The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- The sample library @VenusTheory and I made can be purchased here: www.decentsamples.com/product...
There's also a free version here: www.decentsamples.com/product...
You can watch @VenusTheory 's video here: • If you have VHS tapes ...
There was a guy in Manchester, Iowa who recorded everything. Every phone call, much of the four TV channels available in that area, and endless ephemera. Before computer audio compression, he would record on a C.Crane quarter-speed cassette recorder onto 120 minute tapes (that's 8 hours). He would then transfer these to a single track of stereo VHS tapes at a time in SLP mode, recording on the other stereo track on a second pass. He did this from late in the 1970's to his death in 2015, archiving these tapes on cataloged shelves in two houses he owned on a quiet side street. When he departed, nobody really knew what these tapes were or how to play them back, so they were piled into a huge construction dumpster and taken to the landfill. This is the same guy who designed the first Braille star map and had memorized the names of 3,000 stars visible to the naked eye in the night sky. Lots of flutter and a rather extreme low-pass filtering effect notwithstanding--the results were surprisingly audible. I was able to rescue somewhat less than a thousand of these cassettes, but the logistics of digitizing them was nearly too much for any normal person to undertake.
Thanks for saving some of his work ! Anywhere we can listen ?
I seem to recall this story. Thank you for returning this to memory.
Wow. I’d love to read more about this and hear some tapes!
That also reminds me of Marion Stokes project. There was a movie about it in 2019 in called Recorder. She recorded unbroken streams of all the channels on her television, 24 hours a day, for 35 years from 1977 to 2012. That ended up in 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes. As I understand it, they're currently being digitized.
Whoa! I grew up in Worthington and passed through Manchester all the time growing up! I'd be thrilled to help digitize some of the tapes if you still have them!
In my college years, I ran a low-budget 4-track recording studio out of my parent's house. My dad happened to have a Sony Betamax HiFi VCR, and I mastered to that. It was very close to digital quality. Even all these years later I transferred some of that audio to my computer and it holds up. Amazing tech for it's day.
A sound man friend bought one for a similar reason when they first came out. It is interesting that because they were video, most high end audio enthusiasts never considered one instead of a Nagra etc.
I mastered to a VHS Hi-Fi deck for a time, but at SP, which I'm a little surprised David didn't address. It was cleaner and more colorless than my analog open reel deck ~
As someone who isn't a tech geek, you do an amazing job at suggesting what you mean by your magic words with your camera work on the open VCR. What many languages use dozens of words to convey, you simply achieve by adding a subtle zoom or tilt of the camera.
i’m so happy you found it authentic 😅😅😅😮😅😅 10:26 hours in and
Ratioed much?
@@AndySalinger33 what do you mean?
@@rasmusn.e.m1064 he's talking about the bot
Well, the author DOES seem a tech geek. In a good way, of course :)
I have never in my life done anything remotely with music publishing or just creation. Let alone the usage of a digital synth software, that allows for the creation of crazy sounds like these. And truth be told, I'm 42, I'm probably never going to be involved in this business. And yet, I enjoy these videos about the creation of these samples enormously. It's very satisfying to see this happen.
You can do it just for fun. You don't have to be in the business. Age is not important.
@@themadsamplist well, I'm not the kind of guy who doesn't get life done because of age, am involved in too many projects of a completely different field. I don't think I'll ever venture in the music business, since my network and life sourounds a different aspects of life. But again, I really appreciate your content and my son plays in an Orchester, maybe he'll have something to do work synth work in the future, I'll recommend your software.
I have a few friends who started at 40 and are now making a living from music. If you put in the time you can do anything my friend. Just decide to :)
@@JasonKutchma you didn't read my second response, right?
Wonderful story
Of all of the tape sounds, I think VHS might be the most nostalgia-inducing. I grew up tolerating that warbly audio. And now we're going out of our way to implement that characteristic.
I used to make just audio tapes on a Hi-Fi VCR. It was pretty good, better than cassette tapes and MUCH longer.
Was a great way to have music playing for a long time without intervention.
Same here, they were a lifesaver when you couldn't afford anything else and 2 hours of good quality was awesome!
