MonkeyLizard10 said:
Is often heavily compressed streaming audio actually better quality than VHS HiFi audio recording?I agree that VHS HiFi can sound pretty good, almost as good as CD quality in the right conditions (good tape, good deck).
But: the streaming audio is 640kbit Dolby Digital 5.1 encoded from (probably) a 6 channel 48khz 16 bit PCM master.
If you have an off-air recording onto VHS, the signal has been on long journey before it hit your VHS deck. Starting from a comparable master tape (probably 48khz 16bit PCM stereo) -> C-band (NTSC) -> Beta SP tape (whatever your local TV station had at the time, maybe DVCAM or digiBeta towards the end) -> SDI (for adding station logos) -> NTSC over whatever medium -> VHS -> whatever you can digitize it with.
The VHS tape, even on a good day, is a couple of analogue generations behind the streaming audio.
I know the TV networks were shifting over to high-bitrate MPEG-2 based distribution of material (not sure if the audio was compressed or not in the MPEG-2 feed) towards the end of Buffys run, and digital tape like DVCAM was becoming pretty cheap - so for the later seasons, assuming you had digital cable (probably Dolby Digital stereo at 192kbits) fed from a digital-only station - it’s much closer. But it’s still adding a layer of wow-and-flutter and an digital -> analogue -> digital round trip to a Dolby Digital signal encoded at a lower bit-rate than the streaming.
That said - if you do have VHS recordings of any of the original airings of Buffy episodes - it would be great to confirm the openings I posted above are correct. It would also be great to clarify which “Tonights presentation is intended for our …”/“New Tuesday” bumper was used with which episode - if you can post any information you have that would be great !
Canon.
Although it should be noted that many cable system re-compress all the video AND audio and often the digital audio is very crappy compared to the original digital compressed audio so it is often hardly any sort of pure chain either and usally just 192bitrate. It all depends upon the year and the exact cable system recorded off of. But it didn’t seem that rare to me that taped HiFi VHS would sound better. It really depends.
But yeah I guess the streaming DD would be direct and most likely not re-compressed and could be higher bitrate, but could sometimes still just be 19s.