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

["Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.)