I wonder if any consumer “portastudio” like thing used VCR tech, probably not but could be cool
Same. It was cheaper than 1/4 for my little cassette 4track mixdowns.
@@badbeardbill9956 There was an 8-track system based around VHS tapes, yes! We used one for a few years to record music at Filk conventions in the UK. There were also some early digital audio recorders that used VHS tapes to record 14-bit or 16-bit stereo audio. A whole load of classical music CDs were originally recorded on that system, back in the late 1980s/early '90s, as the system was very portable and could be taken to, say, a particular church to record the organ there, etc.
@@therealpbristow Techmoan has some videos on digital audio on VHS
That "subtle chorus effect" of double tracking is what Randy Rhoads did for his solos. Really broadens the soundscape.
if lofi was a person, i'd be deep in love
Now I'm going to have to Google Fi
I just got the idea of you and Lo-Fi having a Family.
The equivalent is probably an older person!
@@hennydarmse But not old enough. That would be an Eldely Citizen, and that's not *A E S T H E T I C*
@@therealwhite Hello this is Patrick.
Fi means Fidelity.
Google Patrick out.
Back in the early 90s, I used to master all of my 4-track cassette recordings onto VHS HiFi. Worked great for the most part.
I recall Techmoan saying that a HiFi stereo VHS tapes on long play used to be THE way to prepare a 6-8 hour playlist for a party, without having to micromanage it the whole time.
Can confirm. Although more often used to record 8 hours of live dj sets in the 90s, than the other way around.
I'm an audio micromanager. Sounds more impressive on a CV than im a DJ lol
I've done this before for a couple of house parties. Worked a treat 👍🏻
You and Cameron are 2 of very few YTers I watch regularly. Very cool that you got your (recording and playback) heads together on this one!
Watching and listening to your videos creates a "feeling like home" atmosphere.
In a Boards of Canada way.
I love every video you make and use Decent Sampler super often. Please keep this up
I worked in a big insurance call centre in the UK in the 1990s and all of our calls (literlly thousands of hours per week) were all recorded on VHS tapes, they could hold sometime like 12 hours of calls per cassette so they were quite an efficient and effective way of storing / retrieving audio. I forget who supplied the infrastructure now it might have been a US company called Cable and Wireless. Just a random memory this video brought up ! 😃
that is so cool! i love nonstandard uses for technology
As per my comment above--apparently this was a widely used method of low-fidelity ephemeral audio storage.
Cool! I work in alot of Call Centers now, mostly in Sales. I'm pretty good at my job but I want to get better. Are there any pro tips for Call Center work that you can pass along especially those secret knowledge from the past??
I used a VHS HiFi machine as an audio recorder in addition to video in 1987 and it was so good, even on EP, that it sounded really close to a CD in quality.
The top down view with the top off the VCR is a lovely subtle touch to this video that will mostly go unnoticed. I would binge VHS tapes as a kid (especially Disney). These videos you an Venus Theory made was a real blast from the past. Great work as always 👊🏼
Congratulations to you and Cameron on an outstanding library! 👏🙌 Will try out the free version tomorrow, but this is a definite buy! In the first few minutes I thought, “Boards of Canada”, and I was sold!
All of this is very inspired by Boards of Canada, indeed.
How perfect for you to choose the infamous black Scotch VHS box for this video. That is the quintessential VHS to me, on display in almost everyone's living room. The colorful sun is always eye catching. Great video.
this is absolutely my favorite sample pack you’ve compiled. the sounds are all incredible!
Your videos are just so perfect, David. Great storytelling, visuals, ideas. You're an amazing content creator. Please keep going.
Budget VHS decks very seldom had hifi stereo heads. If a system is marked 4 head, the second pair is used primarily to produce cleaner pause and forward scan. Hifi VHS tended to be on the higher end decks so more usually had 6 heads, 4 for video and a pair for audio. The audio had a very wide and flat 20-20000 Hz frequency response. On a good quality of deck it was pretty much the best audio quality recording medium available outside of a studio at that time.
