What's so bad about 8 track tapes?

I littered the roads with eaten eight track tapes many years ago.

 

Also, a lot less people smoke now, so they don't have matchbook covers to make the tape stay in the player

 

I still have around 40 or so 8 track tapes. I keep them for the nostalgia and conversation pieces. They had their place in history and were a stepping stone to better technology. They would never have the same popularity today because there is better stuff available now.

 

Bemoaning the loss of 8-track tapes is like bemoaning the loss of steel phonograph needles.

 

They are not an audiophile's delight so an interest in analog recordings helps. Same goes for 78 RPM records and wax cylinders. I owned no 8 tracks during the 25 years or whatever they were a going concern but did become interested a few years ago and came to learn there is a small "community" of 8 track hobbyists. Cartridges and hardware need to be put back into working condition. Tapes are not "plug 'n' play 95% of the time and any I acquire are reconditioned. Just opening them successfully can be a bit of a challenge because over the years there were many different cartridge designs and once inside, several problems can be encountered. A simple pad/splice replacement takes 20 minutes but unspooling and respooling a tape pack for whatever reason takes much longer. It did become somewhat of an obsession as I am now at about 700 tapes and 8 recording decks all of which are in working order. The number of tapes I actually acquired was multiples of those kept but I disposed of genres or artists I had no interest in. It amused me how fast the responses came when I advertised 8 track tapes in CL's "Free Stuff" section. A big peeve is finding a desirable tape only to discover some one had recorded over top of it. I encountered several of those but one which sticks out is Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn onto which someone had recorded The Eagles. Sometimes fidelity is worse than what it should be because of improper storage like next to furnace motor for a decade or two. 8 track recordings are like vintage cars or motorcycles, New stuff is better from a technical standpoint but some enjoy getting the old stuff going again. I now incorporate 8 tracks into my "library" which consists of vinyl, CD's, reel to reel and some 78's. Although I have more 8 tracks than CD's I am working on that as I noticed there is glut of used CD's available. Presumably because people dump them after transferring to a portable device or hard drive.

 

Where is cassette making a "mainstream" comeback? Even the "huge" vinyl resurgence is barely noticed by the mainstream.

 

Don't let these old fogies get you down. I love my 8-track player and tapes. I recently acquired Tunnel Of Love, my holy grail of 8-track tapes. There is nothing like them. I've spent plenty of time with cassettes and prefer 8-tracks. Tapes usually just sound like ****ty versions of the record. 8-tracks seem to take you into a different sound entirely. My Roxy Music s/t tape sounds like a totally different mix than the vinyl counterpart. That is for me, the definitive way to listen to that album. Lou Reed's Berlin has an extended version of the song Berlin on the 8-track release. These things are sweet, let these bi-amping, DAC worshiping dudes enjoy their ones and zeroes. I'm going to go listen to Heroes!

 

You don't say. I have Lou Reed Berlin on 8 track and did not notice the extended version. I bought the vinyl LP when it was released so heard it a lot. I'll play the 8 track again and listen more closely. This makes me remember seeing print media ads for that album when new. It was to be "the Sgt. Pepper's for the 1970's".

 

LOUSY . . . SOUND . . . QUALITY.

Its only two qualities: Portability and ease of disposal . . . out the window at freeway speed.

 

Something tells me me OP isn't old enough to have ever HEARD an 8-track? Anybody who has would never ask this question. A better question is what executive ok'd a format for music that couldn't even even make it through a couple songs without fade-out/CHUNK/fade-in, like we will 'pretend we didn't hear that'? As a kid I have zero fond memories of 8-track tapes, they ruined most albums immediately. (However ATRAC+ was decent for a lossy codec, but thats another story)

 

There were lots of cheap knockoff players back in the 70's. The 70's was the decade of cheap plastic, huge gawdy ties, and gas guzzler cars, wall paneling, shag carpets... everything was butt-ugly brown or orange.

The 8 track was the perfect 70's commodity, plastic, low cost, clever. But it was the first successful mass produced portable format. The 8 track was fun.

To say the 8 track is not a valid hi-fidelity format is a valid one. Irrefutable are the multiple maladies, crosstalk (another song playing in the background) muddy sound, oxide accumulation on the head, the mid-song clunk event, wow & flutter, limited frequency range, noisy pinch rollers, head wear. (excessive pressure pad force) The unattended 8 track repeated endlessly until one realizes it's been driving you nuts for hours, then end up throwing the tape across the room. (such musical enjoyment with the 8 track tape)

The cartridges self destructed. Life expectancy is uncertain contingent on the quality of tape, the density of the pack, and if the tape was not subjected to a hot car.
The foam type of pressure pad disintegrates after so many decades, but that gets a pass since any vintage item may require some type of rebuild after so much time.

8 Track perks:
The 1st generation Lear Jet tapes were very good, better quality control, better sound, and higher quality tape. Examples would be Universal City (Elton John "Honky Chateau") A&M TC-8, Columbia TC-8 (Lear Jet version) and some others too. These tapes produced respectable fidelity, had less crosstalk problems, sometimes none at all. The 8 track format has inherently high crosstalk due to the very narrow guard track between tracks, so most tapes will produce audible crosstalk, hopefully masked enough by the music playing. A well mastered, higher quality cartridge and player can produce 30-15,000 Hz. Not impressive as a spec, but just in perspective was once considered full range high fidelity back in the 50's. I forget the specific brands and models, but there existed some rare boutique players to enhance home decor, fancy-schmancy sphere speakers, stylized portable players for outdoor activities, etc. My first player for my 69 GTO was a Kraco top of the line unit with FM, all chrome face, smart looking. It was reliable, the head did not gunk up, produced full range sound as practical and good sounding as can be expected.

