Recording to VHS tape & Headroom

[Sunyboy]

Hi!

I've always wondered this, ever since i read about recording or (mastering) to VHS tape. I hear that you can get more headroom in your mixes by recording to vhs, then back to the DAW. Is this true? I know the vcr has some sort of built in limiting, or compressor right? would the prerecorded material thats being sent to the vhs have a*natural limit* while retaining its its loudness but at a lower decibel thus allowing you to increase the volume more while in the DAW without clipping? ( not overdoing it of course)

Also, at which decibel level does a vcrs limiter kick in?

Thanks!

I have an emu 1212m, and a behringer UB802

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Sunyboy

Hi!

I've always wondered this, ever since i read about recording or (mastering) to VHS tape. I hear that you can get more headroom in your mixes by recording to vhs, then back to the DAW. Is this true?

Nope. By recording to VHS and back again, you're adding another stage of analog noise to the signal, which serves to increase the level of the noise floor and therefore decrease the overall dynamic range you have to work with. The less overall dynamic range, the less room for headroom.

If you already have your stuff in digital, if you need more headroom, all you gotta do is reduce the signal level on your individual tracks. Assuming you're working in 24-bit, you have plenty of room at the bottom to drop your levels by several dB and increase your headroom without hurting a thing. Plus you don't have the extra D/A and A/D conversions required to go out to the VCR.

Best yet, if digital headroom is a problem for you at mixdown, that's a fairly sure sign that you're probably recording your stuff hotter than you need/should be. Bring your recording levels down a few dB per track and not only will your headroom problems disappear, but you'll probably find that your mixes actually sound better.

G.

[Sunyboy]

Alright.

Thanks!

[rayc]

VHS tape in a HiFi machine was popular for recording party mixes in the 90's - three hours of music right there in the lounge room with no one changing the poor record & dropping the stylus.
I experimented with it for recording but it's just another layer & one you can't control well. The old, old Umatic cassette video machines had recording level controls and pre DAW weren't bad for mixing to. That was then though.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I think maybe the whole VHS thing started back in the mid-late-80s when one could buy a VHS Hi-Fi machine that had record level controls and actually halfway decent quality preamps (relatively speaking).

I was a Betamax man myself back then before wikiality won over with VHS, but in the mid-80s I bought a NEC VHS Hi-Fi machine with a halfway decent audio section, separate L&R audio line ins (different fron the standard audio ins, which were there as well), separate L&R mic ins, seperate line and mic recording level controls, *no* AGC limiting, peak level metering and output gain control. There were also similarly-equipped machines from JVC that were quite good.

Both the dynamic range and audio quality on this machine were superior to cassette and - except for the quality of the preamps and the inability to use tape saturation purposefully; VHS tape just didn't saturate the same way - rivaled a typical 7.5ips open reel deck. Add to that the fact that you could get 2 hours of audio per tape, and it actually made a pretty fair mastering medium for the home recorder/project studio user in the 80s to early 90s. Unfortunately those machines pretty much disappeared from the market after only a few years as manufacturers moved their attention to digital technology.

What passes for a "4-head VHS Hi-Fi" recorder these days would have been considered a piece of crap 20 years ago in every metric, including audio quality. Add in the the competing technologies (24-bit digital, for example ) these days, and the fact that they just don't make really high quality VHS tape any longer, and the old idea of using VHS as a poor-man's mixdown/mastering medium just isn't the good idea that it used to be.

G.

[omtayslick]

It was also popular to mix from 4-track cassetes to VHS. And some guys did this backwards and recorded to VHS and then dumped it into a 4-track. Sounds like there wouldn't be much benefit with a DAW.

[Farview]

It was a great alternative to cassette and much less expensive than a 1/4 reel to reel. But, that was when DAT machines cost a few thousand dollars, home computers had 20Mb hard drives and the onboard sound was just good enough to make some beeps when you screwed up, etc... It's a different world now. Before cars, people used to hitch wagons up to a horse or two, that's not quite as useful as it used to be either.

[omtayslick]

Originally Posted by Farview

It was a great alternative to cassette and much less expensive than a 1/4 reel to reel. But, that was when DAT machines cost a few thousand dollars, home computers had 20Mb hard drives and the onboard sound was just good enough to make some beeps when you screwed up, etc... It's a different world now. Before cars, people used to hitch wagons up to a horse or two, that's not quite as useful as it used to be either.

Well said. That about covers it.

[TimOBrien]

You also had to find (or modify) a VHS machine to strip out the Automatic Gain Control....

[Massive Master]

From the original post, I think he was counting on the AGC circuit.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Massive Master

From the original post, I think he was counting on the AGC circuit.

Yep, it sounds like someone had the brilliant idea of using the AGC as a mixing compressor.. How musical!

G.