Re: [ARSCLIST] On the beaten 8-track...

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey..8 track players are a cult object these days! Especially the space helmet ones.

dl

Tom Fine wrote:

> Richard, as usual, threw out a ton of good info here.
>
> A couple of more points:
>
> 1. 8-tracks were hated by dupers. That's 8 electronics to keep tuned, complex headstacks to keep
> somewhat aligned, complex loading machines, etc.
>
> 2. 8-tracks were hated by car makers. Road-wear got the heads way out of alignment because they
> weren't fixed. Cartridges didn't work well in cold weather. Trying to figure out where to allow
> storage for those big old cartridges. The playback machines needed a somewhat hefty motor to torque
> up that loop in cold and hot weather, etc.
>
> 3. 8-track recorders were indeed made but you had to be midnful of 15 minute limits per "track" for
> 60-minute cartridges and 22.5 minutes for 90-minute carts. Otherwise, there would be a cutout while
> the loop switched direction and the head moved on its cam.
>
> 4. cassettes were a much more efficient thing to mass produce and had less to go wrong. That's why
> even some of the earliest cassettes still play A-OK.
>
> 5. someone said before that it was the 80's before cassettes were the choice home-taping format. I
> think it was actually the mid to late 70's. Audiophiles still preferred quarter-track reel decks --
> and some of the best Japanese decks ever made were made in the late 70's and early 80's -- but
> really good-sounding cassette decks could be had by 1975 or so. I am still amazed by how good
> cassettes sound that were made on my 1979 Sanyo deck. The reason I bought it was that it was rated a
> superb value by a couple of stereo mags. It was relatively bare-bones but had great electronics and
> head and a good execution of the Dolby circuit. Plus, it was the cheapest deck to do metal tape.
>
> 6. 8-tracks were pretty much dead by 1982 or so when the Sony Walkman came out, but that device
> killed all other consumer tape formats and revolutionized how music was listened to and purchased.
> Pretty soon, pre-recorded cassettes were out-selling LPs. And cassettes lingered long into the CD
> era. Remember C-100's and C-110's, made to accomodate the longer playing time of CD's. Computer
> drives that readily/cheaply/easily copied CD's didn't come around until the late 90's for most of
> us. CD burner drives spelled the end of home taping for most people. And now iPods have spelled the
> end of "mix tape" CD's for most people.
>
> Finally, 8-tracks seem to linger on in the netherworld of cult status. I must say I've only had one
> person ask me to transfer an 8-track, and I talked him out of it since the content was readily
> available on commercial CD. But if I ever get a person with a homebrew 8-track that actually holds
> valuable content, I'm sending him right to Richard!
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 4:55 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] On the beaten 8-track...
>
> Rob,
>
> I wish that there were no 8-track recorders, but, unfortunately, there
> were enough around that people actually recorded important things in
> the dang medium. I've done a fair amount of work -- including having
> JRF make me a custom head assembly -- that allows me to get the most
> out of these things. I play them on a pair of Sony APR-5000
> reel-to-reel machines as even the high-end Akai 8-track recorder
> (quad) that I have doesn't sound nearly as good as the reproduction
> off the APRs.
>
> With that said, I think the ease of use for recording and playback of
> the Compact Cassette (cassette) and its ubiquitous nature and the
> ability to put it in cars reliably spelled the death knell for the
> 8-track. The format itself was flawed and I'm not sure how well it
> stood up to the rigors of automotive service. Alignment probably was
> not much more critical than an auto-reversing cassette machine, but
> the head steppers could presumably wear out and the lubricant needed
> to be just right to keep the endless loop running.
>
> Then there were the recordings that split songs between tracks --
> nothing like the aluminum sensing tape causing a dropout as the music
> went, ummm round and round, in the middle of the song -- and the
> solenoid that ran the stepper would, on many machine, couple into the
> audio with a click.
>
> Cassettes were portable and by the mid-late 1970s exceeded the
> fidelity of the 8-track, even though using 1/2 the speed and tracks
> essentially the same width--cassette stereo tracks are about 23.5 mils
