Panasonic DMR-EZ45V distorted audio?

[jamesharding26]

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with distorted audio through the tape deck. I have the machine connected via HDMI to the TV.

Playing dvd is fine, the audio is clear and crisp, no distortion.

The vhs playback however has significant distortion. It sounds like someone has turned up the audio very loud and the audio is clipping or overloaded.

I have tested with a few old VHS tapes I know to have good audio a couple years ago, plus one retail vhs of The Matrix. I even tried to record some audio onto a blank cassette in case it was tracking but the audio is still very bad.

VHS deck reports it is receiving LR audio which I assume means it is HIFI?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

James

[dubaidave]

Hi do t suppose you ever got anywhere with this problem? I’m having exactly the same issue and can’t find any way to fix it.

[lordsmurf]

There are several possible issues, but caps is always #1 on these. If you're intent on fixing it, or at least troubleshooting it, I'd pull out a meter, and starting testing each, starting from the VHS side of the board(s).

But realize that these units are not suggested for playing VHS tapes. The "quality" is lousy, generic low-end VHS. If you want VHS-only (instead of an ideal S-VHS deck), there are many better units, namely Sharp, maybe Sony.

Certain Panasonics are only suggested for the line-TBC(ish) passthrough ability, mostly for anti-tearing use (and not as a half-baked "TBC replacement"). I don't recall off-hand if the is a model with that feature, but I don't believe it is.

[dubaidave]

Thanks for the info. I was using it to copy vhs direct to sd card which was pretty cool.

Here’s a strange thing I put a video input into the vhs side and the audio was still distorted coming out of hdmi but playing dvd it’s fine.

[lordsmurf]

Nothing strange at all. Audio and video is not necessarily routed internally to both DVD and VHS. In fact, most often in combo units, the DVD is maintained s-video out, while the VHS is internally composited (even if output s-video, component, HDMI).

[radiokom]

+ those combo units all has terrible VHS transport. About 15 years ago my friend bought Panasonic DMR-EX99 with integrated HD. It was something built by drunk psychiatric clinic patients. Along with all other problems it has no S-Video output (but has S-Video input for recording on VHS!). HDMI output with copy protection - it was possible to use it from VHS only if it recognized TV (and maybe there is a problem with the sound of particular OP unit). No way even to copy files from HD - it was only possible to record DVD. When I seen this monster the first question was - why he bought that? Answer was he believed it is OK for digitization. And under the hood was Panasonic most crappy transport "latest edition" with capstan in plastic bearing. No, those combo units all should be scrapped like all dual cassette tape decks

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by radiokom

something built by drunk psychiatric clinic patients.

Quote:

those combo units all should be scrapped like all dual cassette tape decks

Run those all over with a bulldozer. Every single one. I've hated that garbage since the 1990s, because it was responsible for the utter garbage quality ruining the VHS collector/trading scene 30 years ago. Two cheap decks hooked up with composite/RCA cable looked better.

[timtape]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesharding26

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with distorted audio through the tape deck. I have the machine connected via HDMI to the TV.

Playing dvd is fine, the audio is clear and crisp, no distortion.

The vhs playback however has significant distortion. It sounds like someone has turned up the audio very loud and the audio is clipping or overloaded.

I have tested with a few old VHS tapes I know to have good audio a couple years ago, plus one retail vhs of The Matrix. I even tried to record some audio onto a blank cassette in case it was tracking but the audio is still very bad.

VHS deck reports it is receiving LR audio which I assume means it is HIFI?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

James

It could be a faulty HiFi head. Can you upload an audio example file to the forum? It may help diagnose what is going on.

[radiokom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by timtape

It could be a faulty HiFi head. Can you upload an audio example file to the forum? It may help diagnose what is going on.

If distortion is even from input, it can not be head. Head drums in those crappy units are only thing what is probably OK more or less (however hard to say, because all other is complete crap, so no method to test them). But Hi Fi tracking in those units is terrible. Audio and video mistracking is common, digital tracking do not work, manual tracking works like - "you can have more or less acceptable picture or audio, but not both". This is my own experience with my friend's DMR-99EX (was new in box!) 15 years (or maybe more) ago, but not from HDMI but analogue output (composite). So crap is crap even in Africa.