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The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

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Re: The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

#31

If anyone was into the band Boards of Canada, this is how they created a lot of their sounds.

If you went to primary school in Scotland in the late 1970s, early 1980s then you watched a lot of National Film Board of Canada movies.

We had a guy, can't remember his name, might have been Mr Morrison? went round all the schools in his car with a 16mm projector, a screen, and a big box of shiny steel cans of film.

Draw all the curtains, pull all the desks back and line up the seats, sit and watch the movie. I can smell the film and the heat of the bulb on the sewing machine oiled projector parts, clicking escapement pulling film through, and the wibbly-wobbly wow and flutter soundtrack with crazy 70s synth soundtracks.

It's why I listen to such bloody awful music now, I guess.

Re: The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

#33

The video makes a good comparison in the frequency domain between the original and processed audio, but the high and low frequency attenuation is only half the story. The other key part of the VHS sound is the pitch modulation caused by slight inconsistencies in the speed of the tape going past the heads. In a synthesizer, this can be mimicked (and often is, in "lo-fi" presets) with a sine wave modulating the oscilla…

There are many shades of plugins for the effect (and related media), but you lose that edge of chaos—most of the sounds that are so popular are the result of happy accidents because of that chaos and randomness. If you play around with these plugins enough you'll find them pretty deterministic. That said, they're pretty great, and highly portable. And I'm going right out to get the one you linked!

And for posterity there's also XLN's Retro Color and Abberant DSP's Sketch Cassette (which is pretty genius), also Waves' Abbey Road Vinyl is pretty good.

https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_fx/effect/rc-20_...

https://aberrantdsp.com/plugins/sketchcassette/

https://www.waves.com/plugins/abbey-road-vinyl

Re: The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

#34
post #30

This was great, thanks for sharing. I really do love the "warmth" provided by VHS, but I often wonder if that is just nostalgia from using a technology we grew up with? I've been getting into old technology the past few years and a Panasonic AG-170 VHS Reporter camera was one item I had picked up. I've recorded a few social gatherings and trips with friends so far and plan to edit them into a 80s/90s styled montage.…

[deleted]

Re: The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

#35
post #30

This was great, thanks for sharing. I really do love the "warmth" provided by VHS, but I often wonder if that is just nostalgia from using a technology we grew up with? I've been getting into old technology the past few years and a Panasonic AG-170 VHS Reporter camera was one item I had picked up. I've recorded a few social gatherings and trips with friends so far and plan to edit them into a 80s/90s styled montage.…

If these guys can't help, maybe they can point you in a direction: https://www.proaudio-revival.com/

Re: The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

#36
Back in the previous century I used three VCRs as a multitrack audio recorder, I kept spending more money on synths instead getting a proper multitrack and mixer. It started out as a 6 track setup but mixdown was troublesome to say the least so I switched to a 4 track setup with bounce down. Two VCRs were recorded on and their outputs ran to a tuner which had two record ins that could be used at the same time and each even had a volume and balance control. So I would start my cheap electronic metronome, hit record on the first, hit record on the second on 16, start playing on 32. Then stick one of those tapes in the third VCR for play along and two blanks in the others, hit play and record 4 more tracks, repeat. Eventually bounce/mix them down in what could be a very long process since after the first go I could only add two tracks to the mix but the whole setup gave me a fair amount of room to play and infinite tracks as long as you did not mind the cumulative noise of all those tracks, which I did not.

The other thing which I always failed to buy was a sequencer or midi to CV interface, synths and effects were just so much more fun than recording gear. Since I could not effectively play 4 tracks worth of synth and twiddle the knobs by myself I would make control tracks on the computer, ~15khz sine wave whose level I would control for the desired pitch/effect, stick a rudimentary envelope follower on the computers output and I now had sequencing for my synths. I would make 4 of these tracks, two would be dumped onto a cassette tape which gave me 4 tracks of sequencing and essentially 4 extra hands. The envelope followers each had an LED since I could not hear the click track on them and needed a way to sync them still.

It was not great sound, snr was poor with all the bouncing down, nothing was ever quite in sync (but at least I did not have to deal with midi jitter and lag with thru's!), the tapes all wore differently and it was labor intensive but it was fun and the end result certainly had a rather characteristic sound.

Re: The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

#37
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're what got me hooked on getting into playing with cassette sounds. Every time I listen to them I'm transported and get stuck in an uncomfortable wooden chair in elementary school watching National Film Board documentaries and I love it. It pushed me to this sound https://pl-10.x.burns.fm/?t=15fb486da703a7ae565d2dcd0113908e There's a duplication company in Canada (they're easy to find...) that sells NOS, custom…

The classic old-school take on analog noise is Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In A Room" loop. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Sitting_in_a_Room Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho16dPi_WKU

Nice! Thanks for sharing. The digital experiments mentioned also sound interesting, but there is something about the imminence of physical media that captivates me.

Re: The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio [video]

#39

The video makes a good comparison in the frequency domain between the original and processed audio, but the high and low frequency attenuation is only half the story. The other key part of the VHS sound is the pitch modulation caused by slight inconsistencies in the speed of the tape going past the heads. In a synthesizer, this can be mimicked (and often is, in "lo-fi" presets) with a sine wave modulating the oscilla…

There are many shades of plugins for the effect (and related media), but you lose that edge of chaos—most of the sounds that are so popular are the result of happy accidents because of that chaos and randomness. If you play around with these plugins enough you'll find them pretty deterministic. That said, they're pretty great, and highly portable. And I'm going right out to get the one you linked! And for posterity t…

Retro Color is straight-up amazing. Not only can it simulate the VHS sound, it can also do vinyl, a whole host of different types of speakers, and overall it's really user-friendly. I use it on everything. Synths, drums, drones, FX, even vocals on occasion. Highly recommend it.

Haven't tried Sketch Cassette but have seen videos of it in action, sounds pretty awesome.

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