A 2024 Quad 8-Track Player?
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Pretty wild. Too bad he didn't have more quad tapes to match what it was being heard. It's a bit disconcerting when it doesn't match what you're accustomed to hearing. Other than that, this is an incredible engineering effort and process documentation!
His channel balance method 
Brilliant work; he should be hired or consult for the Involve boys to put together a CD-4 board into a future Surround Master… @chucky3042
Brilliant work; he should be hired or consult for the Involve boys to put together a CD-4 board into a future Surround Master… @chucky3042
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I only dabbled in 8 track stereo playback and chose QR when I could afford a proper Open Reel QUAD deck. But since a lot of Stereo 8 Track tapes sported Dolby b NR I always wondered if Q8 tapes folllowed suit.
Well, here's the answer to that query:
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/quadraphonic-dolby-q8s.10215/
Well, here's the answer to that query:
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/quadraphonic-dolby-q8s.10215/
jimfisheye
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
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In 2024 if you find an old quad Q8 that's genuinely out of print with no digital reissue, don't you look up someone with experience and an open reel deck to carefully transfer and digitize it? Possibly holding your breath while the tape plays?
Playing these old tapes for sport? Yikes!
The retro futurism is cool!
Playing these old tapes for sport? Yikes!
The retro futurism is cool!
What a project! Thanks for sharing this. I've got a few old Q8's but no way to play them.
Now that's what I call dedication!
I tip my hat to this gentleman.
I tip my hat to this gentleman.
The new machine isn't actually playing the tape. He has digital copies that are triggered by the QR code label that he attached to each tape. Call it a replica Q8 player. Sort of reminds me of a modern jukebox that has no actual records inside. A lot of thought must have gone into making it, hats off to him for that.
To the designers credit Dolbyized tapes sounded OK without being decoded. Yes, back in the day Dolby was most often used as a treble boost. Budget equipment never even bothered to add decoding as that would just add to cost with little real benefit.
As Dolby for higher quality cassette use became more common so did the use of Dolby on pre-recorded releases. Eight track machines generally fell into the budget crowd hence no Dolby. Recording with Dolby encoding on had become commonplace even if properly decoding those tapes was far less common. They started to apply Dolby to eight tracks as well. The Canadian Gold Cartridge UA Q8 releases sound very good indeed even without decoding.
On the decoding side if the tape playback level is not matched to the encoded record level you will get an excessive reduction in high frequency response. Just another reason that such tapes often sound better with Dolby decoding switched off. So for proper Dolby decoding you need an adjustable unit like the Teac AN-300. Reels always had calibration tones at the start of the tape. Q8's and cassettes did not, making proper decoding rather more hit and miss.
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