51–60 of 64 posts
Fun video. I enjoy this angle of hacker news - where it really is somebody going unnecessarily deep into some tech. Not for practical use, but just because it's there.
There’s a pretty big sphere of retro-tech and unpractical-tech enthusiasts like Techmoan, LGR, 8-Bit Guy, Cathode Ray Dude, This Does Not Compute, even Linus Tech Tips makes videos on the subject often enough.
This was the first reason I got hooked on Stranger Things. The music. It reminds me of a time and space I've actually never lived in. And it probably never existed like that. Yet growing up it is very much how I believed North America looked like.
It pretty much was just like that (I was there). One of my favorite "biographical" movies that nobody's ever heard of is Explorers: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114/ The "More like this" section at the bottom has some other goodies, although a bit campy: Flight of the Navigator, *batteries not included, Short Circuit, Harry and the Hendersons, etc. Mainstream movies like The Goonies and The Breakfast Club are unc…
Nostalgia tripping on the 1980s seems to rarely if ever include Max Headroom. To me, he was the essence of my high school zeitgeist. Maybe younger people today think he was too weird to have actually been a big deal. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU)
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 eac…
Wow, you used non-Hi-Fi VCRs? I used a VHS Hi-Fi unit as an audio recorder, and also to bounce tracks from a POS Tascam four-track. Before DAT, Hi-Fi VCRs were by far the best audio recorder you could buy for home use. The only problem (which I pretty much never heard talked about) was a "purring" noise that would accompany high-frequency sounds. I suspect this was caused by switching between the audio heads on the s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, you used non-Hi-Fi VCRs? I used a VHS Hi-Fi unit as an audio recorder, and also to bounce tracks from a POS Tascam four-track. Before DAT, Hi-Fi VCRs were by far the best audio recorder you could buy for home use. The only problem (which I pretty much never heard talked about) was a "purring" noise that would accompany high-frequency sounds. I suspect this was caused by switching between the audio heads on the s…
They were most likely hi-fi (weren't all the non-hifi ones coax?) but it would not have mattered if I had used a 2" Studer, bouncing down is not a good way to maintain quality, especially how I was doing it. Most of my gear was from the 60s and 70s and probably not in the best repair, even if perfect such gear would generally have noticeable noise and I generally used this gear during the bouncing down as well to app…
I was overdubbing with my setup and discovered that the shitty Tascam four-track had speed variations all through the song, on every take. I had to memorize where they occurred and ride the pitch control while copying to the VHS. It took days, and by the time I had an acceptable mix the original tape was wearing out. I kept a VHS first-gen copy I think.
When computer audio became a thing I of course digitized all the original tracks and gleefully made a perfect mix. Maybe someday I'll do a surround one.
Kids today will never know what it's like to try to edit on consumer audio equipment! I remember memorizing how long it took the pause control to release on my tape decks, to make seamless edits.
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 eac…
Got any links to your music?
This was the first reason I got hooked on Stranger Things. The music. It reminds me of a time and space I've actually never lived in. And it probably never existed like that. Yet growing up it is very much how I believed North America looked like.
I was on my bike every. single. day. I actually bolted an antenna onto my handlebars for my FM Walkman.
And YES I have had sex. With partners.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It pretty much was just like that (I was there). One of my favorite "biographical" movies that nobody's ever heard of is Explorers: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114/ The "More like this" section at the bottom has some other goodies, although a bit campy: Flight of the Navigator, *batteries not included, Short Circuit, Harry and the Hendersons, etc. Mainstream movies like The Goonies and The Breakfast Club are unc…
"it's the stuff dreams are made of"! also, flight of the navigator is an amazing movie https://archive.org/details/FlightOfTheNavigator1986
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were most likely hi-fi (weren't all the non-hifi ones coax?) but it would not have mattered if I had used a 2" Studer, bouncing down is not a good way to maintain quality, especially how I was doing it. Most of my gear was from the 60s and 70s and probably not in the best repair, even if perfect such gear would generally have noticeable noise and I generally used this gear during the bouncing down as well to app…
If there was surface noise it probably wasn't Hi-Fi. Hi-Fi recorded the audio as FM on the tape alongside the video signal, if I remember correctly. I was overdubbing with my setup and discovered that the shitty Tascam four-track had speed variations all through the song, on every take. I had to memorize where they occurred and ride the pitch control while copying to the VHS. It took days, and by the time I had an ac…
So they broke the format when HiFi came out, tapes recorded on a HiFi VCR could not be played on a pre-HiFi one? Something like that may have happened but if it did it happened back during the early days of the format. From what I remember HiFi just meant it had RCA outs which bypassed the internal RF modulator that was used to modulate the signal to channel 3 or 4 standards so you could watch it on your old fashioned TV. In the early days if you recorded something off of broadcast TV it would be demodulated by the VCR, recorded and later when you watched it it was remodulated back out to the TV which would than demodulate it again, this was not a perfect process, as cable TV grew in popularity demand came about for getting rid of the now useless RF modulation which only served to degrade the signal. I could be misremembering and I was not exactly following this stuff closely back than, I was a bit on the young side but I can not ever recall their being two standards for VHS.
Techmoan did a video on a format that used VHS tapes to store digital audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDCxTtn4OQ
There is a whole (almost) lost history about PCM Adaptors for VTR's. Sony made some for U-Matic (3/4 in), there were some for VHS, and some that were meant to use other broadcast grade formats. Also, ADAT, which used a SVHS tape and mechanism to store multi-channel audio