The car 8 track players were simple design, simple amplifiers, often with only a volume and tone control. The simple amplifier circuits of only a few transistors produced good sound. The output power ranged from maybe 2.5 watts to 8 watts per channel, which was high for an 8 track.

I don't think the 8 track was ever conceived as a serious audiophile format. It was a convenience item, highly successful. By the time tape formulas improved, the cassette had already displaced the 8 track. So for lack of a more serious nostalgic appeal, the lowly 8 track remains just a nostalgic item, and perhaps better to remain that way. I loved my 8 tracks, but only in the car. For the home, it was my AR turntable.

 

Regarding sound quality, there were made (and still are) bad sounding LP's Also cassettes and CD's. Absolutely, 8 track had it's foibles as a format but I find it truly amazing that some tapes survived considering the physical condition I've found them in. I read a comment once hypothesizing what condition we would be in after spending a lifetime in or under the back seat of '68 Camaro. I've found remarkable detritus inside cartridges including dried mud, insect husks, bird feathers, pubic hair and what I believed was a mummified newly born mouse. Despite their obviously hard life, after reconditioning, they sound fine or more accurately, as good as an they probably sounded when new. Those one's with dried mud inside?....may have been chucked out the widow of a moving car for all I know but they survived to play another day.

As I type this, I am listening to one of several cartridges I acquired this past week. It's an album called Crawler by a band of the same name and it sounds very good - fidelity, recording quality, musicianship etc. Because of their relative scarcity, I buy 8 tracks more readily than I would an LP or CD. As long as it is or I suspect that it is rock or blues, I'll buy it. I never heard of Crawler and would certainly not have bothered with it otherwise but it seems Crawler (formerly Back Street Crawler) was created after Paul Kossoff (formerly of Free and who founded the band) died. I quite like this album even though I've never heard of them before.

Crawler (band) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »

You just don't know what you'll come upon sometimes when you're looking for 8 track tapes. I found Mick Ronson's Slaughter on 10th Avenue recently and it's in a stack of reconditioned cartridges awaiting playback testing. I'm looking forward to hearing that one as I have not heard any of Mick Ronson's solo efforts.

My very first record player was given to me by my grandmother when I only a few years old. It had an electric motor but just played 78's - no amplifier or speaker, sound was pruduced from a metal diaphram in the tonearm and it used the aforementioned steel needles. So I've heard what bad sound really is. Compared to that, criticizing 8 track vs LP or CD is splitting hairs - pubic or otherwise.

 

I have a working 8 track player in my Chevelle. Let the good times roll.

 

If I ever find those Iron Maiden 8-tracks I will buy a player.

 

I had an 8-track player in the last van I owned prior to moving abroad. This was 1998. When people asked what the hell it was I told them "It's an anti-theft stereo" because who the hell would steal it?

 

....and then there was the different track running order, often completely changing the flow of the album.....then.....clunk....

 

I like vintage audio and have Magnavox sets from 1950, '56, '64, and '70. So I had to add the accessory 8-track to the 1970 console. They're fun! The Ellington/Basie cartridge actually sounds pretty good.

 

Not interested in getting into a big "sound quality" debate, but there is a reason CD caught on and vinyl records kept being produced, while cassettes and 8-tracks did not.

 

I never ever seen a 8-track tape in my life. I don't think we even had them here in scandinavia.

I had to read up on how they worked. Had a hard time wrapping my head around it.

It's four tracks running simultanously and it first runs all the song on the first track, then second track and so on? Infinite loop?

I don't get why they did it that complicated? They could have used two reels like a normal casette? That would have made them more reliable. In that size they could have used two big reels and gotten better sq than compact casette. Seems just silly to me.

 

I agree with pretty much everything in your post. I believe 8 tracks were popular for 2 main reasons: Most young people lived from their cars and the general public could have a decent sound from an economical sound systems manufactured in that time period. Once folks started to invest in more expensive systems, the started to favor cassettes over the 8 track format. I still have some fond (and not so fond) memories from 8 track tapes.

 

8-tracks have too many negative considerations to ever make a comeback.
1). The necessary lubricant on the tape goes away.
2). Built-in rubber pinch rollers deteriorate.
3). As with cassettes, built-in rubbing block deteriorates.
4). Noisy when changing tracks, clunk, clunk.
5). When not recorded correctly, changes tracks in the middle of the song.
6). Most 8-track decks didn't have a fast-forward and none had a rewind(an impossibility).
7). They take up too much storage space compared to cassettes or even LP's.
8). Not as convenient as a cassette or CD.
9). Using a higher grade of tape would make 8-tracks cost prohibitive.
10). More difficult to manufacture and duplicate.

 

You guys are a hoot. Of course 8-tracks were not audiophile quality. And it would not matter if they were; the sound of a 300 hp V-8 with glass pack pipes drowned out any subtleties. It was about volume. Too busy thinking about the girlfriends panties found in the back seat from the night before to think about the sonic nuances of an Edgar Winter Band 8-track.

 

All 8-tracks had a limited lifespan. You play them, you're closer to the day they break. It's part of the design.

 

I guess that was great for the record companies huh.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with [ka-chunk-chunk] [whirrr] [ka-chunk-chunk] eight track tapes and anyone who tells you other-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r [snap!].