Brainstorm, new member

[Brainstorm]

Hello afternoon. Well another new member joins a new site and from some of the threads around looks entertaining enough.

So, I’ve been into home cinema now for what must be close to 25 years, as far back as I can remember connecting a Hitachi monaural VCR with Dolby NR to an amplifier the overall clarity was a major leap forwards over the small limited size and power a TV loudspeaker which can only reproduce a small portion of the sound.

Hi-Fi loudspeakers simple expanded on that with greater depth, although this would be pale in comparison to today’s standards with laserdisc and DVD or even DAT or hard disc drives that can deliver far more of the audio spectrum.

Anyway why state the obvious.

Well I’ll look around and see if anything catches my eye. :wink5:

[Feanor]

Hello afternoon. Well another new member joins a new site and from some of the threads around looks entertaining enough.

So, I’ve been into home cinema now for what must be close to 25 years, as far back as I can remember connecting a Hitachi monaural VCR with Dolby NR to an amplifier the overall clarity was a major leap forwards over the small limited size and power a TV loudspeaker which can only reproduce a small portion of the sound.

Hi-Fi loudspeakers simple expanded on that with greater depth, although this would be pale in comparison to today’s standards with laserdisc and DVD or even DAT or hard disc drives that can deliver far more of the audio spectrum.

Anyway why state the obvious.

Well I’ll look around and see if anything catches my eye. :wink5:

Sounds like (1) you've been into audio and video for fair while, (25 years counts as a fair while), and (2) your main interest is HT, (home cinema).

Hope to hear from you on an ongoing basis. :22:

[icarus]

im impressed brainstorm, you've been into home threatre longer than i have been alive wow.. So welcome, and hopefully we can learn from your years of experience and vice versa...

[Brainstorm]

icarus, Feanor

Well I’m still learning and I like the pass technologies wit a few exceptions to newer ones that are used in the THX cinemas.

[kelsci]

Hi Brainstorm, In 1966, I tapped the volume control of a Magnavox 19 inch portable tv. These were true volume controls and not attentuators that are used today. Doing a tap tapped into the pre-amplified audio of the tv stations. The other end of the tap was a RCA plug that I put to the aux input of an amplfier, or in this case, a Magnavox stereo console.
Boy was that tv sound great coming over thetwo 12 inch speakers that console had. Very similar to what you did with your Hitachi mono vcr. Some of those vcrs had very good pre-amplified sound coming out of their audio output. Even the linear sound on the tapes were pretty darn good so I know where you are coming from.

[Brainstorm]

Hello kelsci

In later years I brought a stereo linear VCR with Dolby NR, I think it was a Furguson videostar, I also had a Hi-Fi VCR JVC the pros and cons I noticed with each one was greater dynamic range on the Hi-Fi VCR, but if the tape gets damaged the Hi-Fi track drops down to monaural linear sound. Similar to how 35mm Dolby SR-D prints react to damage when the outer sprocket holes, this would be where the digital track is held while the analogue Dolby SR will be several millimetres across.

You can hear the difference with Hi-Fi dropping from stereo and worse when played in Dolby pro-logic, everything just goes down to the centre channel.

With Dolby SR-D it will still carry on playing, while you’ll only notice things like rain effects going from soft to loud, this has to do with the way the Dolby pro-logic decoder sees the signal, where surrounds might only carry little background on the rain effects in Dolby digital and when dropping down to Dolby stereo SR matrix the crosstalk is heard on the surrounds.

Stereo linear VCR sounded ok if the tape was damaged with a minor crease it will still carry on playing, there might be slightly wobbles in the sound, but it would still carry on.

Hi-Fi stereo VHS tapes would still play on stereo VCR only the rare few stereo VHS tapes would only playback in monaural sound on H-Fi VCR if I remember correctly.

Ice-cream time, yes its intermission.

[PeruvianSkies]

weeeeeellll Hello ....I have to laugh...HiFi VCR. That's a good one! Just kidding, welcome to 2007.

[basite]

welcome to the forums Brainstorm,

sounds like you already have alot of knowledge, especially with the more vintage audio,
hope you learn alot here, and that we may learn alot of you too...

welcome to the gang,

Keep them spinning,
Bert.

[kelsci]

Hi Peruvian; what is wrong with a hi-fi vcr? I still have two working ones. For the very few tv shows that I watch, they do a good enough job of time delay. I have video tapes made since 1982 that I play on them since they give a good picture with good linear sound as well. I did use my hi-fi vcrs to archive a movie or two. Since the films were mono, the hi-fi vcr was more than adequate for the job. Oh, it would have been nice to do the archiving on a dvd-r recorder but I am just not in the mood to bother with one of these things at this time.