that's simple as it only records the mono audio while playing back the video and stereo audio as it is.
Watching you videos in greyscale mode. And they insanly great! Thanks for impressive composition and color/contrast work!
Beautiful video.
UI, composition and writing. You’re a talented guy, man.
This is nostalgic and so cool! Love your channel mate, greetings from Costa Rica!
Great stuff, Cameron. I rather serendipitously happ cross to catch David’s own upload about this last night, so it's great to sere your side of the collaborative process - top notch video as always, squire! 😎👍
Yes in fact lots of radio stations in past used the approach to make backups of their program as the material had to be checked for legal things afterward. So you can put lots of hours audio to vhs. Good catch!
Fantastic. Looking forward to diving in.
An interesting asterisk in the 90s about those reviews you cited. The “tape noise” complaint would pretty much only have applied to commercially dubbed VHS releases because newer releases may have been made with the later FM audio track method that pretty much removed “hiss” for the same reason FM radio removed hiss compared to AM radio. In addition some TV models would have had fairly aggressive limiters and levels into those, to “even out” the disparity between what we would today cal the LUFS level of program material vs commercials (in the case of recording off-air), or in the case of “true” analog audio only commercial VHS dubs. In addition these older commercial dubs would have benefitted from a remaster to ride loudness especially in quiet dialogue scenes which is where reviewers of the time would have lit their hair on fire about analog s/n ratio. To make it more complicated the duplicator op would also tend to level the analog audio a bit on the low side so as to prevent returns of purchases due to analog print-through (which in the case of VHS tape could produce all sorts of weird repeating onscreen distortions). People love those today.
Back then we lost sleep trying to figure out how to prevent the possibility of them. It was a lot safer to just back off the master feeding the distribution amps by 2-3dB and blame s/n complaints on the playback deck than risk having the distributor return an entire shipment of VHS cassettes as defective. Tape was hard.
I definitely plan on using a VCR in this way, but I picked up the library because of the work you both put into this. Thank you!
Dude wow!, incredible job on this! Im really excited check it out. Ive been really wanting to learn to code so that I can create my own sampled instruments and what not. Would you be able to share what you used to code, and design the UI. and possibly some resources that teach you how to code specifically for Plug ins?
I've always found VHS audio fascinating and have been looking for an easy way to get a bit of that tape audio sound for my loops. I guess I'll start keeping an eye out for old VHS recorders.
I still cry for hours on end when I watch Fox and the hound, Im 33. Amazing video man!
Definitely a movie that hits way too hard haha. Glad you enjoyed the video!
Beyond all your excellent audio advice, I love the way you tell a story. I'm old enough for VHS to be new tech when I was a kid. I totally remember the tape hack. Wish I had the mixtapes I made from pirated MTV in the early 80s
Back in the early 1990s, Sony Betacam used PCM audio, so buying a used Betacam deck was a cheap way to get a digital stereo recorder that was cheaper than the dedicated digital audio recorders.
In the 90’s at my college radio station we used HiFi vhs tapes to record and later play back broadcasting to cover overnight and vacant time slots. It worked fantastically and still sounded way better than many stations digitally compressed automation you hear today on FM radio.
I dumped DAT for HiFi VHS as a mixdown medium in 1996. My HiFi VHS deck was great. No noisier than reel to reel (maybe less) but without the frustrating nuclear dropouts I suffered with DAT (I tried a bunch of different brands of DAT cassettes including Ampex and HHS with Sony being the least undependable). With DAT I had to print each version of a mix three times just in case a dropout hit. DAT dropouts are silence - not the momentary loss of highs of an analogue tape dropout. When I got my Korg D1600 muktitracker I rented a Tascam pro DAT machine and digitized those tapes.
Recently I digitized my old HiFi VHS masters - not a single dropout among them and as good as the day they were recorded over 25 years ago.
VHS tapes and video tape in general have been used for pure sound recording for a _long_ time, actually. Back in the late '70s, the first home PCM adapters used composite video to output their recordings to a VCR; if you wanted to listen to a PCM recording, you popped the tape into the VCR, turned on the PCM adapter, and pressed play while running the VCR's output back into the adapter. If you watch the output on a TV - because it _is_ just a video signal - it looks like a mess of black and white pixels, but a PCM adapter would decode it; sample rate was around 14 bit, not quite Red Book CD but still pretty darn good for the time. Before the advent of CDs in 1982, this was the only way to listen to digital audio at home.
Also, in the '90s, there was a standard called ADAT which debuted in 1992. ADAT used S-VHS tapes, a higher-resolution version of VHS which debuted in the late '80s, and could record 8-channel 16-bit audio; multiple ADAT VCRs could be linked together to record up to 128 channels simultaneously. ADAT was used for professional audio mastering in many studios up into the 2000s.
It’s weird to see the process in reverse. I built my first sample library from watching movies on VHS and sampling sfx and dialogue into my EMU e64 sampler. The EMU came with an installed floppy drive and very little ram. After many nights of waiting 5 minutes or more for my banks to load from the disks I installed a 20gig hard drive. A modern day miracle lol thanks for the video!
Congratulations to David and yourself on an amazing collaborative instrument! 👏🙌 Will try out the free version tomorrow, but this has to be a definite buy!
I remember having a lot of fun taking bits of video tape and passing them across cassette record heads - makes a weird and wonderful noise if you are into that sort of thing!
Thanks for making such great content! Keep going
That's a HiFi VHS machine. Unless you are trying to record too hot, in which case the decks usually have an audio level limiter that intervenes. You were getting near CD audio quality if you kept the levels appropriate. No hiss, no warbles. In SLP speed you will get minute dropouts out of a very used tape. If you want VHS tape grunge you have to get a non HiFi VHS deck. You can tell because it ONLY has one audio output RCA jack. Then you're using the actual linear (Not HiFi) audio track on the tape which actually is LoFi.
