A Hi-Fi Unicorn - The first Integrated Digital Audio Tape Recorder
I finally managed to finish this video I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. So here it is, a look at the first integrated Digital Audio Tape Recorder.
Complicated videos like this really do take it out of me nowadays, but I felt this one deserved all the stops pulling out. It wouldn’t have been possible to make this without the support of all the patrons here. So naturally you get the usual advance screening. I hope you enjoy it. All being well, this one will go public on Saturday.
Tomorrow I’m rearranging a couple of things in the ‘studio’ but when I’m happy, I’ll get right on with shooting the next Patreon update video. A lot of people have congratulated me on the channel reaching one million subscribers, so I’ll no doubt talk a little about that and throw in a few other topics as well. If it all works out, I plan to have that video on here at the weekend.
I’ll be moving the release of the (shortened) dust-off head-to-head video on a week.
Have a good one (or two).
UPDATE: A re-edit has been made to apply a slight correction. This is the version now posted above.
Comments (132)
Excellent video Matt, takes me back to my recording studio days when we used a PCM-F1 & SL-F1 combo for mastering. Now I'm thinking I'll have to get a PCM-F1 (I already have an SLF-1 recorder) and do some tests to see if it sounds as good as I remember.. Your outro sounded the same to me - that would be down to that last step your processing chain - analog audio -> perception-of-sound in my noggin.. Weird seeing a 'dew alert' indicator on an audio recorder though..
I’ve yet to try my PCM-F1 combo system - with it being 16 bit it should really sound as good as a CD - and many CDs started off on the F1. I saw an article from back in the day about a famous sound engineer who recorded classical concerts for CD releases. He tended to record them on a PCM-F1 but he also took along a giant professional fridge sized PCM recorder at the same time, because he found that people didn’t take him seriously if he just rolled up carrying the F1 and they thought he wasn’t taking them seriously either. So to make sure he looked like he was earning his wage, he carted a load of unnecessary equipment along.
Very late to the party with this comment, but I'm already on my third wee dram for the evening so here goes: Isn't the most plausible explanation for audio playback through a VHS player that the PCM-stream is actually being decoded by the player's NICAM circuitry? NICAM is also PCM-based, running at 14 bits with a 32 kHz sampling rate. The similarity, yet incompatibility, would explain the drop-outs during playback. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAM The Orion Combi 650VR isn't all that old, from what I gather (2003?) Thus, it might have a NICAM decoder in it without the fact being advertised on the box. It seems to have a headphone output - whether or not stereophonic sound comes out of it would indicate a definitive answer. BTW, also like that the SV-P100 has an indicator marked "dew check". Wouldn't want that early-morning mist interfering with your hi-fi enjoyment... 😳
I remember a few stations across the country, including one in my home area of Boston Mass, broadcast such a video signal of their sister FM radio station, WGBH.
...and then that beautiful machine and its tapes were scaled down into the DAT format.
This video represents Techmoan at its peerless best. Thanks Mat.
Are we allowed to be nosey and ask how much this cost you? Great vid!
Weirdly this techology is the reason why CD audio is sampled at 44.1Khz instead of the far more logical 48Khz - this looks like a commercialization of the development equipment used to develop the CD itself. The timing fits. From "Principles of digital audio (6th edition)", by Ken C Pohlmann. "One might reasonably ask why 44.1 kHz was selected as the sampling frequency for the Compact Disc. Professional video recorders were originally used to prepare CD master tapes because they were the only recorders capable of handling the high bandwidth requirements of digital audio signals. Because 16-bit digital audio signals (and error correction) were encoded as a video signal, the sampling frequency had to relate to television standards’ line and field rate, storing a few samples per scan line. The NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) format used 525 lines in 30 frames per second; only 490 are available for storage. With two samples per line, 490 × 30 × 2 = 29.4 kHz, a too-low sampling frequency. With four samples per line, 490 × 30 × 4 = 58.8 kHz, was considered too high. With three samples per line, 490 × 30 × 3 = 44.1 kHz—it is just right. Moreover, the PAL/SECAM (phase-alteration line/sequential-and-memory) format used 625 lines (588 active lines) in 25 frames per second, and 588 × 25 × 3 = 44.1 kHz as well. Therefore, 44.1 kHz became the universal sampling frequency for CD master tapes. Because sampling-frequency conversion was difficult, and 44.1 kHz was appropriate, the same sampling frequency was used for finished discs."
