here's the link to the great article that sam eifling wrote about the dead media -


http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=12433269-3774-457d-86a0-4e48ad9d0f7a

i hate buying anything new, unless i have to. there's so much used stuff out there that does as good or better of a job than it's 10x+ overpriced new counterpart/replacement. it's ridiculous to me. 200 dollars for an ipod vs. 50 dollars for 25 thrift store walkmans/discmans that will last you the rest of your life. 5 dollars or less for a hifi vcr, which can be used as an analog tape recorder , like any other tape deck, having equal audio bandwidth to cd. (see vhs blog to hear how to do this).

new technology gets smaller and faster, but not necessarily cheaper or better. let's say 2 people started out their music listening lives in the early 80's, both purchasing the same good-quality cassette deck for 200 dollars. one sticks with cassette decks, the other upgrades through the years to the newer technologies. the first person's total cost will exponentially rise much more slowly. he would keep the original deck until it broke. by that time the cost of cassette decks would be half or a 4th of what he paid for the original deck. when that broke, a replacement would be an 8th of the cost, and so on. ultimately he would just be given cassette decks by friends and family, or paying no more than 10 dollars for them, probably. the other guy would have bought a cd player for 300 dollars (late 80's price) before the cassette deck broke (compromising sound quality for sound immediacy). he would have perhaps paid $300 for a minidisc player in the early 90s. $200 for an mp3 player in the late 90s (thereby taking another step down in fidelity for even more increased immediacy). $200-300 for multiple ipods in the 2000's. not ito mention computers, laptops, memory upgrades/ bigger hard drives, if he chose to manage his music/video collection that way.

same story for vcrs/dvds, media, clothing, whatever. cameras are a good example. i have friends and family that have had to buy new digital cameras a few times so far because they keep breaking. what's that, 200 bucks a pop? then they print out the images on computer paper using expensive ink. cut them to frame size and display these shitty, flat, pixelated pictures around the house. what if they just kept using their crappy cheap little 35 mm camera that's collecting dust in the closet. the store-developed pictures look a hell of a lot better at 7 bucks a roll. that's like 30 rolls of film, equalling the price of a digital camera before the first picture is even printed. who needs 5 million pictures anyway? what about when people took the time to consider lighting and quality of the shot before using one of the roll's exposures?

manufacturers have only gotten better at disguising planned obselecence (controlling when a product will fail, to make the owner want to buy another new one). in a way, manufacturers were working more for the buying public 30-50 years ago. they hadn't evolved this evil skill, to such a degree, so things would generally work better for longer.


generally, companies would like you to feel inferior in some way for not having thier latest product. wouldn't be so bad if the compromise between cost and quality were in the buyers favor, but it's not. this "compromise" is like a moving line on a scale. the tendency of this line, throughout business history, is to generally start out in the buyers favor, where the cost and quality are in a reasonable balance. over time companies found ways to make products still work while using cheaper materials/ labor to build it. the result is something that seems to work as it should, but only in the short term. with the cheaper materials, the product fails sooner than before, and the buyer is faced with repairing or replacing it. at this point the compromise-line has moved toward the manufacturers favor, where they can make more money off of the buyer without the quality. it only moves more and more in that direction, exponetially faster. when things were made well, new companies had to be accountable, somewhat, to the quality of existing products. but as everyone inched their way away from quality, down went accountability. now, a new company can open shop with the confidence that, if they choose, they can manufacture and sell shit to a dung-hungry public because they know we'll buy so much of it.


if you've got to continue buying new merchandise to meet your needs, then do what you want. but consider that there is probably something out there just as readily available, used to some degree, that is probably made better and will suit your needs at 1/10 or less of the price. you get relatively the same thing, without getting suckered, and without encouraging a negative marketplace. it's arguably far inferior to fall for the persuasion of business and advertising than to resist, or not be able to afford, it.

have i mentioned that i'm talking out of my post-hole? god, i hope some of this stuff is accurate...at least this much is - i hate buying new.

i'm surprised hi-fi vcrs were never marketed toward the home-studio musician/engineer in the 80s/90s. if they had been, i think it would have made a huge impact on the music industry. that is, because the average home recordist would have been able to attain cd/digital bandwidth quality much sooner than hard-drive/cd recorders were commercially available, and so much cheaper than DAT recorders were at the time. like, 20 dollars for a used hi-fi vcr vs. 400 dollars for a bugdet DAT recorder. all this, while keeping the music in the analog domain.