Another good option for recording in a Lo-Fi style is using old Camcorders. Some take VHS and some may take VHS-C, but the main concept still remains. A lot of them have a mic Jack too, so just point the camera at a wall and start playing and boom, you’re done as quick as that.
My first "instruments" were a C-64, a few boomboxes with RCA line ins (and one that used RCA jacks for the detachable speaker connections), and a pair of home VHS decks...
I truly believe you should try to insert a plug into a matching jack, regardless of what (okay, within reason) is one either end of the cable.
7:20 whatever that synth is, the higher notes sound like the glishy bell noise that they use for music on the seiko melodies in motion clocks
Brilliant mate 📼
Very interesting! I recall that back in the day, Alexis made an ADAT deck that used VHS cassettes. Also, somewhere in the dusty corners of my mind, there seems to be an article written for Guitar or Keyboard Magazine perhaps that explored the idea of using a standard VHS deck as a tape deck, with audio being recorded along side a stream of blank video for stability. The idea being that the VHS head was spinning at high RPMs made the audio “sample rate” better, and thus made the recording of higher quality than standard reel-to-reel.
Thanks for taking me back to my teens and 20's. I had that exact VCR, in fact I've still got it. Great video!
This video is making me feel nostalgic and a longing for childhood. I’ll be grabbing those decent samples
Congratulations. I think the methodical process you impose on this experiment has produced some remarkable sound artifacts. You are certainly right to marvel at the power of sound to invoke strong sentimental reactions but I think those will necessarily be discrete for each individual and their experiences.
This is freaking awesome
I still have the last dvd/vhs combo I bought about 16 years ago. I recently was able pick up a capture card and component to hdmi converter dirt cheap. So I have been digitizing old projects from the early 90s. But I plan on reversing the process and running some music and video projects through the vcr to see what analog horror sound and video type effects I can come up with. Thankfully I still have a stash of 20 or so tapes on hand for this project.
Learning to experiment i see. We used to do this to give old beat tapes a special character. Im not sure why youd think its difficult. We used to pop the tops off and really mess around inside. Dirtying/cleaning the reel, tweaking with the character even more. Fun times messing with fuzz. Another character trick we did was running thru basic radio transmitters.
I kept all of my VHSs, in fact, I have some still-wrapped doubles: Grease, Friday The 13th, Many Disney, etc. I actually got a lot from watching your channel, from tips to free, amazing software, I'd be happy to send you a package with whatever doubles (or inherited items from my ex that I never watch) as my way to say thank you for your content ;)
Great video! I'm an old guy who used to wonder just how well a VHS recorder could work with the short-lived VHS Hi-Fi (or whatever it was called) format that the recording engineers in Mix Magazine were so crazy about at the time. I never attempted recording audio on one, but now that you have brought it to mind... I think I'd like to try it. Give my computer DAW a break. Maybe even incorporate a cassette recording into it. Thanks for the inspiration!
From 1984 until VCRs stopped being made(indeed the very last model in 2016 supported hifi audio) isn't exactly short-lived. It was basically standard for much of that time, on anything other than budget decks.
showing my age remembering that, "tape hack" and thinking someone watching this would have no idea. Then I think back to being a kid, and hearing someone my age say the same thing. The cycle repeats.
Kids these days will never appreciate the golden prank that was recording over tapes from Blockbuster and wiping the residue off.
Man. Blockbuster. I miss those days of searching around for the perfect videos to take home for the weekend.
It would just be too cool if you were able to get your hands on an old mixing console with tons and tons inputs and outputs for everything under the sun, and stuff like multi band eq, compression, and reverb. You could modify this to hook up a bunch of random sound sources like a modified vcr, effect pedals, and other obscure things. Maybe even something like a dial up modem and an old rotary telephone. You could mess with all this stuff to create crazy echo effects, sequencers, and delays. And if the mixer has a patchboard you can basically set it up like a modular synth where everything can go anywhere and everywhere. You could even add in other synths or hook it up to a computer.
Somebody probably already made that comment, but VCR machines in the early 90s were a genuine audio recording solution for audiophiles willing to make high-quality mixtapes. Back then, the mainstream technology for home audio recording was the cassette tape player, which was a very poor audio reproduction technology: the amount of white noise and of stereo crosstalk were maddening, and you could at best record 90 minutes worth of sound on a single medium.
However, pretty much everyone had a VCR machine at home, and it soon became clear that VCR machines could be used as hypertrophied audio tape machine. By recording your audio on a VHS tape, you had access to a much wider tape than the small, regular audio ones, and you generally could also adjust the recording and reading speed among a few preset values on the machine (thus allowing some degree of adjustment of the overall quality) Finally, the longest VHS tapes allowed for four-hours recording time on a single medium, which was simply unheard of before that.
Therefore, we were quite a few among audiophiles to use our VHS machine as a tape recorder for music.
Early digital music and the advent of the famed WinAmp player a few years later put an end to that trend, by allowing you to make arbitrarily long playlists without the source medium degrading a little on each new play.
Had to buy this one. Really happy to support the channel!
Interesting 💡 We recorded those looong DJ sets back in the day onto VHS cassettes, because we could record up to 8 hours in Longplay onto a 240 cassette AND they could be programmed. Lots of #HR3clubnight sets or Mayday from the Dortmunder Westfalenhalle 🤪
This... is incredible! I can't wait to try this out. Just wait until Kane Parsons picks it up too!
I totally have one of these in the loft and never thought about this
Genius
Cool stuff! Back in 1992'ish we used an Akai VS-F600 Video Recorder to tape audio demo's & practice sessions with the band I was in xD Still have a box full of those tapes, I should look into that. Probably fun to listen back to.