It's true, Hi-Fi VHS recorders were top of the line and had 6 heads. Those produced later in the '90s and early 2000s were just a pale shadow of the true VCRs from the previous decade. However, even a piece of junk like this Quazar has had its moment of glory today.
This could not have come at a more perfect time. I'm working on producing content shot on VHS, and these samples are absolutely perfect for the score. I purchased it before this video was even released. It's awesome!
your music and videos are so incredibly warm and comfortably captivating in a way i really cannot describe
I was in college in the early to mid 90s and I remember a music professor telling our class that we didn't know how good a VHS could be for recording audio. I was intrigued by the notion but never looked into doing any audio recording with VHS myself. This is the first time I have seen this process in action- almost 30 years later! I love the sounds you came up with by the end of this video. It sounds so 80s to me in the best of ways! It reminds me of a video company's logo that would appear at the beginning of a pre-recorded video. Thank you for making me retrieve a memory that I had long forgotten about.
Lots of people have mastered to Super VHS over the years. Sounds great.
Oh wow, my two favourite UA-cam musicians collaborating! That’s great news.
And thank you for the video; the sound you realised does indeed sound warm and easy on the ear.
your videos always brighten my day, thanks David
I love that you share the process of creating these samples and then make them available for people to use.
The VCR sound is very nostalgic for me 💛
FYI (if it hasn’t been said) there’s a song on “the fish that saved Pittsburgh” that was sampled as the main horn on Lords of the Underground’s “funky child”.
2:37 thanks David, now we know how they did the regular show intro theme !
Smiled when I saw this video pop up in my feed. Thank you for the thoughtful content.
One of your best! Loved the overhead shots of the naked VHS and how informative it was, historical perspective and all.
For audio you want to find a VHS player that specifically says "VHS Hi-Fi" on it. They are capable of quite high quality recording and can record 4 tracks diagonally across the tape instead of using the standard audio track like is found on a typical video VHS. The tapes degraded too quickly to have ever made them really practical in the pro market, and their inputs/outputs were usually far from ideal but you can still do some neat stuff with them.
I wonder if a cracked multiplex audio head assembly could have done multitracking on professional tape, and how it would sound. Probably too crazy to ever be used outside of experiment, but could be interesting if it actually has decent quality… not VHS technology but using a similar idea as the quadruplex video head
Essentially a four track recorder. I appreciate the work they did, but how could anyone think that four tracks exist, and somehow, VHS couldn’t do this simple task? 🤷🏽♂️
I used cheap VHS tapes to multitrack record using ADAT machines all the time when I couldn’t afford ADAT tapes. (LA 97-99)
yes. i bought a top of the line Hifi VHS in the mid 90's to duplicate my demo tapes (film/video editing)i was never happy with the video quality but the audio was great :D
Alesis made an 8 track "digital" recorder that used VHS tapes as the media.
ADAT was digital.
The sample library is so good! Could play about with it all day, really inspiring stuff. Thanks for making it!
The quality of your content always astounds me. So cozy and entertaining.
Fascinating and masterfully produced. As an audio/video producer and child of the 80s, this was Reading Rainbow level comforting.
I'm so excited to watch this! I have always been entranced by the unmistakable but seemingly irreplicable chorussy warbling of vhs audio! Obsessed ever since I was a kid and you would hear chewed up strings and warbling pianos on well-worn videos played on tired classroom players haha
I definitely plan on using a VCR in this way, but I picked up the library because of the work you both put into this. Thank you!
Amazing as always. Some of my favorite content on YT. Thank you for your time.
I knew what to expect simply because I've read and reread the Wikipedia pages on pretty much every popular format of tape media, but I am still blown away by how clear it sounded. I wonder how much of our nostalgia for these lo-fi sounds actually came from the perhaps more rudimentary quality or the wear and tear of the built-in speakers we had in our TVs and audio devices. I grew up watching TV, VHS movies, and playing video games on a small Panasonic TV from the early 90s, and this was in the early 00s. 10-15 years of being the daily driver surely took its toll on all of those components. I'll miss you, little black Panasonic.
