This stuff has a much more magical/mysterious quality than consumer equipment of its time, I think. It was gear that we mortals were never meant to deal with. Great vid.
As a sound engineer I really like the video. I've seen 1630 and the U-matics in the Royal Music Hall in Warsaw in 1988 when I started studying Sound Engineering Faculty here in Poland. At that time I was inspired more and more with the Digital Audio Workstations (Spectral Synthesis and early Digidesign ProTools systems). But now I prefer to watch the great old technology:) Regards Andrzej
Hello, I watch with great interest your informative videos about PCM processors. Since 1988 I have formed a collection of PCM processors from Alpine, JVC, Nakamichi, Sony and Technics. I have also had the Audio + Design 701 and here is the very rare RTW AD-3 with PCM 701. This has a working SDIF2 connection to be able to convert the F1 format to 1610/1630. The PCM 100, like the PCM 10, uses the consumer F1 format with NTSC betamax recorders. The good old Sony PCM 1 has a different digital format that is not interchangeable with F1. I once modified a 501 with a Whistlewood board, which still functions great without major jitter problems. For the 701 there was another modification to AES or S/PDIF, which also works great, even better than that of the 601. With kind regards, Lennard Valk, the Netherlands. I have many pictures of these processors so if you are interested I can e-mail them.
I have found that the 501 + Whistlewood board works better than the 601 too. If there's a break in the recording, the Whistlewood board won't output invalid data, but the 601 does, which then causes my digital audio recorder to abort. I'm aware that there was at least one other solution for digital recovery of F1. Have you ever tried correcting for the channel phase error which is half a cycle long, when you capture digitally? There is a UA-cam video from some time ago of an audio engineer who does do that. I'm still looking for a solution for SDIF to S/PDIF. One route would be to use a Sony PCM-7030 DAT machine in E-E mode (the DAT transport wouldn't even need to work), if I can get one of those. I have a working PCM-7040 but Sony dropped the SDIF interface on that one. Do you know of a solution to this, so I can capture PCM1610/1630 digitally? I didn't know the PCM-100 used the PCM-F1 format! Are you sure? Because I understand that the PCM-1630 can play back PCM-100 recordings, so that would mean that it is also F1 capable, which is news to me if that's so. I've never tried that though.
I was curious about this format. Alan Parsons used it in the early 80s. I believe he was probably one of the first ones to get his hands on it at Abbey Rd
They may also have used the PCM-F1 format on Betamax tapes, see my other videos on that. The Umatic version was very expensive and not particularly reliable compared to the Betamax one.
I'm surprised these units aren't very common, seems that lots of them would be floating around if they were the de facto standard for CD mastering. I have lots of early CDs mastered in the early to mid 1980s (most likely on these machines) and they sound great. Would love to own one of these, I bet the ADC in these units are superb.
Excelent video! I'd somehow like to have one of these, but in Brazil this kind of hardware is very rare (due to the 1980's laws of Imported Electronics, which ban Imports and alowed only Brazil-Made products). I wouldn't expect that PCM Recording is not actually new but it still works fine at all.
I have a few VHS tapes that were recorded on a Toshiba DX series VCR that recorded audio as PCM data on the video track. Is there a way to play those tapes on something and convert the PCM audio data to a newer format digital file like WAV?
You will need to get hold of the same model of machine as recorded it. There is a project going on for decoding PCM from video, but it probably doesn't support that format yet.
I have found you get less dropouts from the pcm converters if you re record via the analog outputs. Also there’s the problem with pre emphasis and the non standard sample rate. I tried using SPDIF from the 601 adapter through a sample rate converter and got more drop outs and pre emphasis curve is not reversed over the SDIF connection to a DAW. There’s no plugin that can apply the right eq curve digitally that sounds right. Once I used the analog outs, all those issues were solved.
The de-emphasis curve is not hard to find and works well. I avoid using the analogue outputs unless a customer specifies that, not least because DACs have come a long way in the last 35 years. However I don't like the 601 as much as a 501 with the Whistlewood modification, which copes better when there are blank or invalid sections on the tape. Here in PAL land the non-standard sample rate is less of an issue, with Beta tapes anyway. The 1610/1630 is (as far as I know) always on NTSC so always has the slightly wonky sample rate. What can be an issue is that on Beta-F1 etc., that one channel is sampled half a sample behind the other, I'm still working on a solution for that.
