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On 24/10/11 14:09, S. Massy wrote:

quoted text
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 12:39:00PM +1100, Leigh Dyer wrote:

>> On 23/10/11 04:21, S. Massy wrote:

>>> On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 07:48:04PM +1100, Leigh Dyer wrote:

>>>> On 21/10/11 10:29 AM, S. Massy wrote:

>>>>> 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 :)

>>> 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 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.

> If you can spare the time and provide a link to both the original and

> bounced version, I'd be very interested to listen and see if I can hear

> any difference. Al Thompson mentioned levels being important: How hot

> did you bounce it?

>

> very interesting exercise.

No problem! Here are the original track and the VHS-bounced version,

both as 24-bit 48khz FLAC files:
http://wootangent.net/~lsd/music/releases/texel/texel-original.flac

http://wootangent.net/~lsd/music/releases/texel/texel-vhs-lp.flac
I've lined up the starts of the files as closely as I can, so you should

be able to start playing them at the same time and solo one or the other

to compare them. They're both normalised to 0dB peaks, but the VHS

version seems about 2dB louder, so you may need to adjust its gain down

a little if you're doing that kind of comparison.
As it happens, the VHS version has the phase reversed, so if you play

them both at the same time, they almost cancel out, at least at first;

they do eventually drift ever-so-slightly apart.
I had the audio as hot as I could manage at the time, though it may not

have been hot enough. I also used long-play mode, on the assumption that

using less tape would impart more effect on the signal. I suspect the

VCR may have some automated level control, anyway, so it may not be

possible to actually make it any hotter than this when it hits the tape.
Thanks

Leigh

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