My father is a huge fan of Jazz and Big Band music. There was a local station when I was growing up that ran a one-hour show on Saturday afternoons playing lots of music that he liked. He used to record the show to his late-60s reel-to-reel deck, then transfer songs -- minus ads and DJ blather -- to cassette for playback in his car. When his reel-to-reel deck finally died, he began using the VCR instead. It had the advantage that he could program it to record at the appointed hour, freeing him (and the rest of the family!) to do other things on Saturday afternoons. It worked like a charm, and he claimed that the quality was as good or better than the reel-to-reel deck. I hadn't thought about that in years...
what a heartwarming work you've done, aside from the beautiful result, the process was already a treat. thanks again for that colorful palette you've been creating.
This channel is amazing. Pure wonder and discovery.
In the days before stand alone digital recorders this is what we would use to capture rehearsals. Just ran the tape out of the Mackie mixer into it, and set it to EP mode. We even recorded a few bands live records this way using SP mode instead.
You are both a scientist and a musician. Really admire your brilliant mind. You create really interesting content.
These videos make me so so happy. Thanks a lot!
Yor videos are so pleasing / relaxing. Its always a joy and i learn intersting stuff! Thanks!
Took me back to 1999 where I was searching for high grade tapes so I could record the metal channels on Music Choice overnight and then hook my cassette tape recorder up the next day and go through and transfer the songs I liked.
I just love your channel.
anything you pick up is so damn interesting!
And all your inside on the technical devices is just wonderful
This video is amazing, I think you just gave me inspiration on how to improve my Lofi sound with VHS sound, I had no idea you could do this!
Fantastic idea and execution! Super outside-the-box thinking. Love it!
I have t picked up an instrument in a decade, and I’ve never tried working with synths, but damn I think I might look into it as a hobby. I’m already in a different creative field so I don’t have a lot of money to put into this hobby as my craft also requires a lot of funds, but synths as well as creating arrangements really grows on me as a hobby I’d love to pick up little by little over time. I’m glad I found your channel ❤
There’s free software instruments and free DAWs you can use to get started at no additional cost with your existing computer :) I hope you take a look into it! Music is an important part of human expression
@@kaitlyn__L thanks ! I’ll look into it
This video is incredible, like you I've been pretty deep in the tape world recently. Thanks David!
As always ever so fascinatingly presented as the topic itself is, great job man!
Really enjoy the results you produced with this process, very nostalgic 💭
I love writing lofi, never considered using vcr. I have to try it some time.
It's really fun! Make sure that you get one that does not have "Hi-Fi Stereo" because that...sounds too good. :)
@@DavidHilowitzMusic You mean the tapes or the actual VHS recorder?
I used to mix my 4 track demos into VHS tapes, they sounded great! Hi-fi and four heads went a long way
I wish I'd have known about that... I did record music on s VHS and remember thinking how good it sounded, but never thought to master on to one. Back in the day you had to find out for yourself almost.
@@mikethebloodthirsty and btw it was analog
Been working on VCRs for years and learned something. Thank you❤
Absolutely love your videos. I’m a hobbyist producer; I just dabble, but I enjoy learning and you make it fun. Really cool stuff.
in 1997 I used a Sony Hifi stereo VHS recorder/player to mix down all my songs for a CD I was working on. when I brought it to the mastering engineer, he was very skeptical at first, but soon realized how good the sound quality was.
I was looking for this comment. All the guides for bedroom studio type recording used to say this was the best way to master. Was your initial recording/mixing done on a 4 track cassette portastudio? Did you bounce tracks temporarily to the VHS when you ran out of channels?
@@beetooex Hi beetooex, I used a fostex model 80 8 track reel to reel tape recorder w/ a mackie 1402 vlz mixer. all my final mixes went to my sony hifi vhs recorder/player. I never bounced out tracks to the vhs, just mastered to it.
Those test samples are gorgeous!
Absolutely wonderful video and sounds. Thank you!
As a person that was born in the 1980 this video was very interesting and depressing to watch. It was Interesting because of how the old tech is being shown how to be use in a modern set up, depressing because well it's alien tech to many younger people now and that means I'm old.