Great and well informative video about this wonderful equipment. The Digital AES/EBU option DABK-1631 for the PCM-1630 is impossible to find; The unit I got was inclusive of such boards. The whole system was pre owned at Sony / BMG mastering studios in Rome. When you are used to work with these machines, nowadays technology is like a day on the beach. Kind regards.
You're very lucky to have one with the DABK-1631, what a find! I do wonder if it might be possible to capture the video and use software to extract the data, but that would be a huge task.
@@video99couk If you find the way please let me know because what you will record its not actually a video track, so I guess that any video editing software wouldn't iterpretate it correctly (dropped frames/unknown codec/unreliable playback) I believe a software have to be priogrammed ad hoc. But more simple and easier to find an SDIF to S/PDIF or AES/EBU converter, if you're lucky on ebay is possible to find for cheap . Another trick, get a PCM-2500 dual frame DAT recorder, thats much more easy to find, not important if mechanically faulty. The interface unit has the SDIF interface plus both S/PDIF and AES/EBU. Use it as a digital format converter.
@@video99couk You can even look for PCM-7010, the last DAT machine equipped with the SDIF interface. Such old stuff is being rare to find and prices tends to go crazy even for poor condition machines. I have serviced my 2500 some years ago and luckyly it is still healty.
Because you are one of the few people that still has the equipment I want to ask you. The format is almost dead and the equipment is going to disappear I want to share the samples to an experienced programmer to make an software encoder and a decoder for this format. HackTV project. Thank you!
I see that there exist projects to output S/PDIF with a Raspberry PI. I can imagine that an arbirary input format could also be processed. Still wouldn't be easy though.
Yes, but rather than process it real time, it would probably be better to write some software for a PC to analyse video files of captured audio. This is something that we are sort-of working on in the background, but it would be a large task.
Relatively unusual compared to Ampex, but certainly not unknown. They will generally recover well with a 24 hour baking process. I've had trouble with Agfa on other formats though, but not specifically with Umatic where they don't seem to be very common.
Hi! I’m researching an album from 1985 that says it was “Recorded digitally using Sony PCM 3324. Mixed digitally using Sony PCM 1610” The first part makes sense, but I don’t understand how it was “mixed” on a 1610. Everything I’m seeing about these makes it seem like they’re a device just for decoding and encoding masters into videotape. Any ideas?
@@video99couk Thanks! Any chance they meant that they mixed it, THEN dumped that mix onto a 1610 for the CD mastering? For reference the album is The Beach Boys (1985 self titled album)
I may have a sdif solution. It's a professional built custom 19" rack containing most boards of a 1610, and if memory serves me right is also has spdif. It is located in Holland though. Let me know if you're interested!
@@mendelpearl8066 I would like to see that, you can find my email from the video99.co.uk web site. Presumably being 1610 rather than 1630 though, it didn't support RAR? If there are A and B channels on the video inputs, then maybe it did though, so the rear sockets would be interesting too.
How come these units recorded at 44.056kHz if the Red Book CD spec was 44.1kHz? IIRC you cannot convert 44.056kHz to 44.1kHz without effecting the audio. Why? It makes no sense.
@@video99couk I think the professional models do 44.1kHz, and so do the PAL PCM-F1 format. But still, it makes no sense to do 44.056kHz for the consumer products. Like for example someone might master an album using a PCM-F1, and might want to send the tape to a CD pressing plant. But they can't without doing a conversion because of the sampling rate. I guess you could speed up the audio from 44,056 to 44,100, and it would still be bit-for-bit perfect but be a LITTLE bit faster. Speeding the recording up from 44.056kHz to 44.1kHz would only be a 0.1% increase in speed. I wonder if any CD mastering facilities did that if they had a 44.056kHz recording. In my opinion, a 0.1% speedup that is almost inaudible is much better than going from digital to analog and back to digital to get 44.1kHz. (or other methods of changing the sampling rate that affect the audio). The Red Book CD spec was already published in 1981 when the PCM-F1 was released, so it makes no sense to use 44.056kHz.
I have done much more on this format since this video and now have a pure digital route for these tapes. Regarding the PCM-100, I've been told this may use the same format as the PCM-F1 (Betamax) system, so I must try that one day.
