Saving my loops

[Todd Madson <crash@waste.org>]

Another possibility to save loops is probably something many of you
have lying around in your homes:

A VHS Hi-Fi VCR.  These recorders record very good to excellent audio
quality and for hours and hours if need be.

The beauty of these devices is that at 8 or 9 hours of play there is
no loss of quality in the sound.  Be sure to buy high quality or 
heavy duty tapes (such as the kind they suggest for recording over
and over to prevent dropouts).

So, you could record an entire gig/looping session/whatever and still
have room left over....lots of it.

Now, the caveats: the recording quality is not that of DAT, it is  
very good but not quite perfect.  Also, some recorders come with 
terrible compressor devices on them and should be avoided - you might
want to see if the model you are interested has this as a feature.

I hadn't thought about doing this until the feature set in my VCR as
indicated in the manual suggested using it as a high-quality audio 
recorder.

And it's a Realistic brand (Radio Shack) model.  Amazing.

I actually took all of my 4-track demo tapes and recorded them end to
end into a mixer into the VCR and now I've got a VHS backup should I
ever need it.