a hifi vcr is a high quality analog tape recorder, but not in the traditional sense. most people didn't know about this feature. this can be done and sounds so good because of the unusual technology used in recording onto vhs tape. a hifi vcr is basically two self contained fm radio stations being listened to at the same time. therefore it's not just regular "analog", but "fm analog". the left audio channel is "tuned" to one station, the right channel is "tuned" to another. it sounds different than cassette/8track/reel to reel tape, because the frequencies that these two stations are "tuned" to are so high. it makes the audio recording very stable and consistent, much like a cd. music is recorded on hi-fi vhs, not in a continuous line like regular audio tape, but in diagonal strips lined up one after the other on the tape (kind of like a sideways candy cane). as the tape moves forward, sound one one strip starts where the previous strip ended. vcrs have a tracking system to make sure the tape head is moving in sync with the diagonal strips. this works well most of the time. occasionally, you might hear a faint tick sound, which means that one of the strips was slightly out of sync with the audio tape head. if a vhs tape is mishandled and aggressively stopped and rewound, the tape can stretch slightly causing more of these ticks to be heard.

we can now, in the 2000s, look back and see that hi-fi vhs was technically better suited for audio than video. when you pop in one of the first generation hi-fi vhs tapes, it's apparent that the video signal has faded to some degree. looks grainy and blue or purple-ish, right? not so of the audio, 25+ year old hi-fi tapes have very crisp audio that still sounds new with high fidelity. this is because the audio and video signals are recorded on the same space of tape but at different layers. the audio is recorded deeper into the thickness of the tape. the video is recorded on the surface of the tape. so the video signal is the first to go since it's exposed to friction, ect. video also requires alot more information to be stored on tape to reproduce a faithful image of what is being shot than audio does. so any loss is really noticed.

a non hi-fi vcr records audio in a totally different way. like a cassette deck (on a tiny linear strip at the top of the tape), but at an even slower speed. so there is a huge difference between hi-fi and normal vhs modes of audio recording.

additionally, there are big differences between various hi-fi vcrs. most of the early ones used automatic sound level compression. this squashes loud volume when it exceeds a certain level which can give a "air pumping" sound effect. or, raise the volume of hiss if what is recorded is too quiet. this is relatively undesirable. if you keep the volume of what you're recording safely below the point at which this effect kicks in, it can still sound great. some of the older commercial-use hi-fi vcrs let you switch this effect off. it made the audio sound more stable, but not that exciting. i think that alot of home recording guys that tried using vcrs to record thier mixes used this method. it seems like it should be the best that hi-fi vhs can sound, because you're using a hefty, industrial vcr that costs alot of money, but not so. the best hi-fi vcr to use is one made in the 90s. some still used the automatic level compression, but most used some kind of system that was totally transparent. recordings made on these sound hot, exciting, and crisp, yet faithful to the source material. brands like - panasonic (omnivision), sony, toshiba, jvc...to name a few had this good recording system. i believe that by the late 90s, all vcrs probably had this in swing. on a side note, it's ironic that something that was the opitome of cheaply mass-produced flimsy crap, sounds better than an expensive digital recorder.

depending on what tape-speed setting you put it on, you can have from 2-8 hours of high quality music recorded on one vhs tape (sp is best). just hook it up to your stereo, like a tape deck or cd player. play music into the input jacks. set the vcr for "line" input and "hi-fi" recording (not "normal"). record as you would on a regular tape deck. then playback and enjoy music recorded with cd bandwidth, but on analog tape. the tape adds extra warmth and reality that will, in most cases, make the orginal recording sound better

sound quality suffers slightly the slower you set the tape speed. 2 hours is alot of time, so on sp (short play), you get excellent quality and plenty of time.

by the way, a vcr is not necessarily doomed to eat tapes. they only react to how you treat them. if you occasionally use a head cleaning tape, or open it up and clean the rubber/parts in the tape path properly, it will continue to play with consistency and ease. if you never clean it, gunk will build up and cause the tape to stick, getting "eaten".

it's amazing how programmed we are to think that a vcr is for one thing only. you'd think you were trying to convince people that they could fly if they flapped thier arms fast enough...just getting them to believe this about vcrs, let alone try it.

most of my recording life has been done digitally. i've liked it. it's been relatively easy...starting a song over or jumping to any point without rewinding or fast forwarding. one thing has botherred me, though. everytime i did a mixdown to cd of a song i finished, i'd simultaneously make a copy on tape to listen to in the car. i always enjoyed the way the cassette sounded more. same applies to prerecorded cds and records that i made a tape copy of for car listening. didn't know why exactly. it just sounded hotter, warmer, punchier, more realistic. until more recently, i thought it was just something that i wasn't doing to the cd to make it sound right. now, after having done extensive research into these gut feelings, i know why. because cds don't contain real music. they contain a software program that mocks real events. a tape literally contains a real copy of sounds recorded. this allows the same nuances that our human ears are used to to be recorded and be translated back to us later when we listen to it. recording these sounds onto a digital medium or computer acts as a filter that very clearly records the same sounds, but without the nuances that don't exist or make sense in the software realm. these nuances are, increasingly, being software simulated by manufacturers. they still don't exist, though, and pale in comparison to a real recording. computers and digital electronics have their place, in my opinion. i would chose to use them in their place - crunching numbers, sequencing data/ music, storing data records, playing video games, ect. but, recording audio for serious listening on them? ....i say computers are for computing.

