Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRom92
Before we go there - yes, I know, it’s linear audio, it has its shortcomings, it sucks by default. I get it. The goal here is to not make it any worse than we have to!
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Yes, just as we do for the picture! Unfortunately this subject is hard to get good info on often because generally concerns about picture quality tend to overshadow audio quality. Whereas in the top tiers of movie and video production, audio has always been given its own status, budgets, specialist staff, but not so much lower down. Often we can tell an amateur production or transfer not so much by the picture but the poor sound!
Regardless of make or model, linear audio tends to be very sensitive to head misalignment leading to muffled sound. The best solution is to manually align the head to the tape played. That usually means opening up the machine to adjust the relevent head azimuth screw, which for most punters is getting too technical. Interestingly on many audio cassette players the azimuth screw is often easily accessible without opening up the cassette deck.
Then there can be noise issues as consumer VCR's tend to be an electrically and magnetically noisy environment.
Being a tech and an enthusiast in getting the best sound out of the most challenging consumer formats I've been able to make a number of small improvements to even quite modest consumer VCRs to extract more out of the tape's linear audio track. It's usually in four areas: 1. head azimuth adjustment aids (no need to open up the VCR for azimuth adjust), 2. sometimes better electrical shielding of head wiring, 3. better magnetic shielding of the audio head, and 4. even substituting a lower noise head preamplifier. Each improvement may only be modest but the combined effect can be significant.
But good general maintenance of the VCR also plays a big part not only for sound but for picture and of course avoiding damage to tapes as they are wound or played. It's not just one thing but optimising every factor.
I agree with latreche that often just playing a tape on a linear stereo equipped deck improves the clarity of the sound but I suspect this is often because the stereo head is less sensitive to audio head azimuth misalignment than is a mono head.
In the early years of consumer VCR's, there was no HiFi audio, only linear audio and even in later years many camcorders recorded audio only to linear tracks. Played back without any special care they can sound dire. Played back optimally these audio tracks can sound quite good. I can upload audio examples of "done poorly" and "done well".