Some years ago I got a vhs player with lots of tapes, and it impressed me the quality of the sound. Not only the audio quality was great but the mixing was also superior to modern stuff.
Audio mixing on 80's/early 90's home video was very well done. At some point standards started slipping (I would assume due to budget cuts/tighter deadlines for the home video divisions of the studios).
I definitely used my VCR as a child to record audio. Hi-Fi VCRs had really good audio quality, similar fidelity to CD at SP speed, despite being analog.
It wasn't just analog though. VHS Hi-Fi Stereo was FM encoded underneath the video signal, so it wasn't bound by the frequency restrictions of tape head gaps like linear audio tape. It was more like an FM Stereo radio broadcast.
Got it just because it is such a cool idea and you guys worked hard for this so I need to support your work! Sounds pretty cool indeed! 🙂
Dual mono FTW, I love this vibe so much. Great work and inspiring as always!
The vcrs labelled HIFI from the early- mid 90s record really well. Try and find one with manual record gain control. I recorded some Lps and it was almost impossible to distinguish between the source and the recording. They used to call it poor man's DAT. :)
In the late nineties my friends were using the digital audio track on S-VHS tapes as a mixdown format for their basement EM productions. This was not becuase they thought it sounded cool and retro but because it was their only affordable digital option. I was still using cassetes or maybe DAT.
Of course it's not the same as the analog audio track on VHS but this video reminded me of that anecdote .
I just downloaded decent sampler for iOS for the first time and got the free version of this library. Sounds are great! Congrats on being awesome!
Very cool to see the process of how you create the samples here. I just bought the library and am already using it in a track.
"The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh" is my friend's favorite movie of all time! I know you touched on the capabilities of VHS HiFi, but it is important to note that the HiFI VHS has incredible sound quality... it's comparable to CD, and many people say it's even better since it is still analog. There is also no tape noise. I used to use HiFi VHS to master my recordings, and some people still do as it's as good as any reel-to-reel recording out there.
Is it still easy to get blank tapes? Or do you overwrite other tapes?
@@alicev1500 I'd say it's pretty easy to find them at thrift stores and various other second hand shops, they were mass produced for like thirty years
To this day, i still make some mixtapes and record my mixes on HiFi VHS. They sound absolutely amazing and can easily hold 3 hours of audio.
Ok this is an incredible idea
This is the most educational ad i've seen in recent memory, respectfully. Some lovely comments as well. Thank you
Absolutely beautiful. Here I was thinking you were going to try and write to and decode audio from the video channel but this turned out way cooler. I had no idea the Hi-Fi system had a backup decoder. Amazing!
I’m really surprised that ADAT wasn’t mentioned in this clip at all. It was a really popular format in the ’90s and a number of gigantic hits were recorded with it. It essentially was VHS audio used for mastering.
I worked with one. It was 6 tracks if I remember...
The guy is a composer and records music and I think he's really trying to focus here on using the analogue audio tracks as a sort of lofi signal processor to give it that "warm analogue sound" or whatever.... I'd be surprised if he weren't aware of the ADAT standard, which leverages the entire S-VHS tape on a completely different head mechanism. Even more than that, this issue was really solved in 1982 with the Sony PCM-F1, an A/D-D/A that can encode digital audio (Linear PCM) onto a video tape recorder's video tracks. It also led to the emergence of the ADAT optical I/O standard.... Some modern professional interfaces still use the ADAT lightpipe I/O, though it has largely been replaced by Dante.
ADAT is digital. It was the total opposite of "warm" and "analog." Technically CD quality but the converters at that time were horrible and were notorious for a flat and lifeless sound that you'll hear on a lot of CDs from that era. Of course it wouldn't surprise me if hipsters develop a sudden "nostalgia" for it and start laboriously bouncing everything down to an ADAT machine lol
Yes! My favorite youtuber!!
Excellent video. The samples sound fantastic!
You got me at 70's educational videos. That touches my childhood memories.
Good timing. I’ve been hunting for VHS HIFI machines at the local Goodwill after watching a UA-cam video on this. Found one and it ate the tapes. Oh well. The hunt continues.
