Hi-Fi VHS - The "Poor Man's" Reel To Reel?

[Music] hi it's tony from cassettecombat.com so i'm going to warn you now before we even start there's going to be a lot of talking in this video and not a lot of visual treats so if you get bored easily by staring at the same thing maybe you should go and watch a video of some guy playing minecraft and going whoa a lot maybe that's more what you really want so uh trot along and do that but this this is for genuine analog audio enthusiasts and it's a strange video that i didn't envisage i was doing but i'm really glad i did now the reason is that i get a lot of emails and messages i get loads i can't answer all of them i really can't be personal tape guru but one that comes up a lot regards people who want to record their bands or concerts in analog and a lot of them try to use like sony field recorders or if they're recording at home they're using the tascams and the yamahas which run at full speed and they want to know the best tapes to put in there and you know i give them advice and stuff but one guy it's you jacob saying he wanted to record live concerts on tape and i said well not being funny if you really want to record a live concert well get yourself something like this you know a pcm digital recorder this records high resolution this is a brilliant piece of kit i love this all of the audio from my um videos is captured on this because i love it so much it's so good it's got built-in unidirectional microphones that you can move around it's got line inputs if you want to take it from the desk at the stage you know you can alter the levels of it this is a brilliant bit of key it's not cheap it's not cheap but it's a brilliant bit of kit and i love it that's what i'd use if i was recording live and then you can put it on set in any analog format you want afterwards but i get it when people say like jacob did he turns up with the cassette deck and people get really you know excited and he wanted to know the best way to take an entire concert and he wanted to use 120 length tapes at four speed in a yamaha multi-tracker and it's like 120 length tape it's got to be handled with carrying a good deck four speed in the yamaha no you don't want to do that but how do you get any sort of analog long recording without resorting to something like a reel to reel well this is where these come in now i don't think vhs is going to make a comeback and the reasoning behind it is whenever i think about why cassettes make a comeback or vinyl they've made a comeback it's because there's something about it that isn't fully captured in a modern equivalent for example you know the cassettes and the records we've got the analog warmth i don't know you know perception but we've got the analog warmth and then we've got the physical nature of the item how they look their sleeves have the cassettes the cassettes you know the works of art some of them the beautiful things add the nostalgia to that and you've got something which isn't fully you know replicated in modern streaming digital and mp3s or even cds you know it's not fully replicated however vhs well i mean well okay let's let's just take a cassette shall we look at this i mean i i actually got this in a job lot and i wondered i thought well when i'm ever going to use this again but as it turns out never throw anything away because you never know so you know let's have a look at the vhs cassette they all sort of look the same i mean yeah the zeod exception but on the whole they look like this pretty characterless you know there's there's nothing special about the vhs cassette i mean there's a nostalgic factor but as a a thing they all look the same they never really went to you know making them i mean there were so many different colors but you know what i mean if you look at some of the designs of audio cassettes what they did within the dimensions of the shell they made them look vastly different these pretty much all look the same why because you never really saw these you know they were slotted into the video and you never saw them so what was the point of making them anything spectacular so they don't have the visual appeal but more important than that this was all about video and the point is that the dvd and then the blu-ray and digital video in general just blows and log video out of the water blot out the water it's as simple as that the picture quality is miles better than vhs and its mouse easier to actually deal with you know for editing and storing miles easier and you don't have to do with the cassettes and the tracking and basically vhs has been completely outclassed by dvd blu-ray digital video it's just miles better and as much as i have a lot of nostalgia for vhs i mean if you're a certain age you remember the joy of your dad saying um come on we're going to go video shop it's like yes because you never knew what was going to be there better than the deed better than the memory the anticipation you're walking whoa the new van damme filled out yes yes i've been waiting for this yes yes okay always no noises oh they've got tabs in all the boxes they've all been rented out and then the guy will come from the shelf and then take a tab out at one time yes death warrant i'm going to enjoy