basically, this statement is a technical one that is bound by the law of supply and demand. it's not a personal attack. just the way it is. as with anything in the world, if something becomes oversaturated, it loses value. if value could be gauged in emotional units, someone from the 1700s would care more about music than someone today. today, music is devoured, disposed of, stumbed upon without a second thought or care that it will be lost.

imagine someone from the 1800s going to the big city for the county fair. they hear musicians playing songs in a gazebo. this could be the first time they've ever heard music. so mesmerized and excited, they tell everyone back home every detail they can remember. just hearing the description of music back then probably carried more emotional value than listening to it does today.

so how could emotional value be inserted into the exponential over-saturation of our time? some form of discipline and control of oneself, would seem to be the safest way. as opposed to a nuclear holocaust resetting any survivors back to zero.

making music for performance only, without any intention of recording it on any audio or paper medium, would be at the top of the emotional value chart. making music for performance and recording, using every digital and viral avenue, would be at the bottom. i applaud anyone with the balls to try the previous. i, myself, have a weakness for enjoying the process of recording, and wouldn't want to commit to that degree.

there is a good reason that there are so many timeless phrases and philosophies celebrating finding the balance between two extremes. because seeking a happy medium tends to make you a better person in your own and the eyes of others. the dead media believes that there is no more perfect middle ground in the audio world than the 8 track tape. you can read all about why we think this in another blog, though.

the more of an item we have available to us to make identical backup copies of at relatively low costs, with little effort to obtain, the less we are inclined to care about it. the harder it is to obtain good quality items at low costs with supplies limited, that can't be identically backed-up, the more we're inclined to care about them. these are surface observations relating to supply and demand. very natural things to overlook and take for granted in our current bottomless pit of options. if i haven't mentioned it yet, i'm a victim myself, though seeking help.

weened on cassettes and raised on cds/vinyl, i heard music in all it's glory on an 8 track for the first time in 2006....the best i've ever heard it sound (2nd only to music on open reel to reel tape). so much so that i completely lost interest in listening to, or recording music on cd/digital. digitally recorded music starts sounding harsh and 2 dimensional, once your ears adjust to 8 track tape. of course, i would want others to experience what my ears were hearing. the only solution i saw was to start a one-stop 8 track service that would meet the needs of any willing participant. that means - making new all-analog recordings of local bands for 8 track release, having available 8 track players for sale, being able to repair tapes and players, selling original tapes by your favorite artists from the 60s/70s/80s, and offering a professional transfer service to record any of your favorite cds/mp3/vinyl/cassettes/ect onto 8 track making it sound as good or better than the original. in the year-long process of working toward the dead media's launch, there have been many realizations about - technology, the music industry and it's subtle control, how technology and the music industry have affected the drive of the artist, and people's pattern of interest in something new, different, and dead. the dead media welcomes any questions or comments about anything. while we might know more than the average person about 8 tracks, the dead media has only been involved with them for a relatively short time and is still learning. there are numerous websites containing valuable information created by folks that "heard the light" a long time ago. the dead media encourages you to explore their wealth of experience, cause that's how we got to this point.


HELPFUL LINKS -

8trackheaven.com

8-track-shack.com

barrys8trackrepair.com



8 TRACKS

i remember seeing a pile of 8 tracks at a thrift store back in october of 2006. "wow, i can't imagine putting any music on those", i thought. now, in august of 2007, i have 2000 8 tracks, forming little skycraper stacks around our home. my wife loves weaving through the media-hamster-trails i've formed. i got to this point because of a $3 8 track cartridge tape recorde,r purchased from a thrift store in december of 2006. after giving the 8 track recorder a good cleaning (which is IMPERATIVE before operation), i recorded some cd music that i like onto an 8 track cartridge. recorded over ol' glenn miller's greatest hits, if i do say so. i must have been blown away, since you're reading this. i was, and so began my quest for information, and the highest in 8 track technology. from the endless, mind numbing tidbits, i began to get a picture and timeline of audio recording history. i came to the minority conclusion, that 8 tracks were cheated. vinyl records, reel to reel tape, cassettes, cds, vhs, and now mp3 and beyond all enjoyed, are enjoying, or will enjoy decades of being taken to thier maximum potential as far as highest fidelity and quality goes. not 8 track. almost as soon as things started to develop, the started to slide down hill. production of tapes and players continued, to suit people who had invested in them already, but with a focus of phasing them out in favor of the more compact and portable cassette. after the first 5 or so years, there wasn't much put into research, development, and quality, because the record companies had decided it was to be.....dead media.