Very interesting 👍👍
Excellent video, Mat. A most suitable documentary to push you over the 1,000,000 subscribers. I think all your Patrons have been waiting for this moment. (I went and checked it really was "Techmoan1M subscribers" before I wrote that.) You will have to show us the YouTube framed wall plaque when it arrives! As for this video, I had a Sony SL-2000 and the Sony camera back in the day. I have a vague recollection it cost me around £900 which was bank-breaking at the time! (That purchase got me in deep poo with my wife at the time.) I greatly look forward to reliving some memories when you do a retrospective review of that. (I loved mine!) I never added the PCM-F1 though. Anyhow - many, many congratulations on reaching the magic 1 million. You work so hard for us, and we do appreciate it. Cheers, SB.
The sampling rate of 44,056 Hz is down to Technics using the NTSC colour standard. It has 3 stereo samples per line, 245 usable (active) lines per field, and ~59.94 fields per second. Had they used PAL (294 lines of 3 samples at 50 fields per second) instead, then they would have had 44,100 Hz, also true if they had used NTSC at the nominal 60 fields per second, which it used before colour came and interfered with sound.
If any channel deserves 1million subscribers on youtube its this one!
Congrats! 🎉 Thanks for bringing these amazing tech items out of the past, I always learn something new.
Congrats on 1m subscribers.
Amazing research and compilation!
Another excellent video, I never knew such a thing existed! So thank you for showing off what it is and what it could do. The outro at the end gave my subwoofer a workout. Congrats on the 1 million! 🎉
Congrats
Thank you for your brilliant as usual work.
Found this very interesting Mat and what an amazing piece of history to own, dread to think what it cost you as these seem quite hard to find.
The bit depth is important, but perhaps not as important as one might think. Once you hit 24 bits, there's really no point in going any further. But what's really at play is the Nyquist-Shannon Theorem. This states that you need a sampling rate of twice the highest frequency to achieve absolutely perfect playback. So, given that humans don't really hear anything over 20 kHz, you need a sampling rate of 40 kHz. Add in a low-pass filter so that it starts filtering at 20 kHz and leaves nothing over 22 kHz, you need a sampling rate of 44 kHz. And to make it easily divisible by both 50 and 60 (Europe and USA/Japan), round it up to 44.1 kHz. Why they chose 44.056 kHz for this device, I can't say. Anyway, the Nyquist-Shannon Theorem states that you get perfect reproduction of your analogue input signal at a 2x sampling rate. There are people that don't believe this, pointing out that there are little steps in the signal, but those people know nothing about how signals are built up, and how the analogue circuitry removes any digital artefact. But my uneducated guess is that the high sampling rate is what makes this device sound good, and that the relatively low bit rate (although it was stellar for 1981) doesn't have nearly as much of an impact.
Nyquist Theorem REPRESENT! ✊ (I think that's something kids would say these days, anyway 😳) Just wanted to add that bit depth has more to do with dynamic range and noise, rather than frequency range. 14 bits is plenty. Compact cassette could be compared to having a bit depth equivalent of 8 or 10 bits. Vinyl could probably equal 11 or 12 bits, on a good day. 16 bits hits a sweet spot, with regard to sound quality versus required storage space. PCM, as implemented by the CD format, is a lot better than its reputation. Philips called it "The perfect sound forever". They were right too. 🤓
Wonderful video, and these types of topics are the reason I started watching you in the first place. I remember a high school friend getting a VHS Hifi setup in the late 80's, and he used it to record his CD's onto a mix VHS tape because he could get 4 hours long play onto it, and he wouldn't have to worry about changing the music more than once during a party.
Great video! Technics always stood out back in the day with their dark finish among all the silver, gold brushed products. Although I was always a huge sucker for Marantz products and design. And congrats on 1M subscribers, I hope YouTube recognizes you and take you out of the "Allen Moore tier" ads... THANKS!
That would be nice, we’ll see.
Great video, and gorgeous machine. Always love seeing wack-ass vintage hi-fi, especially old tape & digital guff. Keep it up.
Great video and congrats on the subscription milestone!
Fascinating. Thank you for this insight.
Reminds me of the old Alpha Micro Videotrax system. It used VHS tapes as digital storage for computers. It stored 80MB on a tape, which was reasonable at the time, 1985 ish. I don't think it sold many units though.