myself tonight yeah death warrant yeah but you get it it was an event to go to the video shop and then everyone sat around watching the film it was an event in the house and like now where everyone's streaming on the tablets and phones and doesn't matter it was an event you know and the other thing that i love about vhs is the boxes i mean you know look at this look at that cover art i mean cover art on modern dvds and blu-rays of old films i mean i've got it wrong i mean i'm going to move that here but look at the original video cover of bronson with his wieldy magnum blowing away this gum and look at what they use for the blu-ray release what's that all about i mean vhs box art is great i mean i understand people collecting vhs tapes for the box art i do understand that these are pieces of art and i mean you know like especially like the really old rare stuff that never got released it's like this i mean i've got this because this film it's not an amazing film but i always like this film great keith edwards some soundtrack on this actually this film is is not available in any digital format it's not available on dvd blu-ray it's not on any of the streaming services it's not great cover on that but you know there is some aspects of vhs and i get it but it will never come back mainstream because simply because everything modern is better than this when it comes to video reproduction however that's not what this video is about and this goes back to what jake was saying and a lot of people have asked him about making high quality analog recordings without resorting to the thousands and thousands of pounds that is going real to real what about hifi vhs well if we look here nycam that might not mean a lot to everyone because that's what we used in the uk and nikam was digital however the digital part of it was the decoding the nikam signal which came into the vcr turning into analog and recording to the tape because hi-fi vhs records in fm you know like fm stereo on the radio it's an analog playback otherwise you couldn't record something in stereo on a video like this and then take it to an old top loading ferguson video star which wasn't hi-fi and plug it in put it in and it would you just play about digital noises it didn't it played back sound because it's recorded analog and i remember back in the day personally uh when we got our first hi-fi vcr what i used to do was i used to bang in a four-hour tape i used to take the output of the tuner in our hi-fi stack put it into the audio ends of the video set the timer on the video and sunday afternoon i'd record all of the top 40 onto a hi-fi cassette in the hi-fi video and then afterwards i would just simply play it back and because of the timer on it i time when the tracks i wanted were coming on and i'd just be able to fade in and fade out so i didn't get the dj and i used to do that about once a month and i always had a cassette of the hits that i liked sounding brilliant so i wanted to know now now that i've got better equipment is this still a viable way to record high quality analog audio i mean you know this deck is not one else plan on using i actually bought a deck just for this video it's a deck that i used to like when i was younger that i used to have in the swap shop where i used to work which i've talked about before love this deck it's just this panasonic mv70 and there it is running yesterday fantastic this morning come to plug it in dead as a doornail so this nvhd 680 is one that i picked up a few years ago it was in a charity shop and it was one of them things when well it wasn't a charity yeah it was a charity shop but it wasn't like a a chain it was an independent one who didn't care about pat testing stuff and just put stuff on the shelves and i just saw it there this mid 90s deck and it was like two quid and it's like well you never know i've i still want to get around to digitizing best revenge you know i'm putting that on something i can watch it on my tablet what the hell is two quid so i bought it and even nowadays that isn't a bargain for these because going to ebay these sort of videos are now put it this way you can buy several for the price of one mar and this thing on top is my mum's old one which you don't need anymore because i introduced it to netflix and i've never seen anyone devour box sets like my dear old mother is on netflix you know so she didn't want this anymore this is late it's because it's got a built-in dvd recorder but it's still hi-fi it's it was fairly cheap then it's worth next to nothing now i'm going to use this as well and what i'm going to do is this i'm going to take a tune i'm going to record it on this panasonic yeah this doesn't have all the nice level controls and stuff like the and like the n70 which is sitting in in the spare room now ready to get thrown away because it's dead like i said old electronics who'd have them but it still records in stereo stereo analog hi-fi and then to prove a point i'm going to take it from this and i'm going to play it back in this so let's see if tracking has a problem see if it has to be played back only on the video that you record it on or if it'll play back nicely on a completely different cheap video recorder so because these aren't