Phil Collins - Seriously Live

[ARC Tech-109]

Originally Posted by DVtyro

Seriously cannot figure out where all the people who love ANY analog stuff including horrible low-speed high-noise high-W&F garbage come from. Digital has been a revelation, a great improvement across the board and an equalizer in that both rich and poor can now get the same great quality for peanuts. Before the digital age, good analog quality did cost a pretty penny, and good analog video quality was not accessible even to wealthy people unless they owned a personal TV studio.

In terms of audio, the best consumer analog media was sourced from digital sources, like DDD/Digalog audio cassettes, they were the best.

I will counter this argument in that digital does not always mean "better" in terms of overall sound quality. During the 1980's digital revolution many of the recordings were sweetened and tailored to the medium giving them a very stark and edgy sound, just because the CD label said DDD that did not make it any better. Some labels were better at the digital mastering than others, Windham Hill and Telarc and DMP were a few of the early pioneers who set the bar that is still in place today.

I'm not going to argue that linear VHS stereo is anything better than dictation quality regardless of the recording, most decks after about 1985 thinned down the capstan flywheel throwing what little stability to the curb to save a few pennies. The early days of Betamax also had linear stereo and running in B-1 was roughly the same speed as a cassette tape.

AFM recordings be it VHS Betamax or BetacamSP are all analog mediums that are written along with the video content by the head drum, VHS uses depth multiplexing while Beta is mixed in between the chroma and luma carriers. Running at this recording rate the wow & flutter is on the bottom of the scale, dynamic range is in the mid 90 db's and it doesn't suffer from temporial aliasing when the upper end of the sampling rate is exceeded (22.050khz). There's no quantizitaion error or jitter with the AFM recording and the medium has been used for mastering.
I have both analog and digital recorders from the professional arenas and as a producer of training materials I prefer to stay with the digital side for the ease of NLE while my audio and video archival work is more analog oriented using BetacamSP as a capture medium.

What is considered "best" is really based on ones opinion and like comparing apples to apples it all comes down to prefrence, I like the juicy red ones.

[DVtyro]

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

During the 1980's digital revolution many of the recordings were sweetened and tailored to the medium giving them a very stark and edgy sound ... Some labels were better at the digital mastering than others

Edgy sound and the loudness wars of the late 1990s early 2000s is not the problem of then new medium and encoding scheme. In fact, just because recording engineers could push digital much farther than analog says enough about new possibilities digital offered.

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

just because the CD label said DDD that did not make it any better.

DDD were either as good or better. Cleaner. Editing became simpler. DDD audio cassettes were the best, of course Chrome tape with 120 µs EQ and Dolby helped.

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

AFM recordings be it VHS Betamax or BetacamSP are all analog mediums that are written along with the video content by the head drum, VHS uses depth multiplexing while Beta is mixed in between the chroma and luma carriers. Running at this recording rate the wow & flutter is on the bottom of the scale, dynamic range is in the mid 90 db's and it doesn't suffer from temporial aliasing when the upper end of the sampling rate is exceeded (22.050khz). There's no quantizitaion error or jitter with the AFM recording and the medium has been used for mastering.

I agree that 90 dB with flat 20-20K is more than enough, but Red Book is still better. Filters have been constantly improving and if you ask me, they could limit the frequency range at about 15K. Quantization errors of early ladder DACs have been eradicated by the early 1990s with the advent of delta-sigma DACs, and jitter was made a thing of the past with decoupling of mechanical CD transport from the DAC pipeline and by increasing the precision of the clock (jitter below -100 dB is a non-issue methinks).

Digital has three big things going for it:

• Ever increasing data storage capacity of digital media allows increasing bit rate, bit depth, sampling frequency. I don't care for hi-res audio but I can accept the usefulness of hi-res for mastering. But when the final product is done, Red Book is more than enough.
• The hardware and software constantly improves. Early ladder DACs struggled to resolve more than 13 bits. Granted, it was as good or better than LP, and Philips' proposal to use 14 bits made total sense. They had to use two or four DACs and then average between them. And then sigma-delta 1-bit DAC was developed, which singlehandedly improved DAC performance, and it was cheap, reliable and repeatable. No more laser trimming of resistors. Math has taken over (as if it has not played the major role in digital audio before). And math is constantly improving too. On contrary, analog audio and video cannot be pushed any further. Metal tape? Dolby C? Ok, but even a tiniest spec of dust on metal tape causes a pop or a spark, there is no error detection nor error recovery nor error masking.
• Analog audio and video suffers each time a copy is made. Digital does not. You can edit intra-frame digital video with straight cuts only - there is no re-compression, there is no degradation. With color under, after three generations it is barely usable. BetaSP - probably ten generations? IDK. With digital, you can have unlimited number of generations.

