[dB Cooper]

Years ago I archived my vinyl on VHS HIFI tapes using a a fairly good TT & cart, and a really good AVA hybrid preamp and hi-end VCR with manual level controls (no ALC compression crap). I no longer run a TT but wanted to digitize this material from the tapes. Will be using a Macbook running Audio Hijack Pro (which allows me to record directly to Apple Lossless format) and a Behinger UCA202 sound card which gives me up to 16/48.

Some of my questions:

• Should I use a hi pass filter to filter out rumble? These were vinyls after all; my HK TT was fairly quiet but my Dual, not so much. At this point I don't have accurate recollection of which material was done on which TT. Maybe 20Hz or so? There is no organ music in this collection so I don't need flat-to-16.
• There are some tapes from a favorite radio show; should I low-pass these at 15K to avoid possible 19 & 38kHz issues?
• Since I am no longer aiming at a Redbook CD as an end result, should I do the recordings at 48kHz and is there anything I need to set on the Mac (or the card)  to do this?
  
• Is there anything else I haven't thought of?

Thanks for any advice!

[dB Cooper]

*crickets*
Oh well guess I'm gonna wing it!

[cheap-Jack]

Hi.

.... but wanted to digitize this material from the tapes.

 Will be using a Macbook running Audio Hijack Pro (which allows me to record directly to Apple Lossless format) and a Behinger UCA202 sound card which gives me up to 16/48.
Some of my questions:

Sound quality from any VHS tape is not HiFi at all. Why you want to go thru the hassle of a Lossless format?

FYI, I just finished my month long project (using my very few off-work hours) converting all my favourite classical & pop music soundtracks off my many hundred vinyls (via my TT), cassettle tapes, audio CDs & musical DVDs to DVD+R/-Rs using a DVD burner.

Then I ripped the many hundreds of soundtracks recorded on the DVD+R/-Rs to MP3 format using a special DVD-to-MP3 software in my laptop & stored all of them in a 8Gb USB stick. So handy.

Of course, MP3 compressed music is not as good as its original sound sources. Yet I can still enjoy my favourite music while I am travelling  via  a USB reader:- a 7" portable DVD player with USB port thru a headphone.

Some music is better than no music, right?

c-J

[Hipper]

Whilst I've no experience of VHS Hi-Fi tapes, their sound quality is supposed to be very good.

On the subject of turntable rumble, you might consider also that speakers and headphones have limits to what they can reproduce. My speakers for example are said to go down to the high 30s Hz. I would say don't use a filter unless this rumble is a problem on your listening gear. There are also 'rumble filters' but I have no knowledge of these (not much use am I!).

As far as quality of recording is concerned, I would suggest recording to CD standard (WAV, FLAC etc) simply because you can't predict your future requirements. I'm assuming storage space isn't a problem. Don't forget to make back ups if you intend to dispose of the tapes. You could, for example, back up the lossless copy and make a lossie one for your regular use, if that's appropriate.

Surely some of your vinyl had noise on them. There are programmes that reduce or remove that noise, depending how much time you want to spend on it.

I recorded vinyl on cassette tapes about twenty years ago but didn't do anything about noise. I was amazed how well they sounded when I transferred them to digital. I used WAV files and put them on a CDR. I cleaned them up a bit using a programmes called Wave Repair and to this day I play them on my pretty good speaker set up, and whilst I'm sure they're not as good as a CD, I still enjoy the music.

[srb]

Sound quality from any VHS tape is not HiFi at all. Why you want to go thru the hassle of a Lossless format?

Standard VHS recorded audio on a small linear track on the edge of the tape similar to cassettes, and would have to be considered relatively low fidelity.  However tapes that were recorded with VHS HiFi, recorded audio on the video portion of the tape and were able to achieve ~ 70dB signal to noise and ~ 70dB channel separation.

Through the late 80s and early 90s VHS HiFi was used by some (and myself) as an inexpensive alternative to reel-to-reel and DAT tapes with surprising good quality.  Of course tapes recorded at the fastest 2 hour mode were superior to those recorded at the slowest 6 hour mode.

So if the tapes were recorded in VHS HiFi and the source was decent quality, they may very well deserve digital archiving in an uncompressed lossless format.

Steve

[charmerci]

Standard VHS recorded audio on a small linear track on the edge of the tape similar to cassettes, and would have to be considered relatively low fidelity.  However tapes that were recorded with VHS HiFi, recorded audio on the video portion of the tape and were able to achieve ~ 70dB signal to noise and ~ 70dB channel separation.

Through the late 80s and early 90s VHS HiFi was used by some (and myself) as an inexpensive alternative to reel-to-reel and DAT tapes with surprising good quality.  Of course tapes recorded at the fastest 2 hour mode were superior to those recorded at the slowest 6 hour mode.