> while 8 tracks are about 21 mils for the actual track width.
>
> The cassette was less bulky and most people (though I met a few who
> couldn't grasp the concept, telling me my cassette had become
> confused) could grasp the properties of handling the cassette. Few,
> however, paid any attention to breaking out the record-enable tabs,
> sadly.
>
> By the early 1980s, the LP was becoming a "tweak head" thing and the
> new generation was listening to cassettes for their music. We had the
> Walkman and car players. And mix tapes became easy to do, yes, I'm
> sure that was part of the factor.
>
> Also, many people considered LPs extremely fragile -- those of us who
> had handling rituals didn't help the perception, I guess <smile>. To
> this day, my wife won't play LPs.
>
> I think the crossover came about 1982 (I could be off a few years)
> where more pre-recorded cassettes were sold than LPs. About that time,
> quality improved on pre-recorded cassettes--some were actually almost
> good. They didn't suffer ticks and pops.
>
> The CD came along about the same time, and in the beginning, was the
> ultimate "tweak head" thing with $1K players, but that didn't last
> long and certainly the ability to share music by CD and download made
> the cassette an anachronism. I recall sharing cassettes with a few
> friends in the mid 1990s as we were introducing each other to various
> music -- it was a good format for that as it ensured we wanted to buy
> the CD if we liked the music. There is less impetus to do that if you
> share CDs with friends in the same way. I bought (for me) a lot of
> music in the mid-90s on CD -- exploring folk music and supporting
> favourite artists.
>
> I never got involved with Napster as I thought from the get-go it was
> wrong, and few of my friends did, either, but obviously there were
> many who did.
>
> That certainly hastened the demise of the cassette.
>
> One thing that we miss today is a ubiquitous, easy-to-record format
> for non-commercial copying. For example, the local church still has a
> cassette recorder to record services for shut-ins. A wedding party was
> very disappointed when they found there wasn't a CD recorder,  but the
> shut-ins have cassette players, and re-equipping them with CD players
> would be a chore -- and introducing them to new technology would be
> even more difficult. Generally, shut-ins are older people. Also, there
> aren't that many good CD recorders out there today outside of a
> computer. Sony, for example, has discontinued their range of
> stand-alone CD recorders which I liked. I haven't looked into consumer
> models, but for the casual, non-commercial recording, we'd like to
> avoid SCMS and audio discs if possible.
>
> Other than CD, the up-and-coming formats seem to have problems in that
> while they will produce excellent results, some amount of
> post-production is needed. You don't want to give the wedding party a
> Compact Flash card of their wedding.
>
> But...back to the original question. I think many of use audio folks
> thought that the 8-track was a doomed format from the start, and
> marketing muscle won out for a while. It must have been a nightmare
> for the labels to keep triple inventory...and it certainly was a
> nightmare for manufacturing. Of course, with Ford, I think, originally
> sold on the idea, it was bound to go somewhere.
>
> Obviously you know about the 8-track heaven Web site. I forget the
> URL, but not hard to find.
>
> Sorry for the length, but it's an interesting question with lots of
> twists and turns.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> Quoting Rob Bamberger <rbamberger@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> > Is my recollection mostly correct that there were few, or essentially no
> > consumer market 8-track decks that permitted people to record their own
> > 8-track compilations for use in the car (or elsewhere)?
> >
> > When acquaintances remarked to me in the 1990s that they did not see
> > the cassette being displaced entirely by the CD, my response was that
> > the introduction of a recordable CD would be the end of the cassette
> > once the economics became comparable to cassette feedstock and
> > technology.
> >
> > Similarly, is it correct to surmise that the ability (eventually) to
> > make reasonably decent recordings of one's own LPs to cassette, or
> > custom compilations, was the major reason for the format's disappearance
> > in the early 1970s?
> >
> > (The 8-track format had a number of things going against it, and would
> > have passed from the scene at some point. The question here is why did
> > it disappear when it did.)
> >