Loved the video and congrats on reaching the big 1M!
Interesting video. There was one of these in a recording studio I was at in 1995. My memory is hazy as it was so long ago, but I’m fairly positive it was this unit with that loading mechanism. I was perplexed that the engineer was recording the mixdowns to VHS tapes and he said something about the medium not being well understood among the general population and tapes being cheap compared to studio tape. I didn’t realize until watching this video that it was a digital format. Congrats on the 1m subs!
I was waiting for this. :) Thank you!
Regarding the end of Youtube, there is a reason folks like me make backups of their favorite channels. Good channels got deleted already and their videos lost forever if it weren't for us data hoarders.
Congratulations on 1 million subs!!! Have watched most of your content and always look forward to the next video heres to the next million!!! Cheers from Atlantic Canada!!
When you showed the digital out and in without comment, I immediately leapt to wondering what you would have used them for back in when it was released? And was Mat going to just let that pass without investigating? Of course you wouldn't. I would like to apologize for doubting you for approximately 19 minutes. I am deeply ashamed for my behaviour, and congratulations on another great video. Cheers Mat!
Congratulations Mat, and well deserved! Also a brilliant video!
Fantastic achievement, Mat - to think that a million people have heard of YOU is quite something. There's not that many of us who will be able to say that! Another interesting video - when I see some of these very high end hi-fi devices, I do wonder how many they actually sold, whether it was a few dozen, hundreds or into the thousands. I guess they would have been substantially hand built too, hardly worth setting up any automation for something sold in small numbers. Fascinating stuff. As to home computers, my first was a Sinclair Spectrum - I learned to program in BASIC and with only 16k RAM available, you had to be really efficient in your coding. Congratulations again - roll on 2 million - is the rate of news subscriptions increasing with time or is it fairly steady now? Enjoy the lovely summery July weather we're having, and Thank You again for keeping so many so well informed and entertained.
Thanks for the kind words. As far as numbers go, I don’t follow it too closely but I believe the monthly new subscriber numbers have remained very steady for the last years now - gradually adding to the total but with no massive jumps. I’ll perhaps talk about this a bit in the Patron update video that I’m hoping to shoot tomorrow.
Again, well done Mat. Another cracking video and a great segway to mark the 1M milestone.
What a journey! I once had lunch with an engineer who in the late 1980s devised a system to use VHS tapes to record remote sensing data. I listened to the outro with my Sennheiser wireless headphones and all I noticed was a drop in the bass.
There’s a bizarre story regarding that track and the bass. I copy and paste the previous outro and intro onto the next video. Over the course of many months the audio in the outro has a weird habit of getting heavier in the bass. So much so that every now and then I get people asking what equalisation have I done to the track - as it sounds better. But then more time passes and I start to get complaints about the level of bass, that it’s shaking people’s houses apart - especially when played through a proper home cinema. So then I go back and download the original track again and layer that and all is well....for a few months when it all happens all over again. So yes - ignore any variance in the bass - the outro bass is normally boosted in some uncontrollable way.
I can't think of a better video with which to commemorate hitting 7 figures. Congrats, Mat!
That was one of your all time best videos. Obscure product, weird use of an exiting format, comprehensive history, this ticked all the boxes. A perfect topic to celebrate a million subscribers.
Mat - Just dropping in to say a heartfelt congratulations on reaching 1 million subscribers. It's well-deserved!! While I've only been an active subscriber for, probably, the last 2-3 years, I've enjoyed going back to see much of your older stuff as well. I fully enjoy your delivery and sense of humor, and further appreciate you taking the time to show us all some of this old tech. My inner-geek looks forward to that weekly Patreon e-mail from you saying there's a new video! Here's to the next million!
Well thank you - you comments are very much appreciated.
Hey Mat, excellent video. But the title isn't click baity enough! I know you sometimes feel ashamed of having to do clickbait stuff and it is annoying, but ONLY when the video is click is of bad quality. This video is utterly incredible and deserves to be seen by people. This is music on a VHS! You need to play up that angle! I never knew VHS was ever used for music, and VHS is currently in vogue due to youtubers like Brutalmoose doing videos on it etc. Take advantage because your videos deserve the views for the time you put in.
If you’ve got any ideas for a title - please let me know.
