Quadraphonic audio on VHS-tapes

Never seen this before: A device to record four channel audio on videotapes. Front channels on the video track, rear channels on the hifi track.

Sanyo Plus 5

-Kristian

krkier said:

Never seen this before: A device to record four channel audio on videotapes. Front channels on the video track, rear channels on the hifi track.

Sanyo Plus 5

-Kristian

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This is how we transfered some material from one fellow to another sometimes in the late 80s when PCM first hit the scene. 2 tracks were digital and the transfers were done with no hiss with VHS tape, did not add noise with another analog layer like reels. Sony made a decent PCM. I sold all mine as we now have much better ways to do digital recordings.

I remember Sansui had a thousand dollar unit like this to record digitally on the video space of a tape. Even MFSL released some titles in the PCM format. From what I understand, they were made to order!! Very rare these days.

JonUrban said:

I remember Sansui had a thousand dollar unit like this to record digitally on the video space of a tape. Even MFSL released some titles in the PCM format. From what I understand, they were made to order!! Very rare these days.

Click to expand...

I was at MFSL in 1985 , and spent some time at the cutting engineers house, where he had many of the JVC pcm digital VHS machines...a sort of all in one unit (not to be confused with DVHS)...the tapes were loaded vertically in the machine (they stood upright).....and modified cassette decks(they could record backwards as well as forwards)...and lots of digital vhs tapes.
I heard a digital transfer of the beach boys "fun fun fun" on the machine through headphones...which I guess they were considering doing, but they only used their earlier releases.

I am pretty sure however, that they used these machines to make their mfsl cassette tapes....(certainly their Dark side of the moon cassette was a dub from a digital pcm VHS tape copy of the master)...they also did alot of their dubbing for cassette tapes backwards, as he felt the transients were recorded better that way onto the tape, when you played them normally afterwards in the forwards direction.

They sold these digital VHS copies to order, I don't think they ever sold many, whilst there was enthusiam at the factory for this stuff , it was a pretty slow seller.
In those days it was NTSC video, so no overseas PAL machine would work with it..I remember one color brochure for them.

I had a PCM connected to a VCR in the late 80's. I disconnected it when I got an R-DAT deck in the early 90's. I used it to digitize an analog signal and it did a very nice job and for a time, I actually listened to music that way some much like I had used an open reel deck previously with home recorded tapes. Personally, I thought the audio quality beat cassette, Hi-Fi VCR, and open reel. I was not aware of anyway to use mine in a surround set up other than as a stereo source processed by a digital soundfield processor of some sort, back then it was the Yamaha DSP-1 I used with it.

Chris

I couldn't find any information on this Sanyo device but the PCM models I recalled were accumulated in this list:

Aiwa PCM-800 14 bit home
Nakamichi PCM-100 14/16 bit portable
Sansui PC-XI 14 bit home
Sansui PC-XII 14 bit home
Sony PCM-F1 14/16 bit portable
Sony PCM-10 14 bit portable
Sony PCM-100 14 bit portable
Sony PCM-501ES 14/16 bit home
Sony PCM-601ES 14/16 bit home
Sony PCM-701ES 14/16 bit home
Technics SV-100 14 bit portable
Toshiba DX900 14 bit home

The big buzz that got me interested in the late 80's was that professionals were using the F-1, saving tens of thousands of dollars with comparable results and Sony was killing their own professional recording equipment market. Based on that, I had to have one. I recall trying to find a way to use the VCR analog AFM audio simultaneously with PCM audio for discrete 4-channel but I assumed there would be a delay with D>A conversion for those 2 channels. This is the first I have ever heard of this Sanyo device and although I will certainly pass, it was interesting to search for information and reminisce a few minutes.

Chris

Here's a peek at the MFSL DSOTM Beta tape, from an eBay listing:

Wow, something I've NEVER seen before! (above)

We did record some band material with the Sony F1 which was amazing at that time.

Ah yes that picture brings back the memories.

For other odd stuff ,I've still got one Mobile fidelity transistor preamp left when they ventured into electronics in the 1990's...they had a d to a converter , preamp and poweramp...

Wow... that's gotta be one of the rarest DSOTM bits ever! I never even knew MoFi was into this stuff, and I thought I was a pretty knowledgeable MoPhile...