Might be in the wrong forum...

Something I've been thinking about...it would be rather pointless to do, but still, interesting, if for anything, conversation (and maybe) but has anyone ever hooked a VCR up to an Audio source and ONLY an audio source (let's just use a turntable as an example) and recorded audio onto a VCR tape for later playback? VHS tapes where/are available with higher recording capacity than cassettes, and hooked up to a good reciever/speakers/etc it might sound good....anyone ever do this? I just got a VCR and I thought it'd be interesting to hook it up to my reciever & record some things to tape and then put some music on if somebody was over....on the VCR and play it through the stereo (not hooked to the TV at all) Anyone do this? Somebody here had to have done this.

Earl

I use to do that all the time back in the day when I was taping radio shows such as In Concert, King Biscut Flower Hour and the plethra of Beatles radio shows. Some day I will get round to burn those shows to cd.

I did that a few times, too, usually for Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and the occasional Howard Stern show. On one VCR, unless a video signal was there too, the sound had a definite warbly sound to it; my guess is lack of a sync signal of some sort. The other VCR I used for this had no need for a video signal. YMMV, Earl... just have to try it and see what happens.
Tom

I do this all the time as well...just make sure it's a hi fi VCR...the non-hi fi units aren't worth bothering with.

While I never used it myself at least one of the VCRs that I have owned did have a specific option to record audio only. I assume it would eliminate the warbly effect that OvenMaster noticed. One also had a simulcast mode that would record the video from the built in TV tuner, but take the audio from the line inputs. This was actually useful back in the days before TV was stereo. Rage (a local video clip show) was simultaneously broadcast on TV (ABC) and on radio (JJJ). Unlike MTV, Rage is actually worth recording sometimes. They usually play the original uncensored clips, often play live concerts and have specials on/by specific artists.

I believe one of the original advantages of Beta that was well known was that you essentially got a digital audio recording -- very wide flat frequency response and no wow or flutter. VHS was a lesser medium, so it might be important to use a hifi VCR to get good audio with VHS.
I also believe that soon after Betas useability for digital recording became known, the machines were reconfigured at the insistance of the recording companies to make this much more difficult to do.
And then the high end got sort of hinky about digital in general and Beta crashed and burned, so the whole thing fell off the edge of the earth.

I used to record on VHS Hi-Fi all the time. It was the best recorder I had for quite a while. I used to record music/DJ parties on VHS until I finally got a DAT machine. I've got 78 tapes of music, just from these parties, more tapes from other sources (mostly radio). But, I'll never do that again (record audio only on VHS Hi-Fi). Although at first glance it does sound quite good, the more you listen the more problems you hear. If you do record on VHS Hi-Fi, I suggest to only use the 2H mode. 6H mode has a hard time tracking, especially after some time has passed. Even in the 2H mode, switching noise (from switching between heads) is often times audible. I've found that with complex music, I rarely hear the head switching noise, but very simple/minimalist music allows me to notice it much more. And, since there are two different heads reading the track, they will most likely not be perfectly matched and have different performance. For example, I have one machine that has slightly greater high frequency noise in one head than the other. It is pretty easy to see which head is used at a particular point in time on the recording.

If you are interested, I've attached a few pictures of test tones I recorded onto a VHS tape almost 10 years before I made these measurements. This is a tape that was recorded in the 2H mode. This is a program that I am currently writing, so some things are missing, like proper vertical scales on the FFT display. Still, it is useful. The first picture is a full bandwidth picture of a 1kHz tone at nearly full scale (-2dB). Besides all the harmonic distortion (all the way up to the 17th harmonic), there is plenty of hash. All of this is a result of the head switching phenomena. Note the lowest significant spur at 30Hz (the switching rate). The next picture is a zoom of the 1kHz signal, with the marker on the next lower spur at 952Hz (the actual test signal is 982Hz) - exactly 30Hz lower. Just about all of these spikeys are IMD products of the 30Hz switching and 1kHz test tone. Just to be fair, I've included a picture of a 1kHz test tone at -10dB. Much less harmonic distortion, but the IM distortion is still there. The spike at the right end of the spectrum, around 15kHz, is the line frequency of video and is always there.