Ampex Video Tape, EWWW! DuPont was almost as bad with Sticky Shed, and there is one tape that is worse then them all AGFA not only does it have sticky shed, but it self erases, leaving almost no RF on the tape.... Nice to see the PCM 100, PCM 1610 and 1630.
I've not found Agfa tapes to have sticky-shed on the N1500/N1700.SVC formats, but have not come across that many Umatic ones. For low RF on Umatic, I find Scotch/3M tapes to be very troublesome, they have a low magnetic retentivity.
@@video99couk I guess it just depends on where the tape was made/sold, in my experience 3M has been the second most reliable 3/4" tape with Sony being the most reliable, which is different than the 1/.2"EIAJ where sony was middle of the road, 3M the best and Memorex the worst. For Betamax Sony and TDK seem to be top, with Ampex, 3M, and DuPont at the bottom.
@@mspysu79 Also I find that Fuji branded metal tapes (MII, BetacamSP, Video8, Hi8) are susceptible to mould, which will cause them to snap. Not had the problem yet with miniDV.
Keep in mind guys, all of this is STILL better than MP3 or other audio compression formats because all of this was UNCOMPRESSED!
This stuff has a much more magical/mysterious quality than consumer equipment of its time, I think. It was gear that we mortals were never meant to deal with. Great vid.
Yes, it was seriously expensive when new. You could have bought a huge house for the price of a PCM1630/DMR4000 set up.
As a sound engineer I really like the video. I've seen 1630 and the U-matics in the Royal Music Hall in Warsaw in 1988 when I started studying Sound Engineering Faculty here in Poland. At that time I was inspired more and more with the Digital Audio Workstations (Spectral Synthesis and early Digidesign ProTools systems). But now I prefer to watch the great old technology:) Regards Andrzej
Thanks Colin, a little bit of new U-matic history, very interesting indeed, thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it. All fairly obscure stuff, I probably won't be competing with Techmoan with equipment like this.
I love watching the “video signal”. Wish I could have that on loop!!
Hello, I watch with great interest your informative videos about PCM processors. Since 1988 I have formed a collection of PCM processors from Alpine, JVC, Nakamichi, Sony and Technics.
I have also had the Audio + Design 701 and here is the very rare RTW AD-3 with PCM 701. This has a working SDIF2 connection to be able to convert the F1 format to 1610/1630.
The PCM 100, like the PCM 10, uses the consumer F1 format with NTSC betamax recorders.
The good old Sony PCM 1 has a different digital format that is not interchangeable with F1.
I once modified a 501 with a Whistlewood board, which still functions great without major jitter problems.
For the 701 there was another modification to AES or S/PDIF, which also works great, even better than that of the 601.
With kind regards, Lennard Valk, the Netherlands.
I have many pictures of these processors so if you are interested I can e-mail them.
I have found that the 501 + Whistlewood board works better than the 601 too. If there's a break in the recording, the Whistlewood board won't output invalid data, but the 601 does, which then causes my digital audio recorder to abort. I'm aware that there was at least one other solution for digital recovery of F1. Have you ever tried correcting for the channel phase error which is half a cycle long, when you capture digitally? There is a UA-cam video from some time ago of an audio engineer who does do that.
I'm still looking for a solution for SDIF to S/PDIF. One route would be to use a Sony PCM-7030 DAT machine in E-E mode (the DAT transport wouldn't even need to work), if I can get one of those. I have a working PCM-7040 but Sony dropped the SDIF interface on that one. Do you know of a solution to this, so I can capture PCM1610/1630 digitally?
I didn't know the PCM-100 used the PCM-F1 format! Are you sure? Because I understand that the PCM-1630 can play back PCM-100 recordings, so that would mean that it is also F1 capable, which is news to me if that's so. I've never tried that though.
Hi, thank you for your answer! I have never tried to correct the channel phase error whilst copying digitally. I am going to try this.
I was curious about this format. Alan Parsons used it in the early 80s. I believe he was probably one of the first ones to get his hands on it at Abbey Rd
They may also have used the PCM-F1 format on Betamax tapes, see my other videos on that. The Umatic version was very expensive and not particularly reliable compared to the Betamax one.
