Quote:
Originally Posted by Apache
Jon, you may have been the only person in the world who did not have problems with 8 Tracks. They were notorious for the following problems: 1) Tape Drag 2) Tape Player Eating tape 3) hearing parts of two songs at the same time and 4) The splice coming apart. Tape drag was caused by the tape getting too tight and slowing down. You could open the case and pull the tape out and rewind it. Sometimes it worked and sometimes you were out of luck. If the head got dirty, it could grab the tape and pull out the tape. Sometimes you could repair also, but sometimes it would stretch or break the tape. If the tape head or tape was out of alignment you would here parts of two songs. And a couple of times I had the splice come apart. 8 Tracks were popular, in spite of the inherent problems, because cassette tapes were very thin, and the sound quality was really terrible. Once the quality of cassettes improved eight track died a lonely and sad death. 
Apache |
All true. But 8 track wasn't much higher quality if at all. Track width the same, but faster speed. Compact Cassettes invented/developed 1st in 1962 and only intended for voice originally. The 8 Track never got much support in Europe. It succeeded for a while in USA because one (or maybe two) car makers (autos) put them as standard. Being endless loop they inherently had bad wow and high tape wear. A two track head stepped up & down was used actuated by foil at the splice, so problem for putting an album in four parts rather than two. Inherently fast forward and especially rewind impossible. Home recorders did exist in "music-centers" but I only saw one once. Cassette quality exceeded 8-Track by late 1960s. The Lear Jet Stereo 8 was only released in 1964 and was hardly seen in Europe before 1969.
It was simply the big cartridge used for rented muzak systems cut down in size (those were about x4 bigger). RCA did have a 1/4" tape cassette in 1958 and later Sony revived the 1/4" faster tape as Elcaset, but it was too late and failed despite in theory 4x 1/8" cassette quality.
The 8 Track was really obsolete the day it was released and poor life for any music you bought. So slightly related to DRM, because if you played an album lots you had to buy it again. A Compact Cassette can last 100x more playings.
I've reel to reel tapes from 1960s and cassette tapes from early 1970s that still work.
The Lear Jet Audio 8 Track was the worst post-1960 audio format ever.