AM interference on old VHS tapes in Hi-Fi only?
 

Hello,

I'm digitizing several VHS that used to belong to my grandparents. They lived near an AM radio tower, and I have a lot of old stories visiting of being able to hear the radio station on all sorts of things - bathtubs, toasters, anything with metal. I'm noticing on the VHS tapes recorded on Hi-Fi, on the lower frequencies, I am hearing some cross-talk/cross chat that I can't explain to anything else. Linear audio (mono) VHS tapes from (what I think are) the same VHS/same area don't have (from what I've digitized so far) this crosstalk.

Was VHS hi-fi susceptible to AM interference, but not as much (or not at all) for linear audio? I was just curious. I don't know what I could do for it post, but, doesn't hurt to ask :)

Here is an example of where I can distinguish interference/crosstalk happening.

I listened to about 15 minutes of the game show. Occasionally I heard typical HiFi track noise due to mistracking/tape damage, sometimes with damage visible in the picture as well. Sometimes on bad sections the HiFi track momentarily defaults to the normal linear sound track with the expected lower quality sound. But as to other voices or interference from a radio transmitter broadcast, I didnt hear any. I suspect the problem is typical HiFi dropout and unrelated to the radio tower.

Same here I heard head switch and tape damage noise bleeding into the HiFi track as buzzing, But I didn't hear any cross-talk.

Thank you for the replies. I know that VHS hifi will drop out on damaged/bad tracking. I didn't know if AM interference was a big thing on VHS.