24 Oct
2011
24 Oct
'11
3:39 a.m.
On 23/10/11 04:21, S. Massy wrote:
On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 07:48:04PM +1100, Leigh Dyer
wrote:
I had actually been thinking about trying exactly that -- I do have a
good quality hi-fi VCR here still, despite the fact that I haven't used
it in years -- so I set it up yesterday and gave it a go. I hooked my
laptop up to the VCR, played the track while recording, then swapped the
connectors around, rewound the tape, and recorded the audio from the VCR
back in to the laptop.
It's amazing just how clean the signal from the VCR is. In fact, it's so
clean that it sounds identical to the original audio to me. Comparing
the signals in Japa, I can see a sub-50Hz hump in the VCR's audio, and a
slight roll off above about 10KHz. There's clearly some stuff going on
in the time domain, too, but it's very subtle, and I definitely can't
hear it myself.
So, an interesting exercise, but perhaps a pointless one :) I can upload
the audio if anyone's curious and wants to do their own comparisons, though.
Thanks
Leigh
On 21/10/11 10:29 AM, S. Massy wrote:
I've heard similar claims, among others, that
bouncing to a high quality
VHS tape (using a quality VCR, obviously) can do wonders. My guess is it
has something to do with gentle, non-linear, natural compression
occuring at that stage, but other, more knowledgeable people probably
could elucidate this better than I could.
I very much like the mood of this piece, and, as
someone else said, it
could be longer... Unfortunately, there are a lot of issues with high
frequencies to my ears caused by all the sweeping filters and the drum
processing which makes it grating and spoils the mood. :( Hopefully,
it's just some idiosyncrasy of my hardware or wetware (ears) and others
will not be affected, because this piece is otherwise very good.
Thanks for the feedback -- the glitchyness of the drums is
deliberate, of course, but I wonder if there's a way to smooth out
the higher frequencies a bit. I've heard people say that bouncing to
some good quality tape has various magical qualities, including
smoothing out high frequency transients in general, but I tend to be
suspicious of such claims :)