Hi Mat, Congratulations on hitting one Million subscribers and on a truly great video. I did not know much about the Technics digital audio recorder before, although had come across the Sony solution with the standalone digital convertor connected to a seperate video recorder. You were very lucky to have come across a fully working Technics, very rare no doubt for such an old deck. I believe Sony had some very expensive professional solutions with Umatic video which some early CDs may have been mastered on and the prosumer Betamax solution. Certain Sony Betamax VCRs (SL-F1 and SL-C9) had a switch to turn off the video dropout compensator as it would cause issues when used with digital audio where the convetor box would do it's only error correction. I never owned the Sony digital audio convertor but did own a SL-C9 and did some research when I saw the switch on the rear. I think this is a reason why folks didn't use a VHS deck with a SONY digital convertor as tape dropouts could cause issues (or indeed a Beta deck without the switch).
Hi Mat, an additional thought. It's great that you're looking to preserve information like this for generations to come. Have you thought about uploading all your videos to archive.org, https://archive.org/ ? It's a great community owned and funded resource away from the commercial vagaries of other sites. I'm a patron of Jason Scott who's heavily involved with this organisation and is, like you, a great communicator and presenter.
If youtube look like vanishing I’ll consider it - but for the moment these videos are providing an income and yet are free for all to see, so that’s working well.
Wow, what a piece of tech this is, I never knew such a thing existed! Thank you for sharing it and all the other interesting stuff you have over the years Mat, and congrats on the 1M Subs milestone.
What a fantastic machine that is! If it weren't so rare, I really would go hunting for one now. In fact, I am going to. It may take years, it may take forever, but I'm going to try. I liked the comparison to VHS stereo and where they are different. I do seem to remember that the SVHS version of VHS stereo was a bit better still. Even though I have no clue how... And wasn't ADAT based on VHS tapes? Or maybe SVHS only.. But it's Technics achievement that really boggles the mind for me. My first computer was a ZX81 in, well, 1981. One year after the SP-P100 was demonstrated. And it couldn't really do anything (the ZX81 that is)...
I got a ZX81 too - I can still remember the disappointment.
Wouldn't that just be a copy of the other tape still? So still do nothing?
Very cool! If you record the digital output on a VHS deck and play it back into the system on the digital input do you get anything worthwhile?
If it could it could possibly have two audio tracks with a hifi vcr if connected to another audio source
Excellent video! I think you nodded at early VHS digital audio decks in a previous outing and the full story didn't disappoint. I love clever engineering decisions like this one. "...so how much time and money are we going to budget for the design and development of a whole new tape format and its associated mechanism?" "Oh. Err...well, I imagined we'd just bung a VHS transport deck in there and call it a day."
This really is pretty fantastic to see. Loving all the new things I'm learning in these last few videos. As well as the subtle 1337 that's hidden in this one
Yet another example of technologies I never knew were combined told through a fascinating video as only Techmoan can. There's something incredible about seeing those product launch photos from so long ago for such a 'futuristic' machine ... that largely handles audio signal the way we still do today! And huge congrats on the 1M subscribers, Mat. Absolutely well deserved. Have been happily enjoying your videos for years. :)
I agree about the old pictures. I just think about the people there still walking around in their flared trousers and kipper ties* looking at tech that really didn’t emerge properly in the home until the 1990s in the form of the MD & DCC. *They were only just out of the 70s and if my wardrobe is anything to go by, it’s not full of 2020 clothes.
At 18:23ish you say "quantization" but pronounce it wrongly. It's pronounced "quant-i-zation".
I’m hoping this is a joke.
I never thought I would actually see one ever being demonstrated, let alone hearing one. I recall looking through the Technics brochures in the late 70s and early 80s and was fascinated by this product along with the RS-1500 R2R. A great video. You found one in incredible condition and I’m amazed it worked so well. That black paint that Technics used back them doesn’t age very well unless it was treated with great care. Congrats on the milestone.
Looking through the old catalogues reminded me how stark the separation between consumer and enthusiast tech was. The HiFi catalogues look like they’re from a completely different era, or even planet, than things like Sears.
