VHS

thats going a bit far.

For that much time and effort, you're better off getting a reel-to-reel and some tapes.

Mr modnaR wrote:

Beat~Monkey wrote:NOpe...Video has a totally different Data information format. Its format so your TV tuner can decipher to display Video...RGB (Red Green Blue) Tables and sh!t to form motion pictures etc..

yes i understand that. i'm not talking about plugging the audio signal into the s-video plug on the back! lol

i'm talking about opening up the VCR and bypassing the video circuitry, and disconnecting the input to the audio heads, and connecting them to the video heads.

given that the video is given more space on the tape, would the audio quality be any better?

cheers in advance.

i think thats what Taskam has done...

TicToc wrote:thats going a bit far.

For that much time and effort, you're better off getting a reel-to-reel and some tapes.

yeah you're probably right. be interesting to find out though, wouldn't it? heh heh.

Beat~Monkey wrote:i think thats what Taskam has done...

oh really? damn bastards beat me to it!

Mr modnaR wrote:think of it like this: the way the video section of the tape is set up means that the wider tape is acting like lots of snippets of thinner (not shorter) tape running at a faster speed.
if, with each sweep of a head, an area of 40mm x 3mm is recorded to, and the head sweeps ten times for a tenth of a second, it is the equivalent of running a length of 400mm x 3mm past a stationary head. now a piece of tape 3mm wide would have to move faster past the stationary head, than the wider tape with the 'tracks' running diagonally. you with me?

Sorry man can´t say that I am. Could be my poor scientific skills, but I can´t see how a moving recording head can actually store more audio information to a tape than a stationary one. The tape surface that stores it is the same wheter moving head or not.
But as I said, I was not that clever during the math and physics classes (although I fiddled quite a lot with video during my education).

Mr modnaR wrote:as to whether the quality is any better when using VHS than standard cassette, i would say no, unless you rig up the video heads to record audio, in which case there may or may not be more clarity.

Beat~Monkey wrote:True the Tape moves slower, But its Wider and can store more per inch than cassette so speed of VHS and Speed of Cassette are Irrelevant in comparison true?

Well cassette or no cassette, I didn´t even mention cassette tapes. What´s interesting is the speed issue. Faster tape transport equals a higher quality sound, not the other way around.

Beat~Monkey wrote:Think about it this way....Take a 2 lane highway and Jam Pack it with cars for a 1/2 mile..The only Cars left in the world. Say 200 cars. YOu Car Jack Each Kat in Each Car for a Buck....You get $200

Take a 4 lane highway Same scenario.....Twice as many cars Same distance....Now you got $400 instead of $200

NOw make the all go home Crying with the 2 laners running 80 and the 4 laners running 65...YOU move more cars slower but more loot....

VHS moves slower, But is Spread out over a Wider Space....See the picture?

I certainly do, what you stated above is my whole point. Only difference now is that you talk width instead of length. What it boils down to is the surface which the recording head has to work on, the square inch area it can cover per time unit.
And it goes without saying that a wide tape can pack lots of more info (and energy) per square inch than a thin one. BUT if you transport a wide tape slow over the head you get less area than if you transport it fast. Thus it is inaccurate to say that a twice as wide tape slowly transported by deafault should be better than a thinner tape with a much faster transport.
If the tape runs twice the speed of its original setting you can pack twice as much info in a second, thus gaining resolution and headroom. A fast running videotape WILL give much better results than a slowly moving one.
A drawback is that the tape halves it´s recording time. It´s the same way if you double the quality on your digital recordings you get less recording minutes on your hard drive.

Beat~Monkey wrote:i think thats what Taskam has done...

Is it their A-DAT you are refering to? Isn´t that more like a hard drive on tape, I mean it´s only digital data store there, there is no audio at all running through the heads. No more room for experimenting with the medium than a 16 bit / 48 kHz hard drive recorder.

ryssen wrote:I certainly do, what you stated above is my whole point. Only difference now is that you talk width instead of length. What it boils down to is the surface which the recording head has to work on, the square inch area it can cover per time unit.
And it goes without saying that a wide tape can pack lots of more info (and energy) per square inch than a thin one. BUT if you transport a wide tape slow over the head you get less area than if you transport it fast. Thus it is inaccurate to say that a twice as wide tape slowly transported by deafault should be better than a thinner tape with a much faster transport.
If the tape runs twice the speed of its original setting you can pack twice as much info in a second, thus gaining resolution and headroom. A fast running videotape WILL give much better results than a slowly moving one.
A drawback is that the tape halves it´s recording time. It´s the same way if you double the quality on your digital recordings you get less recording minutes on your hard drive.

the difference is is that the video tape has a wider audio track than cassette tape, so the audio quality should be better. the whole speed of tape issue arose because he was talking about the video head that spin, making the tapew act like a much much longer tape that moves much much faster. it is the spinning of the heads that increases the square inch area per second that the machine can record to.

Mr modnaR wrote:the difference is is that the video tape has a wider audio track than cassette tape, so the audio quality should be better. the whole speed of tape issue arose because he was talking about the video head that spin, making the tapew act like a much much longer tape that moves much much faster. it is the spinning of the heads that increases the square inch area per second that the machine can record to.

