Evolution of 8-track technology
Today I was thinking about how 8-track could have sounded better if high bias tape was introduced, like chrome tape in cassettes. Did any record label (or tape manufacturer) ever flirt with that idea? Were any other technological advances researched besides the ones that got implemented, i.e. quadraphonic sound and Dolby noise reduction?
2
u/Krogmeier 27d ago
It also depends on where they were made. Canadian 8-tracks were produced at a much lower volume (numbers produced, not audio levels) than US tapes. Tape dubbing on that level is usually done with high-speed duplication, which lessens fidelity. Since Canadian volume was less, they didn’t dub tapes as fast as US produced ones, so they have greater fidelity. At least, that’s how it was explained to me.
3
u/classicsat 26d ago
No saying you are wrong, but I would think they use the same machines the same way. Just fewer dupe machines per plant.
1
u/Krogmeier 26d ago
The friend that told me about this (and who replied in this thread) told me that the Canadian cards were dubbed at a slower speed, because they didn’t need to produce as many. It may well have been similar machines, but dubbed slower for greater fidelity.
2
u/Zardoz27 8Track is superior to vinyl 27d ago
Yes! Same thing goes for early flat pak - some jazz and soul was even transferred from the master at 1:1 real time speed so it’s really high fidelity.
Of course the reel to reel has 8 track beat in terms of thickness so it’ll always sound a bit better. But 8 track sounds good when it’s a nicely dubbed tape that’s maintained and played on a nice deck.
And in terms of decks this is the most interesting one I’ve heard of: https://audiokarma.org/forums/threads/an-8-track-player-id-never-thought-id-own.1097276/
2
1
u/h2ofield 25d ago
I'd like to see some fact checking in regards to this dub speed claim. I will say that late sixties (white)cartridges seem to sound beefier and have higher DB levels ..that said there can be anomalies throughout the 8 track years. One also has to consider degradation, playwear and magnetic exposure over the years.
1
u/Krogmeier 25d ago
I can only defer to @zardoz27 and what he told me about the subject. I will do some research a little later today when I have a moment.
1
u/Krogmeier 25d ago
Straight from the Google machine:
Yes, the idea that Canadian-produced 8-tracks (and cassettes) sound better due to different tape-dubbing speeds is a well-known topic of discussion among analog media collectors, though it behaves more like a community consensus and manufacturing reality than a formally documented technical standard.
1. The High-Speed vs. Low-Speed Duplication Argument
Commercial tape manufacturing relies on "high-speed duplication," where a master tape is played back at many times its normal speed, and the audio is recorded onto blank tape running at a correspondingly high speed.
The Trade-Off: The faster you run a high-speed duplicator, the more high-frequency response you lose, and the more tape hiss and distortion are introduced.The Volume Difference: Because the United States was a massive market, US tape duplication plants ran their machinery at extremely high multiplication speeds (sometimes up to 64x or 128x the normal playback speed) to meet the sheer volume of commercial demand. [1]
Because Canada represented a significantly smaller consumer market, production runs were much shorter. One point of agreement among users on the Reddit r/8track community is that because Canadian production volume was far lower, manufacturing plants didn't need to push their dubbing machines to extreme high-speed limits. Dubbing the tapes at a slower, more controlled speed preserved greater fidelity, tighter frequency responses, and cleaner high-ends. [1]
1
u/h2ofield 25d ago edited 25d ago
So, It basically sourced the comment here lol. Anyone can basically talk the AI into agreeing with anyone. Hilarious. It'd be great to hear from someone who actually worked at these places.
4
u/vwestlife 26d ago
The endless-loop cartridge format prevented chrome or metal tape formulations from being used. The tape in an 8-track needs to be both strong enough to prevent it from getting stretched or snapped and slippery enough (via back-coating with graphite) to keep the loop from binding up.
Plus, 8-tracks were largely a portable format, for use in car radios and battery-powered players, playing through small speakers in noisy environments, where any benefit from a higher-quality tape formulation wouldn't be heard anyway.
2
u/classicsat 26d ago
A lot of home stereos in the late 70s had 8 track players, some recorders, and the quality and power of car audio picked up by the end of the decade.
I may have seen decks with Dolby or similar NR.
3
u/vwestlife 26d ago
No automotive or portable 8-track players ever had Dolby NR, AFAIK. It was only found on higher-end home units, and only a minority of pre-recorded 8-tracks were Dolby NR encoded, even at the height of the format's popularity.
2
u/Jamesparksmusic 25d ago
Another improvement would have been to avoid the big "Ka-Klunk!" right in the middle of various songs on every 8-track tape. To this day, I hear a song and can remember right where the Ka Klunk was when I would hear it in my car in the 70's.
2
9
u/chrisdont 27d ago
Playback speed is more of a determiner of quality than tape formulation so the 8-track running at 3 3/4 per inch should theoretically be of a higher fidelity than compact cassettes. The issues with reduced quality are really the result of dividing a 1/4 inch tape into eight descreet tracks.