Oh, and first video: The Curta one (which is one of your short, quick ones, BTW, so those work just as well for sure!). I had just bought a rather conventional mechanical calculator at a flea market and was browsing videos on how to use the bloody thing, and stumbled across your video. And a couple weeks later my GF had bought me a Tefifon after I showed her your video, I got an Olympus Nixie calculator like yours (albeit broken), a Boogie Board, various dash and action cams... And I was one of those guys who always laughed about people buying what some influencer shows in his or her videos. Damn you, Techmoan! *shakes fist*
We still use out Boogie Board to pass notes to one another (or did when we weren’t cooped up at home). Things like - ‘gone to the shops’. I still love the Curta - just wish there were more little gems out there like that, but it’s one on its own.
Fantastic video! Until I saw this, I thought Sony had the only consumer PCM audio format that used videotapes. You covered this very well and addressed everything I'd hoped you would. I only wish I could have seen the tape transport in the SV-P100, because it just looks too short to have a full VHS tape path in it vertically!
I can only see it a little bit through the door - I think the clever eject mechanism goes a long way towards keeping it short - you’d have to measure the mech from the end of an ejected tape to the bottom of the machine, that should be the equivalent of measuring from the front door flap of a front-loader to the back of the mech. Possibly.
I was counting down the time like on new year's eve: Congrats for the 1 million subs from here, too!
Congratulations on 1,000,000 subs. Lots of people see what we see - a good guy making thoughtful videos. THANK YOU! And obscure audio stuff, too! Love it.
As when I watched the Tefifon video, my first reaction was, "what in the world?" Followed by... of COURSE somebody thought of trying this. Why wouldn't it exist? Congrats on 1M, and thanks for your fascinating work.
This is absolutely fascinating. So happy I got to witness this thing working. Great video
Congratulations on hitting 1M subscribers. As someone who is old enough to have been around for much of the tech you showcase (not all, but most) I am amazed at how much I never knew existed. Thank you for all the content over the years and I hope, if you are willing, you keep going for many more. This is one of my favorite channels (and happy to support it).
I’ll keep going as long as I can keep finding things that interest me. Many thanks.
It looks pretty bad ass when you drop in the cassette and the machine just takes it gently and closes the door automatically.
It’s a mechanical work of art - must have been the best VHS loading mech at the time.
Mat, a BRILLIANT video! Just spectacular from the research to the presentation to the photography to the editing. I am proud to support you on Patreon and congratulations on 1 million subscribers.
Thank you very much.
I was hoping my Sony Betamax C7 (bought only last year) might make an appearance in your montage of video recorders, as I was thinking when the video started that your digital recorder had that same dark grey finish. Glad to see it did! Non-wired, if clunky, remote, too! And congrats on the million subscribers! I think the first video of yours I saw was either the Teac Open Reel cassette or the Useless Machine! You've given me a new hobby anyway!
I've owned computers since I was a kid in the 1980s, most iterations of hi-fi and audiovisual technology since then, more musical instruments and hardware interfaces than I care to remember, but it's only tonight that I learned what PCM actually is. Cheers!
The market was so competitive between Sony and Technics in this period. I remember the Technics rep trying to persuade me to take some into stock by offering access to more Panasonic VHS home recovers at the time. My thinking was I had just given ElCassette a try and it was not going to take off. Sony was entering the market with it's own PCM system and consumers were getting tired of being the experimental in the thinking of the makers. None of the recording studios I dealt with would not touch it so I said no thanks. When you remember 16 bit digital chaps were only just being made by Sony. Everyone else had to settle for 14 bit hence the first Philips CD player only having a 14 bit digital chip in it. Thanks for showing us this one Mat.
Excellent episode! On yet another piece of hardware I had no idea existed. Made for perfect suppertime viewing. The visuals of the recording you showed reminds me of the Danmere VHS data backup system I covered a while back! https://youtu.be/TUS0Zv2APjU?t=812 Oh and congratulations on the million!!
I knew I’d seen it somewhere before and relatively recently, but my memory as to where it was failed me.
Wow, that was a great video. I certainly didn't know those existed. When you showed the Sony PCM components, I did do a mad dash back to my "museum," because I knew I had a piece of Sony kit NIB, and I had no idea what it was for. Unfortunately, it's just as add-on unit to decode MTS and SAP audio from a Beta Hi-Fi. Oh well. Congrats on the cool mil. Be well
Awesome video. You keep coming up with unusual and/or rare stuff and make a proper entertaining video about it. Well done, sir! And, of course, many congrats on the million subs!
