series Newvicon video camera for the visual portion of the recording,
which
looks simply awful by today's standards. But the sound... I could not
believe it. snip
Consumer Beta Hi-Fi, an FM system without the constraints of broadcast
FM, was technically superior to JVC's depth recorded VHS Hi-Fi. For a
time after the introduction of the Sony SL-5200 in 1984, it rivalled
DAT with many users.
Yes, the deep layer recording system on VHS was fragile and prone to
dropouts. The Beta was pretty robust with good quality tape stock.
I have some state-of-the-art digital recordings I bought on CD that were
made in 2003 and they don't sound that much better. snip
Further proof that digital recording sucks, eh?
I won't go so far as to say that digital sucks, but I think that 16 bits
might not be quite enough to convey very soft passages without that
'bumpiness' that happens when there are not enough steps on the waveform to
convey it accurately. Low sample rates, such as 44.1, also may be inadequate
to convey subtle timing differences between sound arrivals, thus reducing
the sense of soundstage depth and breadth.
In fact, a lot of my
newer recordings have a blanket of hiss in the background. snip
A common fault of noisy codecs. It's not that much better, just
"different" than analog tape hiss.
This sounded worse that noisey A/D conversion.
I do have one theory though, after troubleshoot an abyssmally noisey Harris
Impulse digital mixing console for broadcast use: all that digital clock
noise running around the PCBs was getting into the mic preamps. Taken
together, it sounded like hiss. We started getting suspicious about this at
installation time, and ran a distortion analyzer set to measure the THD+N.
We were coming up with unweighted s/n ratios of just 39dB! Needless to say,
Harris had to go back to the drawing board on this new console. The client,
a major broadcast conglomerate, was one of the first to purchase the Impulse
consoles, and I was the one to install them. So that's my take on the hiss.
Could it be that some of these mixing desks are falling prey to bad
decoupling?
This old
recording only suffered from VCR-related problems: tape dropouts and a
30hz
purring sound caused by the vertical scan rate of the helical recording
heads. snip
There was a switching adjustment on older Beta Hi-Fi decks that
eliminated that, as I remember.
It was a problem that plagued all the beta decks I owned, from the Model 19,
to the model 22, to the Sony SL-HF1000, which still serves me today for
playing my legacy tapes. Worse, they all have a noise gate, which makes the
no-signal noise floor seem unbelievably low. But record a violin solo and
hear that ugly purring noise punching on and off. Very annoying.
The think that irks me, is that, with today's digital technology, why are
we
still getting CDs with very audible hiss on them snip
Because digital recording sucks. People STILL can't figure out how to
properly sync that crap!
The modern equipment I use today performs well. Even if I make no effort to
optimize levels during recording. Perhaps it is a matter of having too many
inputs active and gross misadjustment of levels, or a noisy mixing desk.
when a pair of electrets
driving an old RS mixer can produce a recording that is much quieter to
the
point where any hiss is masked by the ambient noise? What kind of signal
routing and planning can cause state of the art recording facilities to
turn
out such a noisy recording? snip
Don't discount the fact that you MIGHT be listening to CD on a noisy
player with a noisy DAC...very common. Computer CD-ROMs are genuinely
awful...Sound Platers' crap ranks down at the bottom, in my
experience. I use a Sound Plaster CD-ROM as a doorstop.
Not the case here, as I do own a few CDs with zilch in terms of hiss. And I
have mastered a few CDs right here that are absolutely free of audible
noise. It's not the player in my case. It varies with the recording. I have
this beautiful piano solos CD that has as much hiss as non-Dolby reel to
reel tape. It ruins the performance for me, as I am constantly reminded that
the music is not live. It's like there's a screen between me and the piano.
Now that I have much better recording equipment today, fully digital, I
am
dying to engage another ensemble recording and see how much better I can
do
than I did in 1986 with the Betamax VCR.
But I still can't believe how enjoyable and natural the sound of that old
recording is! snip
I started making audio reference masters with Beta Hi-Fi in 1985. I
was blowing away people with them back then...80 dB s/n with no noise
reduction schemes, flat as a board freq response, negligible
distortion...it was a really contender to DAT in all areas. VHS Hi-Fi
isn't quite as good, but is still better than a lot of the cheap
digital crap out there today.
dB
VHS decks have gotten a lot better in the past 6-8 years. I have a couple of
cheap RCA decks that I use as 'loggers' to record multiple radio broadcasts
to a single VHS tape. Although the frequency response rolls off on the high
end at SLP speed just a bit, the decks don't suffer from the head switching
noise, and so they sound quite good.
I'm anxious to put my high end digital gear to task in a similar recording
situation this spring. I have high expectations.
--
Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at:
http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
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