three head decks i'm not gonna be able to do like the usual monitor thing so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna record a tune i'm going to record it on this i'm going to record it in slow play sp and then i'm going to record it in lp as well to see if that makes a difference so potentially on one e240 cassette you could get eight hours of non-stop audio and then i'm going to well i'm going to just show you an audacity i'm going to put up the original file and then i'm going to put up the version that was recorded in sp and the version that was in lp and we're going to cut between them and see if we can tell any discernable differences so i'm going to start recording now and then i'll see you back at the computer okay so what we've got here is on the top the original file which is a track called away by patrick patriarchos and i'm really liking this stuff i use it in the last video and it's from the youtube audio library so if you want some nice tunes from a very talented musician go over there and download them they're absolutely free so that's at the top and at the bottom we've got the actual recording from the toshiba which was originally recorded on the panasonic and captured on my sony so there isn't a long play version simply because the panasonic needs a remote control to be switched into long play mode and because i haven't used a video in a long time i've done the fatal flaw of not taking the batteries out of the remote control of something you're not going to use for a while especially if you put duracell batteries in there i don't know why duracell is so expensive because i've never seen batteries decomposed quite as quickly and as well as duracell batteries they just even like their pro cells and the industrials they just turn to liquid a few months after they've gone by the cell by day varta they're good batteries that's what i use now but anyway so regardless remote control now just doesn't work i need to have to pry the batteries out clean it all with ipa and hope that it hasn't damaged any of the boards so i couldn't get the panasonic to go into lp mode but as it turns out it's not a big deal because it doesn't look like that toshiba plays back in long play anyway so we've just got the short play version which is fine i mean three hours on the e180 and four hours on an e240 that's plenty of recording time for a cassette which probably cost you two pound brand new so as this switches between them at these points here there is a slight audible click um it's a good thing because it shows that i haven't just taken the same track and just split it up to try and conjure i haven't this is genuinely recorded off the panasonic but it seems to be no dusty quirk it happens sometimes but i've rendered this as a flac file and if you look in the description if you really want to you've got to think when i downl this into a video this audio is encoded once and then when it gets up to youtube it's encoded again so it's twice encoded so if you want to download the flack and ever proper listen the little clicks are still there but have a listen see for yourself but anyhow let's play this now and you can have a listen to how it works so remember top is the original bottom is the recorded from the video so let's go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the truth so what did you make of that i mean like i say i've never actually physically seen a reel-to-reel deck let alone recorded or listened to one but if i had a reel-to-reel deck and that's the sort of recording it made i'd be thinking yeah my reel-to-reel deck's great and it's working perfectly now i know a lot of you right now are going ah you are wrong i must type terrible things about you but the bottom line is in this day and age if you want to make high quality affordable analog audio recordings get yourself a high five vhs recorder i mean the thing is i mean right you go on to ebay now you can get something like this you can probably get four of them for the price of one tdk mhg cassette take i guess i mean this maxell mega power tip i mean i'm no vhs guru in any way shape or form but i bet you if you are you would tell me these are pretty rubbish because i remember these being sold alongside maxell xv cassettes in pem stretcher you know these are late cassettes that i don't even think are made by maxell let's see what they're made and it says well it says shropshire but it doesn't actually say where they're made but you know these are not the these are like you can get them on ebay all day long for a couple of quid brand new and you've got three hours of that quality of recording on one of these get yourself a few of these decks while they're cheap they'll outlast you i mean you've got to think vhs decks on the whole especially these later ones the direct drive they don't have belts that need doing i mean recapping some of them yes but at the price they cost get yourself a few store them like something that you actually want to keep you know something you respect don't throw them in the garage to freeze to death and like i said i haven't used this in about five years and it just fired up today no problem and worked perfectly um and like i said stuff like this they're everywhere and that tape