Best Analog Recordings

musicvid10 wrote on 9/30/2009, 10:54 AM
Just wanted to post an old method for getting the best sounding analog recordings; many people prefer that legacy tape sound for its warmth and soft ceiling, and with a little NR is a worthy contender to modeling in digital production.

The answer is not to use cassette or even 1/4" R/R. You will get the best frequency range, S/N and W/F with VHS Hi-Fi Stereo, short of owning professional high-maintenance equipment. You can pick the machines up for $5 or $10 at Goodwill, and the better ones have an option to turn off AGC for full-range sound. Generally no meters, but you'll have a mixer before the recorder, anyway. No need to connect a video signal, just set on SP and go for it.

After recording exclusively digital for so many years, you'll be amazed at how good and natural this stuff sounds, even if you push the ceiling a bit and take advantage of the "natural" limiting of the tape medium. With 96dB S/N, it's worth dusting off that old deck to have another tool available in your recording arsenal.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 10/4/2009, 7:13 PM
Hehe, I paid almost $800 for my first HiFi VHS deck back in about 1985. Last one I bought new was $39.
farss wrote on 10/10/2009, 10:51 PM
I assume you were referring to recording to the VHS "HiFi" tracks and not the linear tracks.
Those carried an FM encoded signal so you'd really be missing out on what is supposedly the cause of the warmth namely the head saturation.
I have an old Otari 5050 deck in working order, just bought some new pinch rollers for it and two Dolby SR encoder units. To this day the best sound I've heard came from an old studio master tape recorded at 15ips with SR.
A friend of mine now has ninety three (93!) R2R decks and some really wierd early digital decks as well.
I was amazed to see Otari at NAB! The legendary 5050 is back in production.
I should mention I've built two temperature controlled ovens for baking tapes. Not really all that sad to see the end of analog. Only today I was offered a couple of 1/2" decks. Can't afford the space.

Bob.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 10/10/2009, 11:52 PM
You will not get analogue tape saturation effect with a Hi-Fi VHS - you are NOT slamming audio level onto tape - you are simply overmodulating a stereo FM encoder. Though Hi-Fi does generally sound very good (when not overloaded !).

If you want your digital recordings to sound like 'tape', roll off the hf, use a plugin like Magneto, and add low level white noise !

geoff