An excellent video on an incredible machine! It's a great way to mark your subscriber milestone. My mind has been properly blown by this technological beast. Back in the early 80s I was a kid excited just to have a basic Sanyo Beta VCR to play around with. (Yes, my dad picked the losing side of the format war.) Your Technics machine definitely puts into perspective what a radical thing digital audio was at the time. The dark slate color and overall look also reminds me of my family's mid-80's Hitachi stereo system that was more or less an upgraded boombox. Got good at using it to tape songs off the radio, though. But no Technics or Sony for us peasants at the time. Congrats and hope the second half of 2020 treats you better.
What a brilliant machine. The design alone clearly influenced the technics range and for 1981 it looks way into the future without being designed like some tacky sci-fi device. Nice video to celebrate the milestone.
I have a couple ADAT machines that record 8 digital tracks onto SVHS. I think one still works
How much do they go for these days? I have a couple from back in my student engineering days.
Congratulations on 1 million subs and thank you for your hard work. Well deserved with each and every single video you made for us over the last 11 (right?) years. I hope you stay well as we can enjoy even more of your content. BTW this one is also great 😊👍
Many thanks and yes it’s roughly 11 years (on this channel).
Congratulations on 1 million subscribers. Back in the day, early 80's I think. I went to a do in London, run by Sony, showing off their latest innovation. PCM digital recorded on Beta tapes. Thanks once again for a great video.
Congratulations! And great video. What happens when you record the digital output on VHS and play it back into the digital input? Is the signal recognized, has it drop outs or is it just silent?
I don’t have an NTSC video recorder - and it’s NTSC
At the beginning you said the recorder has a VFD. Are you sure about that? That display looks like a LCD to me on the video. It has the contrast/angle dependency and that typical haze around the segments like being lit up by a bulb or something. Unusualy for a VFD. It's a very good fast reacting display though. Especially for the 80s.
Found another demo video. Some shots are taken from the side. That display really looks like a LCD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFvb8HhlQ38
Congratualtions to the 1M subs. You certainly earned it, working hard to put out all these videos over the years. Keep it up! This video I like very much. Bringing back some very old memories.
Yet again another great one. And another forgotten memory re surfaced. My old vhs recorder could do “HiFi audio” I used to use it all the time to record LPs from friends until I could buy them myself. One such album I didn’t get on with initially Disintegration by The Cure. But so glad I “backed it up” as I listened to it time and again. When I got the cd a month later one thing struck me was that the LP recorded to vhs actually sounded better than the CD. (Sorry that was a long winded comment)
Oh and a massive congratulations for 1 million subscribers. Deserved.
The channel is great, we thought it must have cost some cash, the patron money is worth spending and more for the great content you put out 👏
I just wish everyone on youtube realised that things like this were funded purely by patrons. I see complaints about money-grabbing youtubers unnecessarily begging for extra money from Patrons - it’s not like that at all.
Absolutely fantastic! Well done on the million subs. To think I found you when looking for dash cam reviews on YouTube. Your channel gives so much more. Worth every Patron penny.
This is really interesting, I had no idea it ever existed. So is this and D-VHS the only two released digital VHS variants (outside of computer backup systems)? Also any idea what happens if you play a proper D-VHS recording in it? I assume it will just be garbage - but just wondering if anyone has ever tried it.
Another great video, Mat. You, must've read my mind. I was thinking that I must post a comment about recording audio to hi-fi vhs, as a buddy of mines older brother had done just that, back in the mid 80's. But, you beat me to it. Great minds and all that. Still can't figure out how an analog signal got on there, it really shouldn't have. Anyway, thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Absolutely fascinating, brilliant video. Loved it. Exactly my cup of tea and classic Techmoan. Thanks a million!
Great video again Mat, interesting, educational and entertaining as usual.
SV-P100: Truly more rare than the Tefifon? Very interesting and educational video. Thanks for the shout-out to we geeks who used to dub vinyl to VHS-HiFi. Unlike with a digital signal, tape stock quality was critical to good audio with VHS-HiFi, whereas there was no detectable quality loss when dropping from SP to EP.
Definitely rarer - although perhaps more well known. You’ll always find a few Tefis on ebay.de - but perhaps only one or two of these every decade.
An excellent piece of work, very interesting. And, it was lovely to see the long outro again. Glad to have been a part of your channel via patreon, and hope you keep on track to find other tapes and machines to keep the world interesting.
