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Sound cutting out on Hi8 playback - could it just be dirty heads?


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Old 01-11-2014, 18:04
wrongsideof40
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Join Date: Jan 2013
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I'm finally getting around to digitizing and archiving my 8 and Hi8 tapes onto a external hard drive and I'm having a problem with the sound cutting out - completely - for long periods of time. Here's some symptoms...

The picture is perfect.
It affects tapes recorded on the same camera AND those recorded on different cameras.
A tape that played sound perfectly once may not do so on the next try - and vice-versa.
No output on the phono sockets is mirrored on the headphone jack.

So I'm thinking it's some kind of intermittent fault. However, if there's a sound outage and I put another tape in, the other tape will play with sound. Put the first tape back in: no sound. So now I'm thinking 'faulty tape'. But that tape plays fine in another machine. So could it be dirty heads. But the picture is fine! And isn't the sound all mashed up (technical term) with the picture on the tape or is there a separate sound track?

Please help if you think you can unravel my conundrum.

Thanks - Martin

Last edited by wrongsideof40 : 01-11-2014 at 18:05. Reason: puncuation
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Old 01-11-2014, 18:14
grahamlthompson
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I'm finally getting around to digitizing and archiving my 8 and Hi8 tapes onto a external hard drive and I'm having a problem with the sound cutting out - completely - for long periods of time. Here's some symptoms...

The picture is perfect.
It affects tapes recorded on the same camera AND those recorded on different cameras.
A tape that played sound perfectly once may not do so on the next try - and vice-versa.
No output on the phono sockets is mirrored on the headphone jack.

So I'm thinking it's some kind of intermittent fault. However, if there's a sound outage and I put another tape in, the other tape will play with sound. Put the first tape back in: no sound. So now I'm thinking 'faulty tape'. But that tape plays fine in another machine. So could it be dirty heads. But the picture is fine! And isn't the sound all mashed up (technical term) with the picture on the tape or is there a separate sound track?

Please help if you think you can unravel my conundrum.

Thanks - Martin
I like your technical term . The word you are looking for is multiplexed, it only applies to digital video and audio. Hi8 isn't digital it's analogue. The audio head probably needs cleaning.
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Old 01-11-2014, 19:27
wrongsideof40
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I like your technical term . The word you are looking for is multiplexed, it only applies to digital video and audio. Hi8 isn't digital it's analogue. The audio head probably needs cleaning.
Thanks for the quick response. OK, so I'll look into the audio head thing. Is the audio as low-tech as a cassette recorder? If so, wouldn't the sound become murky (another technical term) and not be either 'on or off'?
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Old 01-11-2014, 19:31
Winston_1
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I seem to recall the sound track on Hi 8 machines is FM sound recorded by flying heads on the drum. In which case it could be attacking fault.
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Old 02-11-2014, 12:14
Nigel Goodwin
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There are essentially two entirely different types of sound on HiFi VCR's:

1) Normal low quality linear track (as used on all VCR's).

2) High quality HiFi audio track, recorded helically as FM underneath the video track at a lower frequency (which means it can be recovered from beneath the video).

The HiFi audio uses a separate pair of heads on the drum to record/replay the audio, and the most common effect of worn audio heads is intermittently losing one or both of the HiFi audio channels. 'Usually' VCR's are designed to mute the HiFi audio if it drops below a certain level, and often to revert to the linear track if that happens.

If you set your VCR to play the linear track instead of the HiFi one it 'may' allow you to copy the tapes, but at the cost of lower quality audio - but any audio is better than none.
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