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SQ of old LPs.....

From the U-Matic wiki page:

The famous compact disc 44.1 kHz sampling rate was based on a best-fit calculation for PAL and monochrome NTSC video's horizontal line period and rate and U-matic's luminance bandwidth.

I've never heard this before. I've always read that it was about Nyquest sampling theory - i.e. ~ twice the highest audible frequency.
 
flatpopely said:
"...I don’t know where to start with tape hiss!"
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WIKI SAYS...

"Early studio and all portable U-Matic VCRs had a drawer-type mechanism which required the tape to be inserted, followed by manual closure of the drawer (a "top-loading" mechanism). Later studio VCRs accepted the cassette from a port opening and the cassette was pulled into and seated in the transport (a "front-loading" mechanism)....

A recurring problem with the format was damage to the videotape caused by prolonged friction of the spinning video drum heads against a paused videocassette. The drum would rub oxide off the tape or the tape would wrinkle; when the damaged tape was played back, a horizontal line of distorted visual image would ascend in the frame, and audio would drop out. Manufacturers attempted to minimize this issue with schemes in which the tape would loosen around the spinning head or the head would stop spinning after resting in pause mode for a pre-determined period of time."

There's that hiss I can hear... ;)
 
SONDEKNZ said:
WIKI SAYS...

"Early studio and all portable U-Matic VCRs had a drawer-type mechanism which required the tape to be inserted, followed by manual closure of the drawer (a "top-loading" mechanism). Later studio VCRs accepted the cassette from a port opening and the cassette was pulled into and seated in the transport (a "front-loading" mechanism)....

A recurring problem with the format was damage to the videotape caused by prolonged friction of the spinning video drum heads against a paused videocassette. The drum would rub oxide off the tape or the tape would wrinkle; when the damaged tape was played back, a horizontal line of distorted visual image would ascend in the frame, and audio would drop out. Manufacturers attempted to minimize this issue with schemes in which the tape would loosen around the spinning head or the head would stop spinning after resting in pause mode for a pre-determined period of time."

There's that hiss I can hear... ;)
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That's describing audio drop out on analog video. I don't know what impact that would have on digital audio but I very much doubt it would be hiss. Damage to a section of a DAT tape can render the entire subsequent portion of the tape unreadable.
 
If I
paulfromcamden said:
That's describing audio drop out on analog video. I don't know what impact that would have on digital audio but I very much doubt it would be hiss. Damage to a section of a DAT tape can render the entire subsequent portion of the tape unreadable.
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If I understand what I am reading, back in the day both video and audio were stored on tapes.

For the purposes of audio-only replay, the audio (only) was treated by what WIKI describes as "quasi-audio".

So, it seems clear that the entire SONY u-matic recording chain - video, audio-video and audio-only - relied on tapes as the recording substrate.

Surely this explains why a ton of superb music albums - from DONALD FAGEN's NIGHTFLY in 1980, to ALISON KRAUSS & UNION STATION's NEW FAVOURITE in 2001 - all feature a bit of (reassuring) tape hiss?
 
SONDEKNZ said:
If I


If I understand what I am reading, back in the day both video and audio were stored on tapes.
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Not at the same time. They're two different systems using the same media.
SONDEKNZ said:
For the purposes of audio-only replay, the audio (only) was treated by what WIKI describes as "quasi-audio".
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Do you mean "pseudo video"?
SONDEKNZ said:
So, it seems clear that the entire SONY u-matic recording chain - video, audio-video and audio-only - relied on tapes as the recording substrate.
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Recorded as a form of digital signal. Lots of things can go wrong reading a digital signal from tape (perhaps you had a ZX Spectrum?) but tape hiss isn't one of them.
SONDEKNZ said:
Surely this explains why a ton of superb music albums - from DONALD FAGEN's NIGHTFLY in 1980, to ALISON KRAUSS & UNION STATION's NEW FAVOURITE in 2001 - all feature a bit of (reassuring) tape hiss?
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I have no idea how those records were recorded or mastered so can't really speculate on what you're hearing.
 
SONDEKNZ said:
Back in the early 1980s, the word DIGITAL was a marketeers dream buzz-word. Everything DIGITAL was better... right? 😂

From what I have been able to understand, the early SONY "DIGITAL" recorders - SONY PCM1610, PCM1630 etc. - were based upon VHS Video recorders of the day... which of course, were really ANALOG devices. You can still hear the tape hiss on all of these "DIGITAL" outings.

IMHO therefore, the earliest "DIGITAL" recordings were some of the best ANALOG recordings ever made! My ears support this view when I hear the mountain of sublime recordings made on such devices throughout the 1980s and beyond. Even well into the 2000s, these early SONY machines were being used for such excellent recordings as:

818YiNk9yRL._AC_SL1200_.jpg


Meanwhile, the "REAL DIGITAL" recordings began popping-up in the 1990s, and they were truly dreadful. Here is a sad example:

71ma78OeRRL._AC_SL1425_.jpg


Again, IMHO the earliest "DIGITAL" recordings were some of the best ANALOG recordings ever made. Here's a few more:

814-5ualSsL._AC_SL1425_.jpg


MDgtMzI1My5qcGVn.jpeg


This also explains why DIGITAL recordings started out great - got a whole lot worse - then eventually matured into an acceptable listening format that is good enough to truly compete with ANALOG recording processes.

By 2010 - or thereabouts - we started hearing all that real digital recording is capable of. This incredible recording, for example:
(I'm 99% sure this is a REAL DIGITAL recording...)


See if you can find this last track on a hi-res streaming platform and prepare to be bowled over! ;)
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I have all of these albums but don’t know the last track
Can you let us know what it is please
Cheers
 
tricky1 said:
This also explains why 44.1khz was used:

44,100 Hz - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
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Thanks for this.

It also confirms what I was saying earlier about VCR video tape being used as the audio-only recording substrate from 1979 onwards with the SONY PMS1600...

WIKI SAYS

"Early digital audio was recorded to existing analog video cassette tapes, as VCRs were the only available transports with sufficient capacity to store meaningful lengths of digital audio.[note 2] To enable reuse with minimal modification of the video equipment, these ran at the same speed as video, and used much of the same circuitry. 44.1 kHz was deemed the highest usable rate compatible with both PAL and NTSC video and requiring encoding no more than 3 samples per video line per audio channel."
 
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