I'm surprised these units aren't very common, seems that lots of them would be floating around if they were the de facto standard for CD mastering. I have lots of early CDs mastered in the early to mid 1980s (most likely on these machines) and they sound great. Would love to own one of these, I bet the ADC in these units are superb.
They were very expensive and the Umatic part could wear out. Also some got dumped when it looked like they were worthless. Rare and valuable now.
Excelent video! I'd somehow like to have one of these, but in Brazil this kind of hardware is very rare (due to the 1980's laws of Imported Electronics, which ban Imports and alowed only Brazil-Made products).
I wouldn't expect that PCM Recording is not actually new but it still works fine at all.
These decoders are pretty rare in the UK too! I was very lucky to pick one up some years ago.
I have a few VHS tapes that were recorded on a Toshiba DX series VCR that recorded audio as PCM data on the video track. Is there a way to play those tapes on something and convert the PCM audio data to a newer format digital file like WAV?
You will need to get hold of the same model of machine as recorded it. There is a project going on for decoding PCM from video, but it probably doesn't support that format yet.
pro video decks from that era typically had analog sudio outs, and typically more expensive digital audio output optional plug in cards
I have found you get less dropouts from the pcm converters if you re record via the analog outputs. Also there’s the problem with pre emphasis and the non standard sample rate. I tried using SPDIF from the 601 adapter through a sample rate converter and got more drop outs and pre emphasis curve is not reversed over the SDIF connection to a DAW. There’s no plugin that can apply the right eq curve digitally that sounds right. Once I used the analog outs, all those issues were solved.
The de-emphasis curve is not hard to find and works well. I avoid using the analogue outputs unless a customer specifies that, not least because DACs have come a long way in the last 35 years. However I don't like the 601 as much as a 501 with the Whistlewood modification, which copes better when there are blank or invalid sections on the tape. Here in PAL land the non-standard sample rate is less of an issue, with Beta tapes anyway. The 1610/1630 is (as far as I know) always on NTSC so always has the slightly wonky sample rate. What can be an issue is that on Beta-F1 etc., that one channel is sampled half a sample behind the other, I'm still working on a solution for that.
Great and well informative video about this wonderful equipment. The Digital AES/EBU option DABK-1631 for the PCM-1630 is impossible to find; The unit I got was inclusive of such boards. The whole system was pre owned at Sony / BMG mastering studios in Rome. When you are used to work with these machines, nowadays technology is like a day on the beach. Kind regards.
You're very lucky to have one with the DABK-1631, what a find! I do wonder if it might be possible to capture the video and use software to extract the data, but that would be a huge task.
@@video99couk If you find the way please let me know because what you will record its not actually a video track, so I guess that any video editing software wouldn't iterpretate it correctly (dropped frames/unknown codec/unreliable playback) I believe a software have to be priogrammed ad hoc. But more simple and easier to find an SDIF to S/PDIF or AES/EBU converter, if you're lucky on ebay is possible to find for cheap . Another trick, get a PCM-2500 dual frame DAT recorder, thats much more easy to find, not important if mechanically faulty. The interface unit has the SDIF interface plus both S/PDIF and AES/EBU. Use it as a digital format converter.
@@musk771 I'll look for a PCM-2500. There's one on eBay now but they want silly money.
@@video99couk You can even look for PCM-7010, the last DAT machine equipped with the SDIF interface. Such old stuff is being rare to find and prices tends to go crazy even for poor condition machines. I have serviced my 2500 some years ago and luckyly it is still healty.
@@musk771 I have a PCM-7040 here, so close!
Hello, could you put some video output samples of this audio processor somewhere? U-Matic/non-U-matic, PAL/NTSC or any other variants if possible.
Because you are one of the few people that still has the equipment I want to ask you. The format is almost dead and the equipment is going to disappear I want to share the samples to an experienced programmer to make an software encoder and a decoder for this format. HackTV project. Thank you!
I can provide some video output of my PCM-F1, it's different than the professional 1610/1630 format though.
@Free in Jesus Yes, there's another solution for this. Have you heard about VHS-Decode project? I encourage to check out Github of it.
I see that there exist projects to output S/PDIF with a Raspberry PI. I can imagine that an arbirary input format could also be processed. Still wouldn't be easy though.
Yes, but rather than process it real time, it would probably be better to write some software for a PC to analyse video files of captured audio. This is something that we are sort-of working on in the background, but it would be a large task.
