New format HD8T

[kap'n krunch]

Found a (real) Sweetwater Music article....

NEW HI FI FORMAT, HD8t!!!!!

 

[cupboy]

Who will be making the chromium dioxide cartridges that are required with this?

 

[kap'n krunch]

don't know..but as long as they do it in Quad too!!!

 

[Snood]

8 Tracks are b@:ack????

 

[seilerbird]

April fool

 

[kap'n krunch]

Hey, even if it's April Fool's , the fact that Sweetwater posted this shows that they have a sense of humor ...(and besides, they are an excellent company)..

AND

Carts (used in radio, which played a twice the speed of home versions, IIRC...I used a LOT of those when I was a DJ in the 80s in an FM radio station) were VERY reliable...

 

[seilerbird]

Hey, even if it's April Fool's , the fact that Sweetwater posted this shows that they have a sense of humor ...(and besides, they are an excellent company)..

AND

Carts (used in radio, which played a twice the speed of home versions, IIRC...I used a LOT of those when I was a DJ in the 80s in an FM radio station) were VERY reliable...

I almost spit my coke through my nose. I made a fortune in the 60s and 70s repairing 4 track and 8 track cartridges. I remember the famous 8 track bush seen on the side of the road when a driver got pissed at his 8 track and threw it out the window creating a big bushy ball of tape on the side of the road.

 

[kap'n krunch]

During my tenure as a DJ, I NEVER had ANY problems with a cart....and that was 2 years!....now..home stereo ones were another thing....

(EDIT: I must admit I made a mistake...carts in radio stations were "Fidelipacs" and were physically different from home 8 track tapes....apologies)

 

[Mr. Poobah]

Tape holder thingy?

 

[Philip Spinner]

A fellow railfan friend of mine claims that he has a patent on a mini reversable 8 track cart. Not sure if he was pulling my leg but he did work at 3M most of his life.

 

[Doug G.]

As a former member of the 8-track manufacturing industry (the company I worked for made 8-track decks for the Ford Motor Company to put into their radios - stereo and quad), I have always maintained that if the efforts that were put into developing the cassette system would have been directed to 8-tracks, A very acceptable and superior to cassette system could have materialized.

After all, even the most elementary thing - faster tape speed - was already there with 8-tracks. And a correctly manufactured 8-track cartridge is very reliable, contrary to the ones that ended up on the side of the road, although that situation was not solely due to the cartridge. Users didn't keep their machines clean and the tape would wind around the sticky capstan instead of being forwarded by it.

I had a friend once who, after hearing the 8-track system in my car, couldn't believe it actually WAS 8-track. He said, "It's all there!"

Doug

 

[seilerbird]

During my tenure as a DJ, I NEVER had ANY problems with a cart....and that was 2 years!....now..home stereo ones were another thing....

(EDIT: I must admit I made a mistake...carts in radio stations were "Fidelipacs" and were physically different from home 8 track tapes....apologies)

I worked in radio stations and never had any problems with them there either. However radio stations don't generally travel down the road at 60 mph and endlessly get shaken. That shaking would make the tension on the pinch roller change which would cause the tape to either run all over the place or get wound up so tight the tape would not move. Many people here listen to surround in the car and a tape player would be a disaster. But it was an April Fools joke anyway so it doesn't matter.

 

[dr8track]

I have always maintained that if the efforts that were put into developing the cassette system would have been directed to 8-tracks, A very acceptable and superior to cassette system could have materialized.

After all, even the most elementary thing - faster tape speed - was already there with 8-tracks.

Doug

Finally! Someone who shares my opinion about how much more advanced the 8-track could have been if it wasn't abandoned and all the technological focus shifted to the crappy cassette tape! My music listening experience was at the sweet spot for 8-tracks. Cassettes were a format I skipped almost entirely. Obviously, given my screen name, I've always had a soft spot for the quirky 8-track which has never seemed to get its proper respect. In this day and age of the near extinction of physical media, it's hard for people who were not from my generation to realize that before the invention of the 8-track (and the less commercially successful 4-track cart) there was no feasible way of having your choice of music in your vehicle. You had two options: Listen to whatever radio stations you could get over the air in your area or... and this one was pretty darn unrealistic, install a record player in your car! There were a few attempts at this, but obviously, you don't have to have a vivid imagination to realize the problems with playing vinyl records in a moving automobile. So the 8-track cartridge (and the 4-track cartridge) provided a freedom and practical format to actually take your tunes on the road with you. It was revolutionary at the time. Your choice of music while driving, while at the beach, while parked and making out with your girlfriend, etc., etc.
Was it the perfect format? No. In retrospect it's mainly maligned because of the 2 sides of a record being divided up into 4 programs on a cartridge, which often resulted in the need for a mid-song fade out, kerchunk of the track change, and the song to be continued on the next track. Also there is a lot of talk about carts tangling and being tossed. I seem to recall just as many cassettes strewn along the highway with a twisted tangle of tape coming from the housing, so I don't feel this was unique to the 8-track format.
When it comes to the freedom we have today of taking an enormous variety of music with us wherever we go, we should all remember the 8-track fondly as the pioneering audio format that started that revolution.

