The cassettes were very large. It only played in monotone. And there were 8 tracks to your tape.
So what was the point of 8 track tapes?
To play music? What was the point of Model Ts? So clunky, slow, horrible gas mileage…
For one, they were a lot smaller than records. And you could switch from parts of the tape a little easier than going over to your turntable and try to put the needle in the right place.
A few years from now, we may be wondering why we ever used VCRs.
They weren’t monotone. They played two tracks at a time, so you got stereo. Actually, if the heads weren’t aligned, you could hear two songs at once. You can’t do that with a cassette!
They predated audio cassettes, so it was the only way to play recorded music in your car. Plus, you could switch between four stereo tracks, like an instant fast forward. And they never had to be rewound. A great idea for its time.
The main point of 8-track tapes was to be able to play them without ever having to flip them over for the other side, as you had to do with phonograph records and cassettes. This made 8-track tapes ideal for listening to tapes in cars (this was before they invented cassette players for cars that flipped the tape over by itself).
And let me reiterate what others have said above, 8-track tapes were in stereo. There were four “programs” per tape, and each program had a left and right channel, making a total of eight tracks. Each program was equal in length to half of one side of a phonograph record or cassette. The tape was a continuous loop, and a metallic splice that joined the two ends of the tape together signalled the tape player to shift to the next program.
One slightly annoying thing about 8-track tapes was that because each program had to be exactly as long as the other three, songs were often split between two programs. So you’d hear the song fade out, a “ka-chunk” as the tape head moved to the next program, and then the song would fade back in and continue.
I have dozens of 8-track tapes that I really ought to unload one of these days, although I can’t imagine who would buy them, even on eBay.
I remember 8-tracks! You could even buy 8-track recording decks! For its day, it was not a bad format-however, I remember that at some point the lubricant on the tapes would wear off, then your tape would jam up. Usually, the deck would then shoot out your tape, and you would have several feet of unwound tape on the floor. Yeah, no market for these things today-you see them at yard sales, but no buyers…at some point, they will all wind up in the junkyard!
Having lived through the era they were introduced, I can testify that while all of the above testimony is true, Fear Itself was very accurate (I especially liked chriszarate’s answer). Until that time, it was pretty much the radio (predominately AM too, although FM was just starting to make some inroads in a few markets) or nothing; so to be able to take your music of choice with you on a date, cruising or whatever was pretty special.
In the town where I grew up (in the mountains of Colorado) there was basically only one rock ‘n’ roll station we could pull in (and only in the evening) so to show up playing something different than what was on KOMA was very cool.
I should point out there were two innovations that preceeded the 8-track tape when it came to car stereo systems. They actually came out with a car record player, but that bombed terribly because of the records destroyed by cars hitting potholes and the like. And there was also the 4-track, but 8-tracks were such a step up from that, that I believe that 4-tracks only were seriously on the market for about six months or so before 8-tracks became dominant.
TV
slight hijack
Compare Walloon’s link with a picture of a 35mm movie platter system.
When I was showing movies years ago, I found it fascinating that they had used the same principle (draw the film from the center of the reel and wrap around the outside) as was used for 8-track tapes.
As an 8-track plays, each coil that is wrapped around the outside has to tighten slightly over time so that eventually it has the diameter of the center core. Film doesn’t do this as easily; hence, they usually go from one platter to another. Even though they lose the “continuous loop” aspect, there is one cool outcome: when the film is finished, it does not need to be rewound. The beginning of the film is always at the center of the platter.
There are some platters out there that run in a continuous loop. They use arms that pack the film as the platter turns. Besides the fact that they cannot hold as much film, I don’t trust them.
A few additional details:
8-tracks as a consumer item didn’t predate casettes (they had been used in radio for years before they trickled down to the consumer in a modified form*). However, the sound was of much higher quality. Back then, tape quality was a function of tape speed; 8-tracks went at 7 1/2 ips, casettes 1 7/8 ips (they still do, but recording techniques have improved).
