[geeks] bizarre stuff available

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 05:43:04AM -0800, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> --- Joshua D Boyd <jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu> wrote:
> 
> > A local radio station uses a cheap HiFi VCR for their long play
> > programs that get recorded earlier for over night or sunday morning
> > broadcast. Makes sense.  In theory a decent HiFi VCR should be very
> > good for audio, what with the width of the tape, and isn't it a
> > pretty fast tape speed also? 
> 
> Hi-Fi VHS decks do not use the heilical scan head, they stripe the
> audio tracks on the edges of the tape (use seperate heads). The speed
> of the tape is not that fast (appears to be about the speed of a
> cassette, but that is just an impression) - the video head (the big
> round spinning head in the middle of the tape slot), since it spins
> around and records on a diagonal, exploits the width of the tape to
> increase the spped of the head over the tape.

I believe that what you just described is a mono VCR and stereo non-HiFi
VCR.  HiFi VCRs have two sets of audio heads, one that reads the old
style signal along the edge of the tape, and one that reads it from
across the entire tape.  The later set provide higher quality, but don't
allow one to write audio without stompiong on whatever video may be
there.  There for, pros used to not use it (although I'd imagine they
use it again now that non-linear editing is the standard and they'd be
unlikely to want to write the audio and video seperately I'd think).

I suppose some consumer "hifi" VCRs might play hifi, but not record it.
That would stink.   But Hifi does use the entire tape.
 
> I am bothered by the thought of the sound going from analog (source) to
> digital (CD) to analog (analog out) to digital (MP3) to analog
> (playback device). Shove some digital effects, mix in an analog mixing
> board and a digital recorder, and it becomes a bit insane. I *love*
> so-called DDD CDs (analog -> Digital mixer, deck, -> digital CD ->
> analog on playback device - all intermediate steps are done in digital
> domain).

Who inserts an analog step between the CD and MP3 anymore?  Maybe some
lamers did when MP3s first arrived, but the cool cats have always used
digital extraction.

I'm a fan of keeping it digital once it is digital until it hits the
speakers, but I do like analog tape somewhat, and analog mixers.  Or
analog mixers and digital tape is also nice.  But all of that is
expensive to do well, while good digital can be extremely cheap.
 
> Of course, having said that, I have about 75% of my CD collection
> "ripped", for ease of use at the office... ;^)

FLAC.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd