VHS Hi-Fi wow and flutter cause?
 

Hey everyone, long time no see!

I recently got around to changing the loading belt on my JVC HM-DR10000 and I can finally use it again (love that huge thing).

I'm playing around with recording music on the HiFi audio track to see how it sounds and it's fantastic but I'm noticing a bothersome amount of Wow and Flutter, the pitch changes quite severely and is almost never constant.
The source for the recordings was all-digital so there's no way these pitch changes were present there.

This is something that I never noticed on normal tapes which almost never have uninterrupted music without other noises going around so I'm wondering whether this is a normal phenomenon or if I have an issue with eg. the pinch roller or capstan belt?

Thanks in advance!

We don't hear what you hear , so how can we be able to help you?
Post a sample.

Hey there! I'm not going to be providing a sample as it's a straight forward question - is noticeable wow in Hi-Fi audio normal and what could cause it?

Next time you feel like acting like a snarky passive aggressive little troll go bully someone else, I hear 4chan's great for that

Good luck then.

Stay civil, this isn't Twitter. :wink2:

I agree, post a sample clip of this noise. Sometimes people use the wrong jargon to describe errors, so it's best to always confirm.

Audio errors with VCRs are always from the audio head. (In theory, I guess it could also come from inferior processing on the mainboard. But realistically, in practice, I doubt it happens often, or at all.)

More often than not, the VCR is falsely blamed for capture/processing that happened after the video output the signal. So process of elimination is required.

In the same passage of audio does the linear/normal/non Hifi audio track have similar speed/pitch variations as the HiFi track?

In audio engineering parlance, "wow" refers to slower speed variations, "flutter" to faster.

HiFi audio on VCR's had very low wow and flutter when working well. The more common problem is cyclic "motorboating" and clicking sounds. It's not always easy to eliminate especially on LP or EP speed recordings.

But as stated, probably quicker to upload an audio sample. If you are correct that it's wow/flutter in the HiFi track then the sample will only prove you correct.