GoodDoG wrote:
A mate of mine used to record all his audio on to video cassettes,he used to go on about wider tape and some other stuff that meant he got far superior recordings than conventional tape.
hmm – unless he was using one of the PCM converters that were about in the 1980s and early 1990s he wouldn’t actually have gained that much…
Even a NICAM/stereo VCR (where the audio is recorded along with the video signal) only has a frequency response of up to 15 Khz (same as FM radio) and is also a very early form of digital audio compression.
The linear audio quality (standard mono soundtrack) of VHS and SVHS is quite frankly rubbish; the tapes move slower than analogue cassette.
However, a stereo VCR can be and often was used to record FM long radio programmes without having to change over cassettes (as you can get 8 hours in long play mode) by feeding the audio in at the scart socket, along with a constant video sync signal (such as from an old computer, CCTV camera etc) to keep the kit synchronised properly.
As the frequency response is the same there is little loss of quality with this method, which was a common practice until computers with large storage space became available.