recorded on this played back on this beautiful compatibility so right now i'm going to stick my neck out and bear in mind i do not have a horse in this race i don't sell videos i don't sell video cassettes i've got some vhsc head cleaning cassettes you know i mean on the web store that's about it because i got them in a job lot and i thought people might need them and i didn't pay anything for them so yeah that's about all i've got but don't bother with your four-track bleeding four-time speed shredding xl twos or 120s and getting like five and six minutes of recording if you want to record analog pure here we go wow that's in you've got three hours worth and over the years it's proven that video chess tastes like regular audio cassettes if you keep them in good condition and store them properly they're going to last they're not going to degrade any further so yeah i mean i i don't have a realtor reel and to be honest with you i don't have any desire for one since these sound so good and it looks like there is actually use for this now at the start i said that well you know vhs has been beaten in every aspect by dvd and blu-ray and they have and digital videos better than analog but as a analogue audio recorder right now these are amazing i mean you can archive stuff onto this and like i say play them on different the picture might not be brilliant but it doesn't matter because you're not recording your picture the sound is what's important so i guess it begs a question why didn't we use videos like this more often well i guess at the time when these sort of came out and they were around these weren't cheap you know videos were expensive at the time and you know so at home maybe you did maybe you didn't but they weren't always with your hi-fi stack and you weren't going to spend you know three and four hundred pound on something like this to record off the radio when you could do it on your cassette and then as time came forward we went digital and i mean in the studios even for pro reasons you know everything was digital digital digital they didn't want to record on the vhs deck they wanted to record either on the reel-to-reel and when that went they went digital like with all the mitsubishi digital retail reels and they went to dat and because digital was good analog wasn't sexy they weren't going to use this and then we're going to look at the other aspect of it you know you could only really play back on this at home you know there was no portable you know well there was portable vhs players but you know it was compared to a walkman they didn't really compare they were too big and even though they did you know like the vhsc which is a lot smaller this is only a 45 minute tape but even so because of the way that it gets threaded out around the drum you'd you'd have a player that big which isn't practical for you know moving sound and plus even long play 90 minutes it just wasn't practical it was a wrong thing more advancements to come this wasn't sexy but right now with the cheap price of these the cheap price of these you want an amazing home analog audio recorder you want to take something to a gig get it get the left and right stereo taken out of the desk into the back of this hit the record button and leave it for three hours you're gonna have the lot and it's gonna be all analog and it's gonna sound great so that's my thoughts on this i'm sure a lot of you will vehemently disagree but i have a band that i'm going to be recording onto analog vhs all the outboard is going to be analog all of the well the desk is an analog desk it's an old uh it's an old mackie from the late 70s that they use in this studio it's not because they're a rich studio and all that it's just they got it for free and no one wanted it so they're using it it's a peasy studio but it doesn't matter this is going to be a live band all analog outboard recorded onto this in fm analog which will then get duplicated to cassettes in analog and then i've been support to the record pressing plant they could press the vinyl from one of these so it's going to be an aaa all the way through recording and uh yeah i have a record company yeah that was a little uh a little flag at the start yeah i've been doing some experiments recently with stuff but yeah the bottom line is if you want to record at home in analog as best as possible record live in analog best as possible get yourself a cheap high five vhs deck so i hope that was okay for you you know a bit different but uh i wanted to get it done but until next time please like and subscribe now catch in the next video which will be about good old-fashioned compact cassettes take care now bye-bye

Channel: The Cassette Comeback Archive

Views: 89,524

Keywords: Cassette, cassettes, cassette reviews, blank cassette, blank cassettes, tape, tapes, blank tapes, tdk, maxell, that's, ferric, type 1, normal bias, cassette comeback, review, Type 0, wish, saehan, Nakamichi, Nakamichi Dragon, SKC, Type 2, High Bias, High bias cassette, type 2 cassette, chrome bias, chrome cassette, Type 4, Metal Cassette, BASF, Maxell UR, New Cassettes, Cassette 2020, denon, ferric cassette, vhs, beta, betamax, vhs hifi

Id: lunkqR2lDag

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020