VCR Audio Recording

Has anyone tried recording drums ect to a old vcr and back for a little warmth and saturation?



Im gonna try find and old JVC and do this hopefully I can find one cheap enough!

I'd be more interested in a plugin that can emulate some of the VHS qualities. And automate speed warp among various other VHS artifacts.

Id be interested in that too but how much would it beat the real thing which could be done for much cheaper and its actually being done and not emulated

chopchop wrote:Has anyone tried recording drums ect to a old vcr and back for a little warmth and saturation?



Im gonna try find and old JVC and do this hopefully I can find one cheap enough!

That's a good idea, I think I'll try that out too.

Wal Martian wrote:I've tried it and it mostly just added hiss. The problem being is most the surface and width of the tape is reserved for the video signal. If you're after tape warmth try to find an old reel to reel. I've had better, although still very lo fi results using a teac cassette deck.

Have you tried to push it into the red (the level meter) because it seems like I've read somewhere that analog distortion is what gives you that warm pleasing sound?

I used to do this back in the early 90's. It only worked good on a HI-FI VCR or BetaMax's which are hard to find

There was a thread on gearslutz a few months back. It was started by user "ChicagoSpecialSP" or something like that. He used an sp404 and recorded to VHS. I liked the sound, but I think most of the lofi was from the SPs effects. There was some nice warping effects from the VHS.

The reason I would rather a plugin would be to automate the effects to go more along with the beat. Also be able to control the level of distortion. Just seems like too much trouble to work with real VHS and also be precise.

i also read that thread on gearslutz, it was called "anyone into lofi hiphop?" or something similar to that.
i also liked the sound, i know the user m56p87 has used a vhs player before, ill PM him and ask him to post here. i think he would run it through twice or 3 times to get the best saturation.

i have done some research on it and i do think only the hifi vcr's work, but you can still find them for pretty cheap nowadays.

I think the lack of say precision is what I'm looking for as it will force me to work with it and think on the spot plus I think I will use it more on drums id like to see what I could get abusing the idea

Ive been looking into this today and seem some akai reel to reels going quite cheap

when you guys say HI-FI vcr does that apply to any vcr that says hi-fi on the front because thats about all i see in goodwills around here or is it more like professional vcr tape recorders used by tv or recording studios...

I tried it, cool for drums. Adds Lo-Fi color/compression/tape saturation.

Record vinyl on VCR then resample in MPC.

Experiment.

Note: some VCRs won't record audio without a video signal coming in. If that's the case, feed it with a video signal from your TV or another VCR using a video cable (yellow RCA).


http://homerecording.com/vhs.html


http://homerecording.com/vhstests.html





A video i enjoyed:

I recommend this as good cheap way to get fat saturation for sure. But it usually sounds most "phat" if you do a second pass, I.e recording to VHS back to digital then back to VHS again. Wal Martian is right you pay a price for all that cheap analog coloring with heavy noise, but it can sound great if you use it as a tool for resampling single drums. Put a buch of snares and kicks on a VHS tape, overdrive the **** out of samples going in then dump the whole thing into recycle and chop that shit up. The trick is to make use of the envelopes in recycle that will fade out each slice, really blends in the noise. I do this all the time with my reel to reel to resample hits without covering the one shots in hiss.

If you want todo it for master tracks then even one pass might with a noise filter might give you something you like. I think there are also different speeds of recording VHS similiar to reels etc... Something to mess with but not a solution for every track you make. But a good cheap tool

I love tracking my mixes down to VHS. It definitely adds a unique texture to it. Of course, VHS won't give you the same punchy sound as tape because it's not TAPE. There is hiss, but that's just a part of it. Plus, you can always filter most of the noise out with EQ anyway.

Here's one...