8-tracks gave good quality stereo sound (in a time where stereo FM was still developing, and where FM stations were sometimes few and far between).
One big downside was that it was next to impossible to fit the tracks on an album into four neat segments. So they either rearranged the songs or had the dreaded fade out – the sound would fade away, you’d hear the “click” of the heads moving to the next segment, and then the sound would fade up.
*The main difference is that on a radio cartridge (as they were called), the tape drive wheel came up from behind the tape in a hole in the cart. Consumer 8-tracks had the drive wheel in front of the tape. The radio version required pulling a lever to engage the tape once the cart was inserted; consumer 8-tracks could just be slid into place. Radio used the carts because they were easily cued up (when you recorded on them, a signal was placed at the beginning of recording; the cart would stop when it got to that point). In the 70s, all jingles, ads, etc., and all songs currently in rotation were kept on carts; the only records played were oldies.
I love to point this out: Men walked on the moon as 8-tracks were the hi-tech audio format of their time.
Try talking to these people.
Also, you didn’t mean monotone, you meant monophonic. A monotone recording would be rather uninteresting, though there are works that spring to mind.
You all are right, of course. What I want to know is what ever happened to reel-to-reel? At one time that was the Cadillac of playback, but when exactly did they die out?
I remember 8 tracks well. The big irriation for me was that when they split a song between programs, often they would fade down about 15 seconds before the splice in the tape, then you’d hit the splice, then another 15 seconds of blank tape before fading back in. Then remember how the tapes got chewed up?
I had a friend who got a good reel-to-reel around 1980. He was the last one I know of who got one. This was also the same time that cassettes were replacing 8-tracks for use in cars, BTW.
MSU, it wasn’t 15 seconds, more like 5. The song you were listening to would fade out, then the kachunk, then it would fade in, but the song would have gone backwards a few seconds so you wouldn’t miss anything.
Another justification for 8-track tapes over cassettes is that the track widths on cassette tapes is only half the width of the track widths on 8-track tapes; and pre-recorded cassettes move at only half the speed of 8-track tapes, making 8-tracks notably superior in sound quality.
Neither true nor fair. The audiophile format of preference in 1969 was the reel-to-reel tape recorder, not the 8-track (although the latter, as I pointed out, was still superior in quality to the cassette tape).
Also, all consumer formats in 1969, as today, were a compromise between what was possible and what was affordable and practical. By 1969, recording studios were using 16-track, 2-inch wide masters. And their sound quality of those masters is still admirable – listen to the Beatles’ Abbey Road on CD.
Another point concerning 8-track vs. cassettes: They were remarkably low-tech. Very few moving parts, for both the cartridge and the player. The only part that was at all sophisticated was the track changer. So they were also added to those cheap, crappy “all-in-one” home hi-fi systems. Hardly added to the cost at all.
Some purport that there is another, more sinister reason for the existence of the 8-Track, as espoused by Big Black on the back cover of The Rich Man’s 8-Track Tape.
“This compact disc, compiled to exploit those of you gullible enough to own the bastardly first-generation digital home music system, contains all-analogue masters… Don’t worry about their longevity, as Philips will pronounce them obsolete when the next phase of the market-squeezing technology bonanza begins.”
And then, on the CD itself:
“When, in five years, this remarkable achievement in the advancement of fidelity is obsolete and unplayable on any ‘modern’ equipment, remember: in 1971, the 8-track tape was state of the art.”
Note that Walloon points out that the above statement about the 8-track being “state of the art” is neither true nor fair. It’s also worth mentioning that the abovementioned CD was released in 1987, and I was just listening to mine last week.
All in all, I’d say the marketing theory doesn’t cut much glass with either product.
Exactly! To add to this, I’d point out that each point of the tape is constantly changing its location relative to nearby points. That is, the tape is constantly “rubbing against itself.” This is why you got the “echoes.” The oxide on one segment of tape would either transfer to or modify the oxide on an adjacent segment of tape.
I’ve always thought of 8-track tapes as a technology that was designed to fail. Every 8-track ever made was doomed to eat itself.