 

[seilerbird]

It would not have mattered how much money Ford would have invested into 8 tracks it would have never made any difference. Consumers vote with their wallets and 8 track tapes were gigantic compared to cassettes. Carrying around a few dozen 8 tracks took up a lot of room. A few dozen cassettes fit neatly under the seats. And yes there were plenty of cassette bushes on the side of the road too, but I saw many more from 8 tracks. I actually owned a Muntz 4 track machine in 1966 and what a disaster that was and it was the real pioneering audio format for mobile audio.

 

[quicksrt]

A fellow railfan friend of mine claims that he has a patent on a mini reversable 8 track cart. Not sure if he was pulling my leg but he did work at 3M most of his life.

I pretty sure that design patents only last 14 years. So it is likely expired by now - unless designs that never make it to the market are held indefinitely which I would doubt.

Your friend is now SOL.

http://www.stopfakes.gov/faqs/how-long-does-patent-trademark-or-copyright-protection-last

 

[quadsearcher]

Finally! Someone who shares my opinion about how much more advanced the 8-track could have been if it wasn't abandoned and all the technological focus shifted to the crappy cassette tape! My music listening experience was at the sweet spot for 8-tracks. Cassettes were a format I skipped almost entirely. Obviously, given my screen name, I've always had a soft spot for the quirky 8-track which has never seemed to get its proper respect. In this day and age of the near extinction of physical media, it's hard for people who were not from my generation to realize that before the invention of the 8-track (and the less commercially successful 4-track cart) there was no feasible way of having your choice of music in your vehicle. You had two options: Listen to whatever radio stations you could get over the air in your area or... and this one was pretty darn unrealistic, install a record player in your car! There were a few attempts at this, but obviously, you don't have to have a vivid imagination to realize the problems with playing vinyl records in a moving automobile. So the 8-track cartridge (and the 4-track cartridge) provided a freedom and practical format to actually take your tunes on the road with you. It was revolutionary at the time. Your choice of music while driving, while at the beach, while parked and making out with your girlfriend, etc., etc.
Was it the perfect format? No. In retrospect it's mainly maligned because of the 2 sides of a record being divided up into 4 programs on a cartridge, which often resulted in the need for a mid-song fade out, kerchunk of the track change, and the song to be continued on the next track. Also there is a lot of talk about carts tangling and being tossed. I seem to recall just as many cassettes strewn along the highway with a twisted tangle of tape coming from the housing, so I don't feel this was unique to the 8-track format.
When it comes to the freedom we have today of taking an enormous variety of music with us wherever we go, we should all remember the 8-track fondly as the pioneering audio format that started that revolution.

I got into music at the tail end of the 8 track era, around '77, but there were good things about them even then. Many sounded great in the car and fine at home. It was great to just slam it in the player and hear an album. Continuous play was good for uninterrupted, uh, studying with a girl from school. I still have a bunch of tapes, and need to stock up on foam and figure out what to do with Ampex melted pinch rollers.

 

[JonUrban]

I was a pro-cassette, anti-8Track guy in the early '70s, but when quad came around, I HAD to get a Q8 player for the car, so I made the switch. I have to admit that the faster speed and (mostly) non fade-out on Q8's made me appreciate the format more. Even today when a Q8 conversion is done properly from a decent tape, it can sound good enough to go "That's from an 8-Track?" and get confused looks from people.

As I recall, many stores charged almost $10 for a Q8 ($8.99) and back then that was a lot of coin. That, along with all of the other quad disadvantages (nothing available that I want to hear, can't afford a player for the house, etc), pretty much killed the format, although it did survive into the '80s. Better cassette decks and especially duplication decks (with two cassette players in one machine) really fueled the cassette dominance, along with much better tape quality. (Who remembers metal tapes?)

Anyway, IMHO, Q8's rule to this day. And there are many titles you can only get on Q8. Who's fault is that?

 

[timbre4]

The Q8 tapes I bought on good days were $5.99 at Tower Records, Wherehouse Records or Licorice Pizza, although Federated in Los Angeles had many @ $4.66! Alas, I didn't quite have my driver's license yet to drive up there from San Diego. We frowned on the stores that sold them for $7.98 or more.

As the Q8 scene faded, better and better cassettes took over. Yes, CRo2, Ferrichrome, metal particle type IV, etc. bought them all!