Analogue newbie - now!

[witzendoz]

VHS HiFi was a million miles from a true analog tape recording. It didnt add analog tape compression or tape harmonics. It was so inherently noisy that sophisticated compander noise reduction was mandatory.

Sure, people used it back in the 80's and 90's but they were also using ADAT digital tape based machines mainly because tape was still a more mature carrier than hard disk drives at that time. Read what Dr Ray Dolby said about how the advances in hard drives caught even his analog recording based company by surprise.

If you want analog tape distortion you need more than just a "non digital" machine that uses "tape". VHS HiFi isnt either true digital accuracy or true analog tape warmth.

Compared to what you have, why track to VHS HiFi? What are you trying to achieve?

Cheers Tim

All true, the only reason I ever used a VHS tape to record to, A low noise cheap to run recorder in the days before there was affordable DAT machines, computer recording, etc. It was not to replace analog but a means to affordable noise free recording. The other thing like I said before was that you could record a long show without switching tapes. Nowadays you could do this with a lap top computer.

Cheers

Alan.

 

[Lance Lawson]

As a long time TEAC owner I would go with the TEAC.

 

[mwhouston]

As a long time TEAC owner I would go with the TEAC.

I had some real nice TEAC cassette players in my day. I may pursue the VCR path for a bit of fun. Like to try it. I have all sorts of preamps and a number of quality mics.

I would like to post a track I recorded at a university of the classical pianist. Rachmaninoff. This would be in 320k or even 128k LAME mp3. Can I do this and how can I go about it? I would like a comment on the recording.

Do I need to send the track to personal e-mails? Is anyone interested? The recording has been done with valve mics, valve preamps and 96K/24Bit A2D, no other processing.

 

[Chilljam]

I may pursue the VCR path for a bit of fun. Like to try it. I have all sorts of preamps and a number of quality mics.

This is fine but the reason why i got excited about the VCR idea was because i was looking to use it in a live application, something to record some of our gigs for personal reference. The key for me is to minimise set up time (since setting up for some gigs already takes a couple of hours) and since im a musician and not a hired sound engineer, i need to concentrate on playing the music and hence why changing tape reels every 20min is out of the question. I will try it soon and hopefully post something up to show you the quality i was able to obtain.
If you are using valve pre's and good mics and are being hired as an engineer to record musicians at a live event (by the sound of it)... then i cant recommend anything less than a 2 track 15ips reel to reel recorder, if you wish to record in analog format.

I would like to post a track I recorded at a university of the classical pianist. Rachmaninoff. This would be in 320k or even 128k LAME mp3. Can I do this and how can I go about it? I would like a comment on the recording.

I Don't think you can actually upload it straight onto this site but you are able to provide a link to a page where you host the file. If you have a soundclick.com (or similar website) account then you can just upload it there and link it to this forum.