Out of interest, are you going to use this recorder now? Or is it just a beautiful relic of a moment in technology?
Congratulations on hitting your milestone with another fascinating video showing something that most of us knew nothing about.
Congrats on the 1M mark Mat! Love the vcr audio thing... still using my Sony SLV9ES with the PCM Addon on a daily basis :)
What happens if you try to record on the tape again with a VCR? Are there any artefacts?
They should just wipe off like recording over a normal video. The erase head in a video recorder *should* wipe out everything on the tape from edge-to-edge.
Congratulations to the million and celebrating it with this incredible video. I can’t thank you enough for the outstanding work on all the videos you made :) PS: it seems like the „digital“ output will allow you to make a perfect digital copy of your recording with a standard vcr as the digital audio is stored as a video?!
I think it needs a really good quality VCR - hence the U-Matic. Also it’s NTSC, so my normal VCR won’t do. Maybe one day I’ll try it with my D-Theatre machine.
Congrats, the 1M subscribers are well deserved. Wonderful video as always. Was that just a Japanese auction find or did you track that down in the UK?
I bought it from a chap in Eastern Europe - or was it Russia, I forget. I’d been looking for one for a while - just to make a video on. It cost me as much as my first car...and that wasn’t a cheap car. It’ll never earn back what it cost, but it was a treat for the viewers.
Congrats on the 1.000.000 subs! If only that was the amount of pounds in your bank account, eh? :D And to top this off with my first ever keyboard brand too.. Technics. Neat!
I’d be happy with 10p for every video view (that’d work out at £23M).
Congratulations on the million, well deserved with all of the work you've put in over the years. Really enjoyed seeing this machine.
Pre recorded audio, My shelves loaded with it, fancy cover art, it's only just a dream. That would mean pre-recorded audio is mastered digitally, the end user could not achieve this :edit you made 1 million mark , lots of great work on youtube, you deserve it and then some.
Thanks again, these are the kind of videos that got me interested in your YouTube channel in the first place! And such a nice, good-looking one you have there, and still working perfectly! The design language is quite similar to the little tape player you have on the shelve in the corner, remember I got the deck version (M-205) of that, also from 1981! In the beginning, you say that it has a vacuum fluorescent display, but it looks more like an LCD to me (and also says so in one of your brochure shots...) Another anecdote: somebody told me once: when CD was introduced, the Commodore 64 was a high-tech computer, as comparison for digital technology for the time. And about the signal-to-noise ratio: that's depending on the amount of bits, and can be simply calculated, at 16 bit is is about 96 dB I thought, indeed, no tape hiss, but a quantisation of the quietest signal possible. So it's certainly there for digital audio!
I thought it was a LCD too - but the brochure I looked at said it was a Vacuum display so I went with that, but yes it looked like some kind of LCD too.
Congrats on the 1M! Up to the next million.... ;-)
I think the next big milestone is 10M - so based on how long the first million took, that’ll be in another 110 years.
Have you seen ( this is not spam!! ) my video here? about Video8 Digital Audio System? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SMfIxVfqtk
I was looking for one of those too a while ago. Maybe I’ll find one someday.
I agree with you Mat! This is a great piece of equipment to show in order to celebrate 1 Million subscribers. Congrats! It's crazy when I think of how long I've been watching your videos. One thing I'm sure is that your channel has been a great inspiration to lots and lots of people. I, for one, have purchased my own share of vintage media equipment, and don't forget your videos even helped people get employed! All I can say is thank you, and here's to many more years of Techmoan! Cheers!
It’s even crazier when I think how long I’ve been doing this. I feel like I was a much younger man when I started.
Congratulations on 1 Million Subscribers! 🎉🎊
Being in the music business deeply in the 1990s, recordings made in the mid to late 90s (and beyond) were being made to VHS tapes digitally as ADATs (Alesis Digital Audio Tapes). Still have a few of my last session archived in this format. The digital audio quality would/should remain the same, it's the physical tape degradation one gets concerned with. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAT
Yeah, shouldn't be any different at all to getting a scratch on a CD, for instance. The 0's and 1's don't wear down/out, but if the medium they're stored on wears down/out then they simply won't be able to be read. Just like you could write all of those 0's and 1's on paper, but if you write them in pencil you won't be able to read them for very long relative to if they had been written in pen.