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Why Does 8-Track Exist?

RobRoy said:
I worked at Video Concepts in the very early 80's. I was a big laserdisc fan and we also sold those crappy RCA "needle in a groove" video disks. I refused to sell the latter, but was very worried that RCA's marketing behemoth would get enough people to buy it to give laserdisc a run in the same way VHS took over Beta.

Fortunatley, that old RCA system is my posterchild for the concept that even powerful marketing cannot completely overcome really, REALLY bad design.

And that is a good thing. :)
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Ever seen a Chiapet? Marketing can sell anything.
 
Outland said:
I suppose a finer question is; what allowed the cassette to become superior over the 8-track sonically? Was it CrO2, Dolby, etc.?
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To use an analogy, when the jet powered airplane was first introduced, propeller aircraft were at their pinnacle. I believe some even had a higher top speed than some jet aircraft. But jet engines were just getting started while prop powered aircraft were quickly approaching their design limitations.

The ate-track inherent design was a stop-gap that did have one real benefit, as demonstrated in the prolonged use of that design for recorded commercials and announcements in radio. The infinite loop filled a nice niche.
 
Some history can be found here: www.8trackheaven.com

IMHO, improving on the cassette was the better idea because it had more potential than the 8 track. Longer recording times, new tape formulations, noise reduction, the ability to rewind and it's compact size. With 8 tracks, there were no ways to improve. Dolby noise reduction was added, but by then cassettes rule the market. It was still a clunky format.
 
Back around 1970, while all my friends had 8-track, I could not stand the obviously flawed infinite loop and the track change in the middle of a song. It destroyed the music, as far as I was concerned. I also had a friend that owned a Radio Shack cassette recorder. I would go over to his place and use the latest TDK tapes to record my albums.

I had a 1963 Rambler classic (with fold down seats, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and put one of these on a slide mount on the center floor hump. I had to cut 6x9 holes in the METAL rear deck for some very nice coaxial speakers. Who's Next was killer on that system. It even made it's way to my Vega GT, from which it was stolen near Seattle Center while I attended a concert. It really was a great deck. This is a stock web image...
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JohnVF said:
It doesn't always come down to marketing. It's often licensing (of the format itself and what's made available on the format), availability of the tech across brands/platforms, etc. People will buy what is made available to them in the most places with the most titles.
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That right there really cuts to the heart of the VHS vs Beta war.
 
Wigwam Jones said:
And you're trying to grasp technical 'why' without noting the marketing 'why'. People buy what they are told to buy. Superior tech often has little to do with it.
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This is the crux of the matter.

Betamax was a superior format over VHS, too.

8 Tracks made it to market first with 'better' sound. It really wasn't til the very late 70's that cassettes finally pulled ahead of the 8 track, and only because the cassette deck finally made it into the mainstream as far as homes and autos. The 'average' person didn't have a component system back then, they either had a dinosaur console stereo or one of those all-in-one piles of junk with the BSR turntable with ceramic cart, radio and 8 track player, and a pair of craptastic full range speakers. When *those* systems started to include a (admittedly crappy) cassette deck AND when car stereo manufacturers started to offer cassette options in large numbers, that's when the cassette took hold as more than a 'tape recorder'. This transition caught momentum with the mainstream around 1978 or so.
 
Sansui Louie said:
...they either had a dinosaur console stereo or one of those all-in-one piles of junk with the BSR turntable with ceramic cart, radio...and a pair of craptastic full range speakers.
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Mine had the Sears logo on it, thank you very much. :)
 
Sansui Louie said:
This is the crux of the matter.

Betamax was a superior format over VHS, too.

8 Tracks made it to market first with 'better' sound. It really wasn't til the very late 70's that cassettes finally pulled ahead of the 8 track, and only because the cassette deck finally made it into the mainstream as far as homes and autos. The 'average' person didn't have a component system back then, they either had a dinosaur console stereo or one of those all-in-one piles of junk with the BSR turntable with ceramic cart, radio and 8 track player, and a pair of craptastic full range speakers. When *those* systems started to include a (admittedly crappy) cassette deck AND when car stereo manufacturers started to offer cassette options in large numbers, that's when the cassette took hold as more than a 'tape recorder'. This transition caught momentum with the mainstream around 1978 or so.
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I agree. I came of age during that time period. My first car, a 1972 Chevy Vega, was purchased by me used for $500 in 1977 (and you think cars depreciate quickly today)! I put a very cheap cassette deck in it (don't even recall the brand, might have been Sparkomatic) with a set of 5 1/4 inch Radio Shack speakers in the doors (back when you had to cut the holes and run the wire, since no manufacturer put speakers in door panels then). I worked at Radio Shack and bought a set of Minimus 7's for the back deck (later stolen and replace, stolen and replaced).