There are no redeeming qualities of analog video and audio. Its first generation can be almost as good as digital, but after that it is all downhill.

[Popester]

This is all just pointless. I’ll stick to my late ‘50’s tube amp stereo and enjoy my records on that. I bought a Sony PCM F-1 that pairs with a Betamax SL-2000. Still have but haven’t used for years. It was something pretty neat when it came out. Gone full circle back to a tube amp stereo playing my 60 year old records. Enough said.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

Do you have documentation to the contrary?

I dont wanna make anyone mad buddy. Electronic M sounds like he is mad...

I listenend to the HIFI track on my GO VIDEO unit and it sounds thin and gross like its digital..... The Linear side sounds warmer and just goregous....

My ears can tell the difference and analogue sounds goregous

[DVtyro]

Originally Posted by Dude111

My ears can tell the difference and analogue sounds goregous

I can agree with the above

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Dude111

I dont wanna make anyone mad buddy. Electronic M sounds like he is mad...

I listenend to the HIFI track on my GO VIDEO unit and it sounds thin and gross like its digital..... The Linear side sounds warmer and just goregous....

My ears can tell the difference and analogue sounds goregous

I'm not mad, just calling a preposterous statement....That still isn't backed up with any real evidence.

[ARC Tech-109]

No just an opinion. I suppose the muffled cassette quality audio appeals to some giving it that "warm" tone quality they crave but it all comes down to ones opinion. Some decks may do better than others on the linear tracks but it's not something I'd use for prime broadcast.

[DVtyro]

Since this thread already discusses muffled sound... I have a question, two of them:

* is it possible to have Hi-Fi sound at LP and EP speeds? I don't see any technical restrictions for it, as it is recorded by heads on the drum.
* are there known commercial VHS releases at LP or EP speed with Hi-Fi audio? I have several pre-recorded tapes in LP and EP, but none of them says Hi-Fi.

[ARC Tech-109]

Never seen a commercial release on LP or EP speeds due to incompatibility with some of the oldest decks but they might be out there.
No degrading of the FM HiFi at the lower speeds other than dropouts and tracking errors. I've used 8hr VHS HiFi for extended music runs before mp3s... dark days of Windows 3.11

[Electronic M]

VHS and S-VHS Hi-Fi both work fine at SP and EP speeds they're slightly more prone to noise and dropouts as is the video.

I have a release of Three Amigos that was put out in EP I forget if it was Hi-Fi or not (I'll have to dig it out now).

I've recorded tons of 8 hour and even 9 hour EP VHS and S-VHS Hi-Fi time shifts off of cable over the years.

I remember back around 2007 copying the A-Z weekend of a local FM station... Mostly on audio cassette, but when I needed to sleep I piped my stereo tuner audio and the video on my N64 into my Hi-Fi VCR and popped in an 8-Hour VHS tape. (Also used Reel to Reel for a ~4 hour waking stretch)
Of the 3 the VHS Hi-Fi sounded the best.

[ARC Tech-109]

I used an 8hr tape as a pgm feed while doing an STL move, worked well enough for prime FM bcst.

[Hawkwind]

VHS is for blind people...

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/24113...Live-in-Berlin

[Dude111]

Ah man!!

[ARC Tech-109]

Yea that would defiantly beat the VHS HiFI and linear tracks considering both were probably mastered from a Type-C or D2 format feeder depending on when the concert was actually captured.

[KentTeffeteller]

Originally Posted by Dude111

I was listening to my Phil Collins Concert I have on VHS again earlier

Oh my its goregous!! -- The original analogue concert audio is on the linear track and it sounds incredibly beautiful!!!

I cant believe they left the analogue soundtrack there... Probably figured no one would hear it anyway (Most VCRs are HIFI -- Im glad Mine isnt)

The HIFI track is digital trash of the concert which I dont wanna hear.....

Phil Collins has an excellent concert and all his 80s music is in glorious analogue!! (I havent ever heard most of those songs so nice)

For 1990 its amazing they left it there!! (The video is composite analogue so the analogue audio is there already but they could have taken it off and put the digi crap there (They probably figured no one listens to the linear track)

IT SOUNDS SO MUCH BETTER THAN DIGITAL TRASH!!!!!!

VHS HiFi is analog, it is not digital. And is superior to linear audio tracks, especially when there's two channels crammed into the space of one. And some analog is better than others. Not all digital is junk. Not all analog is superior. Depends on a case by case basis.