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Tapes for recording?

Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Active Member
In a dream I had last night I was a pirate recording vinyl from a turntable onto tapes through a VCR and distributing them, long story short I got arrested and fined 550,000 dollars and 20 years in prison for copyright infringement.

Anyways, I have never thought of recording to tape before, and thought this was an interesting idea...

1. Is this possible?

2. If it were, how much time would be available on the cassette for music recording?

3. What would the quality be like?

5. Are there any disadvantages to doing this?

I figured that recording to VHS would be very cheap considering that VCR's are commonly available for 5-10 dollars at garage sales and VHS tapes are commonly 50 cents.

Thanks for your input,

Sam
 
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except for the distributing part, I do it all the time! :-)
Use a good (early) VHS Hi-Fi or Beta Hi-Fi stereo video recorder - many of them (such as the Zenith I've had since 1986) were designed for use as audio as well as video recorders, and they offer excellent fidelity and s/n (even at the "6 hour" tape speed) because they use rotating (high-bandwidth) heads to record the audio program via FM (rather than AM "linear stero" - which is awful on VCRs due to the slow linear tape speed). Most later HiFi VCRs have only ALC for recording volume - you need variable input level controls, sans ALC to record music without some "pumping" or "breathing" due to the ALC).

Also bear in mind that there were some cheaper linear stereo (not labeled "HiFi") VCRs made. These record audio only on the linear track and the audio quality is abysmal.

Bunch o' threads on using HiFi stereo for music recording here at AK.

holidaydubbing121209.jpg


Dubbing holiday (Christmas) music from LP to VHS HiFi audio (this particular session was ca. 2009, if memory serves...)
 
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We used to use the HI-FI VCRs back in the mid 80s 86-88 or so when I was in the air force and stationed in Germany. It was just as easy to use that instead of buying a reel to reel especially since we had the VCR anyways to watch movies.
 
A T-120 tape will give 2/4/6 hours at LP/SP/EP, respectively.
A T-160 is good for up to 8 hours.

Use the best quality tape you can find for audio recording to minimize/eliminate dropouts.

We have tapes I've made which are over 25 years old that play and sound fine.
 
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