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.