So if the tapes were recorded in VHS HiFi and the source was decent quality, they may very well deserve digital archiving in an uncompressed lossless format.

Steve

+1

Though I would say they do deserve archiving in a uncompressed lossless format.

[dB Cooper]

Hi.
Sound quality from any VHS tape is not HiFi at all. Why you want to go thru the hassle of a Lossless format?


c-J

Well, I don't know what your experience with VHS hifi is or was; the low end consumer machines had auto level recording and weren't very good, but the better ones had excellent sound. Here is some of the Wikipedia article on the subject:

Around 1984, JVC added Hi-Fi audio to VHS (in response to Betamax's introduction of Beta Hi-Fi.) Both VHS Hi-Fi and Betamax Hi-Fi delivered flat full-range frequency response (20 Hz to 20 kHz),excellent 70 dB signal-to-noise ratio (in consumer space, second only to the compact disc), dynamic range of 90 dB, and professional-audio-grade channel separation (more than 70dB).

The sound quality of Hi-Fi VHS stereo is comparable to the quality of CD audio, particularly when recordings were made on high-end or professional VHS machines that have a manual audio recording level control. This high quality compared to other consumer audio recording formats such as compact cassette attracted the attention of amateur and hobbyist recording artists. Home recording enthusiasts occasionally recorded high quality stereo mixdowns and master recordings from multitrack audio tape onto consumer-level Hi-Fi VCRs.

I am sure the original vinyl, played back directly, would provide a "better" sound (though whether a given listener could tell the difference in a blind test would be open to question), but the .01% THD on top of the several percent contributed by the analog TT itself doesn't justify the expense and inconvenience of setting up a vinyl rig for me. Also, I do not have a lot of the vinyls anymore, making any quality difference considerations moot. A number of these releases never made it to CD either. I have been listening to some of the recordings (I had one of the machines with manual recording level controls mentioned in the article) and they are quite listenable. THAT is why I am using lossless.

Hipper, I don't anticipate a traditional CD transport being a common music delivery mode for me; I can always resample if necessary. Much more likely to be a collection of music files on a mac mini or similar. The 48kHz sample rate allows the use of a less drastic high filter, that is the main reason I expect to go that route. I suppose that would make it easier to burn a redbook CD to play on someone else's system though.

[jarcher]

For me what would be ideal is to re-record the LPs digitally and use software like Channel D's Pure Vinyl.  Failing that, Pure Vinyl, or something similar, may still be worth it to process already recorded material to do, among other things, treat pops & clicks (if that sort of thing bothers you).  I guess it all depends on how much you want to monkey with the recordings.  Myself, I wouldn't be too worried about the hi-pass / lo-pass filtration.  At least I've not yet noticed this as a problem on LP playback - are you hearing any of these problems on your VHS recordings?

[dB Cooper]

If I had a turntable, and the original vinyl source material, and a quality phono pre, that is exactly what I would do. However, since none of those criteria is met, I am working from the 99.95%-as-good tapes.

I have software to deal with the more intrusive pops and clicks.

I guess I could run some samples thru a spectrum display to see if there is anything going on in the subsonic region.

[cheap-Jack]

 Myself, I wouldn't be too worried about the hi-pass / lo-pass filtration.  At least I've not yet noticed this as a problem on LP playback - are you hearing any of these problems on your VHS recordings?

Me too. I do NOT notice any rumbles & the like noises recorded from the sountracks played on my vintage Thorens 125II TT. Nor any cassette tape hissing noises so recorded from music played on my vintage tape deck.

I am used to burn the soundtracks direct played back from their players on my DVD burners using 4.7Gb DVD+R/-R discs. Sound only no video. So one such disc can burn a couple hours of musc at XP (fast speed for best sound). No need any Lo/Hi cut filters.

I am gratified as I find the burnt discs played back on my Blu-ray player sound very very close to the original soundtracks, in term of vocals/instrument size & overall soundstaging.

I can't complain as I use only standard average burner that costs my cheap.

c-J

[dB Cooper]

One shortcoming of the hifi VCR format (it's all coming back to me now...) is that dropouts can sound really bad, especially at the "extended" tape speeds and/or right at the very beginning of the tape. Fortunately haven't run into too many problems with that.

Other thing I notice after not running vinyl for a long time is that, despite the smooth vinyl highs, I really don't miss the rumble, pops, clicks, arm pickup thumps etc. I was fastidious about keeping my LPs and styli etc clean but there are still fireplace noises to clean up. Found VinylStudio which seems to streamline that process along with splitting, tagging, etc.