My buddy had 8-track. We both argued over the format; you could get more pre-recorded tapes in 8-track at the local record store than you could cassettes in 1977, so he wanted to go with that. I was an early adopter, I thought cassettes were superior, and yes, because you could reverse them and also because you could more cheaply record on them.

By 1979, when I graduated from high school in Colorado, 8-tracks were clearly on the way out. The war was over; although 8-tracks would remain available for a long time after that.

The victory didn't last long. When I was in the USMC in Okinawa, buying my Luxman and AR stuff, I pondered over the 'new' format, called Compact Disc. That was 1983. I decided not to buy it and stick with cassettes. By the time I got back to the states, it was clear that CD was going to make it as a format, and I bought my first CD player, a Toshiba, when the prices started to drop into the reasonable level; I paid $79 in 1988.

I also decided not to get into DAT; a wise decision. I did get into MiniDisc. Oops.
 
Sansui Louie said:
...that's when the cassette took hold as more than a 'tape recorder'.
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Ha! That reminds me of my sales pitch back in the late 70's & early 80's when I sold video gear. I'd show someone a laserdisc player and they would say, "but you can't record on them". I'd then ask, "Uh, do you have a record player?" The obvious quality pitch went from there...
 
A lot of it was Ford and the automakers adopted 8 track players in cars, cassette players in dash in cars didn't catch on until 1975-1976 or so (in Europe in dash cassette players were available from the middle 1960's onwards) On cassette's end, they got better due to Dolby NR, Improved tape formulations in both Type I and Type II, better heads designed, mechanical improvements, and better electronics. But do remember, pre-recorded tapes then cost as much as $2 extra over heavily discounted LP albums and often were hard to get. 8 tracks were common due to being factory installed in cars, and tapes were easier to find (though equally as expensive as cassette and open reel tapes)
 
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Wigwam Jones said:
I agree. I came of age during that time period.
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Our stories have a lot of similarity, except I graduated in 1972 and bought my 1972 Vega in 1974. I also got so pragmatic about the whole home audio/video thing that I steered clear of any "new" technology except for CD. I heard one of the primary promoters of DAT interviewed on the radio about why he thought it would take off and I actually laughed out loud at the logical fallacies he was using. 'Course, I saw by then, as a Hi-fi salesman, the arrival and departure of the elcaset and RCA video disc as well as the hard won rise of the cassette and laserdisc. I had some pretty entrenched (and relatively accurate) beliefs about what would sell and what wouldn't.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
A lot of it was Ford and the automakers adopted 8 track players in cars, cassette players in dash in cars didn't catch on until 1975-1976 or so (in Europe in dash cassette players were available from the middle 1960's onwards)
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My uncle from California, back in the 60's, had one of those Muntz four track players in his car. The tape literally sat ON TOP of the player and when you slid it on, you could see the mechanism come up to engage the tape. I seem to remember there was a manual tape/mechanism engagement lever on the deck, but I could be wrong.
 
Years ago I had one of those all in one units. Tuner, turntable and 8 track. I ended up getting the adapter that plugged into the 8 track and allowed you to play cassettes. That quite a setup lol. I had a wall of crappy bookshelf speakers wired to the speaker of a Gorilla GG-25 guitar amp. 1/4" plug from the stereo headphone jack to the amp. I then had an 1/8 mini to RCA coming out of the headphone jack of my 13" Quasar black and white TV to the aux inputs for TV in stereo.

I was 12 or so back then. It worked til i could upgrade lol. still have that TV too!
 
Other than the obvious, the difference between 4-track and 8-track was that 8-tracks had the pinch roller built in while 4-tracks had a hole where the pinch roller would swing into.
 
Quadraphonic might have extended the format war for a little while. 8-track had it, cassette didn't, afaik. I recently saw a 1979 Lincoln with a factory "Quadrasonic" deck that reminded me of this. Oh yeah, it did CB radio as well! I love it, I love it.
 
I bought my first "hi fi" stuff around 1976. I would probably have bought a cassette deck, but the car we cruised in had an 8-track, so I bought a Pioneer HR-99 recording deck. The Pioneer's time counter was in minutes/seconds (sort of), so before I'd make a tape I'd play the new tape to see how many minutes the tape would be, because they were usually longer than the label said, then I would time the 4 "channels" so that the songs wouldn't be playing when the track changed with the loud "ka-chunk."

Still have the HR-99. It actually made some listenable recordings - much better than most of the pre-recorded tapes.
 
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