The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio

[JCHaywire]

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.

[rasmusn.e.m]

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.

[kyaMega]

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.

[falkhammermuller]

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.

[sunriseshell]

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.

[SoundAuthor]

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.

[marklechman]

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.

[gibsonfan]

That "subtle chorus effect" of double tracking is what Randy Rhoads did for his solos. Really broadens the soundscape.

[LongPeter]

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.

[philmarsh]

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!

[lesfuller]

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!

[VintageModernRemixes]

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.

[elishmeeli]

I love every video you make and use Decent Sampler super often. Please keep this up

[Luap-lsix]

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 👊🏼

[thenowereman]

2:37 thanks David, now we know how they did the regular show intro theme !

[T.A.P.O.]

if lofi was a person, i'd be deep in love

[Crw]

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.

[raulacevedo-esteves]

You got me at 70's educational videos. That touches my childhood memories.

[ackamack]

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.

[Turrican]

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 ! 😃