How common is the sticky shed on U-Matic tapes that were made by Fuji, Sony and Agfa?
Relatively unusual compared to Ampex, but certainly not unknown. They will generally recover well with a 24 hour baking process. I've had trouble with Agfa on other formats though, but not specifically with Umatic where they don't seem to be very common.
Hi! I’m researching an album from 1985 that says it was “Recorded digitally using Sony PCM 3324. Mixed digitally using Sony PCM 1610”
The first part makes sense, but I don’t understand how it was “mixed” on a 1610. Everything I’m seeing about these makes it seem like they’re a device just for decoding and encoding masters into videotape. Any ideas?
They got that wrong, clearly. The 1610 is just a recorder, often used for delivery to CD manufacture.
@@video99couk Thanks! Any chance they meant that they mixed it, THEN dumped that mix onto a 1610 for the CD mastering? For reference the album is The Beach Boys (1985 self titled album)
I may have a sdif solution. It's a professional built custom 19" rack containing most boards of a 1610, and if memory serves me right is also has spdif. It is located in Holland though. Let me know if you're interested!
Wow. How big is this thing?
@@video99couk About 3HE and 50cm deep. I can mail you some pictures!
@@mendelpearl8066 I would like to see that, you can find my email from the video99.co.uk web site. Presumably being 1610 rather than 1630 though, it didn't support RAR? If there are A and B channels on the video inputs, then maybe it did though, so the rear sockets would be interesting too.
Watch this: ua-cam.com/video/fC0XWFlE1oQ/v-deo.html
How come these units recorded at 44.056kHz if the Red Book CD spec was 44.1kHz? IIRC you cannot convert 44.056kHz to 44.1kHz without effecting the audio. Why? It makes no sense.
I thought these record at 44.1, the 44.056 applies only to PCMF1 format and even then only for NTSC. But willing to be corrected.
@@video99couk I think the professional models do 44.1kHz, and so do the PAL PCM-F1 format. But still, it makes no sense to do 44.056kHz for the consumer products.
Like for example someone might master an album using a PCM-F1, and might want to send the tape to a CD pressing plant. But they can't without doing a conversion because of the sampling rate. I guess you could speed up the audio from 44,056 to 44,100, and it would still be bit-for-bit perfect but be a LITTLE bit faster. Speeding the recording up from 44.056kHz to 44.1kHz would only be a 0.1% increase in speed. I wonder if any CD mastering facilities did that if they had a 44.056kHz recording. In my opinion, a 0.1% speedup that is almost inaudible is much better than going from digital to analog and back to digital to get 44.1kHz. (or other methods of changing the sampling rate that affect the audio).
The Red Book CD spec was already published in 1981 when the PCM-F1 was released, so it makes no sense to use 44.056kHz.
only the design engineers working on that project could supply the insights.
numbah of tapes
5:55 SDR hates you. 7:20 The alternative would be ear-rape as it sends the wrong figures to the ADC driving the headphones. RIP.
I have done much more on this format since this video and now have a pure digital route for these tapes. Regarding the PCM-100, I've been told this may use the same format as the PCM-F1 (Betamax) system, so I must try that one day.
Ampex Video Tape, EWWW! DuPont was almost as bad with Sticky Shed, and there is one tape that is worse then them all AGFA not only does it have sticky shed, but it self erases, leaving almost no RF on the tape.... Nice to see the PCM 100, PCM 1610 and 1630.
I've not found Agfa tapes to have sticky-shed on the N1500/N1700.SVC formats, but have not come across that many Umatic ones. For low RF on Umatic, I find Scotch/3M tapes to be very troublesome, they have a low magnetic retentivity.
@@video99couk I guess it just depends on where the tape was made/sold, in my experience 3M has been the second most reliable 3/4" tape with Sony being the most reliable, which is different than the 1/.2"EIAJ where sony was middle of the road, 3M the best and Memorex the worst. For Betamax Sony and TDK seem to be top, with Ampex, 3M, and DuPont at the bottom.
@@mspysu79 Also I find that Fuji branded metal tapes (MII, BetacamSP, Video8, Hi8) are susceptible to mould, which will cause them to snap. Not had the problem yet with miniDV.
Are you f*ing kidding me? I'm not watching a freaking ad for some g.d. insurance company just to see your video