Ha ha! I´m feeling like my old grandmother here, she can´t give up her stand, even if she´s wrong.
Forgive me for being an old grunt and tjurskalle, but I´m convinced the facts are:

Yes, wider is good. Wide and fast even better! Thin is less good, but thin and faster is none the less better. The faster the better, wheter it´s wide or not.
Wide and slow vs. thin and fast, I guess that´s a dead run.

The square inch of a tape passing by the head, the amount of magnetic particles exposed to the head can not suddenly be greater than the actual square inch of the tape just because the head is moving.

The diagonal tracks is video tracks, I guess thay are laid out in a diagonal fashion to use the tapes width instead of its length to keep the total tapelength down, thus giving a more compact and easy to store cassette. The diagonal layout requires a spinning drums with the heads on it in a fashion so they take over after each other in reading the video data as there are only short strips without continous flow.
It´s a matter of saving space, using several tracks of a smaller bandwidth than the tape itself, spread in the most efficient way.

And note, the audio tracks on the VHS is horisontal.

It acts like a longer tape as it´s video tracks are laid out in a effcient manner, that dosen´t give the tape a larger area than it physically has.

A 2 inch Revox reel to reel transporting tape at a speed of 2 inch/sec (hypotetical) can record square 4 inches (I think, math no good) of tape a sec
Do you mean that if it had some sort of spinning recording heads it could actually record 6 inches of tape simultaneous?
I just can´t se that happen, there´s still a 2 inch wide, 2 inch long piece of tape that passes the head each second.
Though I can see that if you speed the tape transport up you gain square inches simply cause more tape passes the head.

Wut the fuk are yall talking about?

NERDS!

Jacpot wrote:Wut the fuk are yall talking about?

NERDS!

Yeah, you go play football with the hip guys. Let us alone in the study with our bottle thick glasses and scientific calculators.

BULLY!

Yo Ryssen....Youre right son...we both right...

Check this..Now that I think about it, In the Cassette world for example, my first multitrack was a Sansui WS-X1 6 tracker. The Master cassette ran at 3-4 times faster than a normal cassette which proves the faster speed it better for recording....

Check it..



NOw..in the VHS world the Tape moves Slower than cassette, which was what I was referencing to, but didn't make that clear at first. VHS the head is rotating, Still laying the Audio down Linearly, But video (Should there be a video signal present to record) Diagnally because the Video has 500 times more information than Audio. I am sure...and YOu made your point,
In EP,LP, and SP, you'll get better sound quality out of SP....But the tape moves slower than Cassette, Cause in the VHS world, its not required to move Faster than cassette, Hence we have SP mode. Now High Speed Dubbing on Dual Decks is another Animal and Lord knows we don't need to touch on that one...

Good thread man... Good Points..

Matter of fact, while we are on the subject....If anybody comes across one these, Contact me. A Sansui MX-12 Mixer.
GET AT ME DAWGS !



I had one and sold it....I WANT IT BAAAAAAAAACK!!!!

@ ryssen, yeah i think we're making the same point. at first though, i thought beat monkey was saying that the audio tracks were layed down diagonally too. still the audio track is wider than a standard cassette, but it moves slower, so after all these shenanigans, it probably means that there is little difference in using a vcr! lol

Mr modnaR wrote:@ ryssen, yeah i think we're making the same point. at first though, i thought beat monkey was saying that the audio tracks were layed down diagonally too. still the audio track is wider than a standard cassette, but it moves slower, so after all these shenanigans, it probably means that there is little difference in using a vcr! lol

Who knows what sounds best? It´s all individual in the end. As I said earlier I kinda like the thickness one gets from a fairly poorly recorded VHS. But then I use it to sample from, not a master recorder, although I see why one would use it like one.
My perspective was never one of which media sounding the best, my driving force in this rather over tensed debate was the fact that the more information you are able to store on a media per time unit, it will most likely sound better in a hi fi sense.
Thats a theoretical stand, in practice I like the dirt and limitations that less refined recording options give. My field recording kit for example consists of a pro quality Sound devices MP 2 preamp and a Marantz PMD 430 which is a pro portable tape recorder, though it sounds far less clean and hyped than the consumer Sony mini disc I used before it. I actually paid a whole lot of money to get noise, hiss and overloads. Some say that is stupid, but I wouldn´t like it any other way. I also use it to gather samples from my friends record collections, really great to record multiple versions of each sample, all with different input gain. Drums hit harder, strings crack. It sometimes sounds shitty, sometimes really great.

I endorse the use of VCR´s for recording, if Tic Toc´s using it for all his beats it must sound good, his contibution to the Tic / Nym / Jac battle was great.

Sorry if I have came across as totally unreasonable in this discussion, repeating my shit over and over. I´m just a stubborn ass guy.

ryssen wrote:Sorry if I have came across as totally unreasonable in this discussion, repeating my **** over and over. I´m just a stubborn ass guy.

so am i. that's why you lost and i won.


lol jokes.

totally agree with the subjective thing. i'm gonna look into jacking my parent's vcr as they don't use it because they don't know how. then i'll open her up and cause some mayhem/minor electrical burns.