Most old VCRs will eat your tapes, but it's usually a very simple repair. 99% of the time it's because the tape is being pulled out by the capstan /pinch roller (as it should be) but not collected on the right hand take-up spool in the cassette. So the tape pools inside the VCR, and it shuts down. Most consumer VCRs have a swinging idler wheel that swings left for rewind, right for FF/Play. The grease on the swinging arm turns to tar, and it no longer swings 🫤 Older designs use a rubber tire on the swinging idler, which can become shiny and non-grippy. You can roughen it up with fine sandpaper. Usually a dab of grease and/or a piece of sandpaper will fully cure this problem.
You're welcome. 👍😉
@@njm1971nyc thank you!
@@michaelkonomos The channel 12voltvids does repair videos on audio & video equipment including VCRs. Good and useful reference vids even if you don't need to fix the type of equipment in a particular video.
that was... so neat. i literally never thought to use a VCR like this. anyone know the name of the Korean(?) movie or show that was sampled at the beginning of the video? aslas googling "boy flies on a whale" and plugging in different decades yeilds nothing. thanks for a truly stellar video!
I was also wondering. I speak Korean so I can confirm that it's not Korean. I'm fairly sure it's Japanese as I also know a smidge of Mandarin and it's almost certainly not chinese.
I think you are one of the few treasures on youtube, I love the editing style and your ideas are so creative. Keep it up ♥
An awesome collab by two amazing sound designers! Venus Theory is great.
It’s a well-known fact that a lot of audio engineers use VHS to master audio. They did make hi-fi VCRs. They make a great mastering track
I used a hi-fi VHS recorder as a backup master 2 track recorder in the 80s. I would mix down to 1/4" half track at 15 ips, and to the VHS deck. Worked like a champ!
Beta was more common
@@solarbabies9682 Beta was the better format, but VHS was way more common
Thats ADAT. It's not analog. I'd just 0s and 1s on tape. Like a hard drive
@@carlwinslow5905 ADAT used the same principle and hardware, but VHS/hi-fi wasn't digital.
the file is unavailable :(
As a separate comment, when growing up in the 80s/90s, it used to really make us upset hearing that dissonance of the audio warble and it felt like it ruined the movie experience. For some strange reason, it always reminds me of the 80s and how much I loved life back then. It’s a warm, nostalgic feeling. Thank you!
Thanks for this! I have an old Casio mini keyboard I found @ a thrift store a couple decades ago and I adore the tones on it but it has freaky white noise during silence; now I can sample them and retain some lofi magic using this method. Love sounding like no one else.
It would be great to run an impulse input through the VCR in order to get a filter for the "quasar lo fi" sound that could then be applied to any sample. Similar to what they detailed in this NPR piece about recreating the sound inside the Hagia Sophia: ua-cam.com/video/aELeEpgiQos/v-deo.html
This is an awesome library. Thank you!
Hi-Fi VHS is one of the highest quality analog tape formats you could get at the time as a normal consumer without a padded bank account.
I recorded hours of music on Hi-Fi VHS because of that back in the day.
Great job! I bought the library immediately once I noticed the link in the description after watching the first couple of minutes of this video. It's still downloading as I'm posting this comment, but I'm 100% positive it's going to be awesome
This is fantastic and is exactly the type of content I have been looking for on UA-cam.
This was an absolute delight to stumble onto. Cheers!
Amazing video !
(as usual should I say)
Just purchased the library, can't wait to try it !
Tappin' my Moonlambo T-120 VHS kicks to this.. Thanks for sharing your (and linking to VenusTheory's) process!
In the late 80's my friends and I would DJ our high school and private events. We would often grab brand new music that we couldn't buy yet from MTV via VHS recording, then play them back at dances and such. We weren't thinking much about fidelity, because tape was the air we breathed back then. The sound was always great for pumping through high end amps and loudspeakers. Little did we know how edgy we were. :P Excellent video - I love experiments like this!
Two of my favorite artists/producers/etc collaborating on a tape sampler is one i'm gonna need to check out!!!
It sounds so beautiful, great work!
Amazing. I have been wanting something like this for a long time. Thanks.