'A visit from the goon squad' by Jennifer Egan

[Vincent Brady (TEX)]

I'm reading the above book and I came across this passage which I thought I might share with you.

A record producer is reflecting on the music business and he thinks

"Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust!"

Food for thought maybe.

[CGW]

It's a fun book. Odd how the past's "hi-fi" is today's "lo-fi." Vinyl, film, tape, VHS media are now coveted for being "authentic" as someone drunkenly explained this past week-end. Really starting to cringe, though, whenever I hear that word...

[Plate Voltage]

The word that currently makes me cringe on sight is "artisan." Now that that's off my chest, I don't think good vinyl records ever ceased to be high fidelity. Good tape - not cassette, not 8 track cartridges - can be very high fidelity. Both can convey the original recording with a great degree of authenticity. But VHS? No. Never. Not then, not now. VHS was never very good. It was an affordable, easy way to record video at home but it was never very good.

Now if something like lomography starts up with VCRs, I'll be able to pay off my student debt by selling $5 garage sale VHS machines for $250 each!

[tomalophicon]

Plate,
IMO my old VCRs kick my current 'digital' TV channels into a cocked hat.

[CGW]

The word that currently makes me cringe on sight is "artisan." Now that that's off my chest, I don't think good vinyl records ever ceased to be high fidelity. Good tape - not cassette, not 8 track cartridges - can be very high fidelity. Both can convey the original recording with a great degree of authenticity. But VHS? No. Never. Not then, not now. VHS was never very good. It was an affordable, easy way to record video at home but it was never very good.

Now if something like lomography starts up with VCRs, I'll be able to pay off my student debt by selling $5 garage sale VHS machines for $250 each!

I know that, you know that, but they don't. C'mon, there's interest in the old shakey-cam, schlocko-rama VHS low-budget horror stuff from the 80s, so much so that lots of it is being re-issued on--wait for it-VHS! I have a soft spot for old 60s and 70s Japanese stuff on VHS like Kinji Fukasaku's trashy yakuza and cop films. Seriously, though, the VHS look is becoming Sundancy--yikes!

"Artisanal" connected to anything edible has me scouting the nearest ERs if there's a chance of someone serving it to me.

[Plate Voltage]

Those must be some pretty awful digital channels to make VHS look good. The point I was trying to make is that if I record something on VHS and compare it against a recording made on just about anything between say, a colour Ampex quad machine or Sony BVH-2000 C format machine or HDCAM-SR machine, or captured digitally to something with 4:2:2 colourspace or better, the VHS looks like a smeared pastel drawing that moves.

[ajmiller]

Not sure Vincent - the old adage 'shit in, shit out' springs to mind.
Digital is only a tool - it's just made it easier for everyone to have a go at creating 'Film, photography, music' (and why not?).
By its ubiquitous nature it means we have to search harder to find the 'good' stuff - probably using Google!

[tomalophicon]

Those must be some pretty awful digital channels to make VHS look good. The point I was trying to make is that if I record something on VHS and compare it against a recording made on just about anything between say, a colour Ampex quad machine or Sony BVH-2000 C format machine or HDCAM-SR machine, or captured digitally to something with 4:2:2 colourspace or better, the VHS looks like a smeared pastel drawing that moves.

Fuck yeah, they're terrible.

[guitstik]

Hmmmm, back in my younger days I used to record club/garage bands with a 4 head VCR through a 16 channel mixing board and still to this very day the sound quality is better than digital.

[hoffy]

Plate,
IMO my old VCRs kick my current 'digital' TV channels into a cocked hat.

Are you serious? The only time VCR was good was when the machine was brand new and so was the tape. It was pretty steep downward slope from there!