Is it a good idea to use a cassette recorder as an alternate audio source?

T

turtlesinautumn

Active member
I've always been a huge fan of analog formats such as VHS and cassettes. I have an old tape recorder that works great, and I was wondering if it's feasible to use it as a source of audio. Let's say I'm in a windy environment, and my camera doesn't have an external mic jack (which it doesn't). Would it be a good idea to record audio of what I'm filming on the tape recorder, then dub it over the video in post? Or for some reason is this not a good idea?
 
Personally; and from an audio amateur’s perspective (which is why I spend hours on this site learning everything I can from the pros and $$$ accessible, and before I make the un-reversible sacrifice of my first borns fore seeable, inevitable, life changing future independence to pay the cost of anything Sound Devices) I can honestly say using; >as antiquated as it might be, tape, fostex, m-audio, etc, etc, < what I own or have ready access to and practicing all the techniques the pros share on this site has provided me with the required tools that I will surely use when I make the $$$ step to purchase $$$$ professional audio equipment.
And speaking as an anonymous single parent it is a good chance your first-born has over stayed her welcome anyway…. So step up to digital, you will never look back. Your clients and first born will thank you..
 
Bad idea. No two ways about it.

You may have a "decent" cassette recorder, or you may at least feel that you do. The problem comes in consistent speed. Unless you have a very, very high-end analog recorder with very accurate speed control and TC sync (such as a Nagra open-reel recorder), what you'll find is that the speed of the recording will waiver. A cassette recorder will not run at a constant speed over time; it will speed up and slow down and speed up and slow down. it also will not play back at a constant speed over time, and this will be a completely different inconsistency from the last time it ran through the machine. Just try and sync that up to your video...
 
It's not quite that bad but close. There were quite a few modified cassette decks with crystal sync. If you can get one of those your probably OK. Anything else will drift all over the place. It's not so much a wrong speed as an inconsistent speed. Pretty much impossible to fix in post.
 
If the clips used are short, like 30 sec or less each and are not hypercritical about sync, you might get away with the speed problems. Never know before you try, so try it first.

I would worry more about the wind; how are you going to protect whatever mic you are planning to use with the recorder? Good wind protection cost many times more than the recorder...
 
For wild sound, sound that is not in lip-sync to picture, a high quality cassette recorder would work just fine but I'm more pessimistic than the other users when it comes to sync sound. Unless your cassette recorder was especially modified to provide crystal sync, which is VERY unlikely, your attempt to record sync sound with it will be doomed to failure. People can often detect a sync difference between picture and sound of only 1 frame and most people can easily detect an error of 2 frames. Keeping that level of accuracy for even just one minute requires a speed consistency to within 0.05%, 1 part in 1800, and any duration over that shrinks the leeway even farther. Current standards typically call for a MAXIMUM acceptable error of +0 / -0.25 frame at any point over the course of the entire program, film, or video. Not only do analog recorders vary in speed from moment to moment, the tape itself stretches each time it's played. It also expands and contracts with temperature. A recording of some given duration when it was made will never play back in exactly the same duration twice in a row. Close yes, but never exactly and exact to wthin a fraction of a fraction of a percent is required for accurate sync. Back in the days when analog recorders - be they cassette or reel to reel - were the only game in town, a sync tone or pulse was recorded on an extra track parallel to the audio. In post production, the tape was played through a device called a resolver that would read that tone and adjust its playback speed from instant to instant to keep it constant as the audio itself was transferred to sprocketed magnetic film called "perf." The perf was then mechanically lined up to the picture (of course also on film with identical sprockets) in a device called a "synchronizer" that used a set of sprocketed wheels to keep the two strips of film locked togther. Recording to analog tape and then digitizing it into your computer lacks any of these controls. You'll see that your audio will slip out of sync with picture within a very few seconds.
 
Whereas it's technically not the best option, I used a sony walkman with a line in once, and recorded to a chrome tape. Sync was problematic, the quality was questionable by some sound guys (sound guys only) but to tell the truth, the hiss, the low end, the whole tape thing, I like that end result.

There's a difference between knowing something's dubbed, and knowing that 'oh that's the actor's voice off the set but it must be old film or something'. Tape is nice, wouldn't take it to a gig, but for something personal and b-movie-ish I loved it.
 
Actually 1/4" was usually resolved with pilot tone Cass. were mostly/all crystal sync and "self resolving". Once you transfer to mag (or digitize) your sort of in the same boat.
But as people keep saying it's the tape end that gets problematic. For one thing even with a crystal sync cass you have tape stretch to deal with. The only "fix" for that was using something like pilot tone.

But if you want to go analog and have AC power around I can sell you my old Tascam 8 track cass with the syncronizer. It has all those bells and whistles and you get 6 tracks of recording (8 on tape but one is for TC and you should generally leave the one next to it as a "guard track" to keep the TC from bleeding into the audio. I also have a DA-78 if your into digital tape, and a small portable DAT deck. For that "vintage digital" sound ;~)
 
All of the flash recorders are stable enough for most takes. You might get some drift over an hour or so but on normal film takes your fine. DAT is pretty much the same. Basically digital recorders have to stay pretty stable or they don't work at all so even cheap digital is far more stable than good analog, actually than high end analog (if it wasn't being resolved).
 
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