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Why Does 8-Track Exist?

I'm pretty sure 8-tracks (or "ate-tracks", never heard that one before!) were a lot more convenient than reel to reel tapes or earlier cartridges, such as the system that RCA sold in the 1950s.

I was something of a late comer to the format, though I'd first seen a player in my aunt's old car.



That machine is almost 40 years old by date of sale, and may well have already made it, if I knew the date of manufacture.

When I've had the good fortune to find an 8-track tape in good shape, I've found the sound quality to be pretty decent. Then again, I'm playing them on a deck that seems a lot nicer than the others I have seen (picture above). It's even quad-ready! (Not that I've ever seen, or expect to see, a quadraphonic 8-track tape.)

I've never had a problem with a cassette tape in any tape deck that worked properly. The 8-track machine has generally been reliable, but I've had problems with tape slippage on some cartridges. I've had to jiggle a cartridge to get it playing again, and quickly pull the tape out to relieve a jam.
 
In my personal opinion reel to reel will always be the superior format. 8 track and cassette simply can not compare. I know this isn't why this thread was written but thought I'd throw in my two senses. I remember having 8 track back in the 80s, when I was a kid, and it sounded horrible. Same could be said about my flimsy cassette deck. But man oh man the sound that came out of my reel to reel was perfect in every way.
The masses got lazy and stopped buying reel to reels, I mean come on their not hard to thread and actually are good for hand coordination.
 
Here in the UK 8 track didn't take off like the cassette. our cars had cassette players fitted (if any in the Euro DIN sized holes). Nearly any home player also recorded and pre-recorded cassettes were easy to buy. I always saw the 8 track as basically flawed, unreliable and too big! When in car tape players took off so did the cassette format! The 8 track didn't stand a chance.
 
ShaneR2R said:
The masses got lazy and stopped buying reel to reels, I mean come on their not hard to thread and actually are good for hand coordination.
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It's not a laziness thing. It is a cost/benefit equation. And by "cost", I mean in both dollars and time. Convenience really does have value. And just as recorded music brought music to the masses in a way that live music just would not, smaller formats (culminating in the current digital sources) enables conveniently bringing music to facets of people's lives that records and open reel, and even Cassette, do not afford.

It's why LED lighting is enabling us to have light sources in places hitherto impractical. Heck, my wife's cell phone has a "flashlight" app that uses her led photo "flash" as a flashlight. Try that with an incandescent bulb for any reasonable amount of money or battery life.

I believe I may be thread crapping, but I feel soooo much better now. :D
 
persil said:
Here in the UK 8 track didn't take off like the cassette. our cars had cassette players fitted (if any in the Euro DIN sized holes). Nearly any home player also recorded and pre-recorded cassettes were easy to buy. I always saw the 8 track as basically flawed, unreliable and too big! When in car tape players took off so did the cassette format! The 8 track didn't stand a chance.
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I'm in the US and I'm with you. It's why I went to cassette in 1971 or so while all my friends had 8-track. I do believe, based on what I'm reading on this thread and the sites the thread has motivated me to explore, that 8-track was more of an american thing. In fact, I'm getting the feeling that 8-track was taking off in the US while cassette was taking off in Europe.
 
I have some early 60's Lear 8-track carts that I have repaired and they sound stunning. Some of those early 8-tracks were very well made.
 
Thanks for the 8 track history lesson. Although I'm the same age as most of you (graduated HS in 1975), when I bought my 1973 LeMans in 1977 It never occured to me to consider 8 track and cassette seemed the only option. It was probably all those "Crazy Eddy" (NYC) commercials screaming that his cassette prices are "insane"!

Ray
 
juncers said:
Thanks for the 8 track history lesson. Although I'm the same age as most of you (graduated HS in 1975), when I bought my 1973 LeMans in 1977 It never occured to me to consider 8 track and cassette seemed the only option. It was probably all those "Crazy Eddy" (NYC) commercials screaming that his cassette prices are "insane"!

Ray
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The biggest problem with me going Cassette back in ~1970 is that all, and I mean ALL my friends had 8-track. We couldn't swap tapes. And since we liked to cruise the "loop" and I usually drove, we were limited to my ecclectic selection. I had no Stones, Foghat, Hendrix, Cream etc. but plenty of Who and Blood Sweat and Tears...
 
I was lucky as a kid. From the age of 5 in 1967 we got a Sherwood 7800,Mirachord 720U,AR4x system that had a Sony TC-350 reel to reel deck.

I didn't even own a cassette deck until 1980 when I moved out on my own.

All my friends had those crappy all in one systems and were listening to music I had grown out of by 6th grade.


Ahhh the 70's were great for me!
 
131east23 said:
I have some early 60's Lear 8-track carts that I have repaired and they sound stunning. Some of those early 8-tracks were very well made.
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I agree, 8-track quality is all over the board, but on my H-R100 some of the tapes sound excellent. I've got a few that are even Dolby encoded. Of course there are certainly a fair share of stinkers that sound horrible too.
 
ShaneR2R said:
In my personal opinion reel to reel will always be the superior format. The masses got lazy and stopped buying reel to reels, I mean come on their not hard to thread and actually are good for hand coordination.
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"Although the 8-track today is dismissed as a failure, from a contemporary standpoint it was a huge success. It was the first tape format to achieve a true, national mass market. While the projections of the promoters of recorded tape on reel-to-reel had fallen short all during the 1950s and 1960s, cart sales on 4 and 8-track grew spectacularly from the early 1960s through the 1970s."

The masses didn't get lazy, they just never bought. Cartridge tapes excelled not because they sounded better - it's just easier and quicker to "plug-in" than thread tape. R2R was always a niche market and not for the typical consumer.
 
FAB1 said:
..........- it's just easier and quicker to "plug-in" than thread tape. R2R was always a niche market and not for the typical consumer.
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A bit odd - here in Denmark - before the casette came, everyone used R2R's.... (or vinyl)
 
Question about the original post - it clained cassettes were several years ahead of 8 tracks, which isn't how I remember it. According to wikipedia, cassette was developed in 1962 and first released in 1963, as a mono portable media designed primarily for voice. 4 tracks were around several years earlier, and 8-tracks were introduced in 1964 and mechanically virtually the same as 4-track players. It was at least 5 years later before stereo cassettes were introduced and the format standardized. The first car units didn't start appearing until around 1970.
 
I'm not sure what your question is. Stereo cassettes were available in 1968, perhaps earlier. Car units started appearing in 1970, but the cassettes themselves were available earlier. The format was standardized by Philips when it was introduced...unlike 8 track, which was kind of like the Wild West...
 
In 1970 had a 2 door 55 Chevy it had a 8-track with Johnny Rivers and CCR tapes. I needed more zip put a cassette player in and a 396 from a rolled SS. The cassette sound really good and finding tapes was not a problem, stuff like the James Gang went well with the rumble of the motor.
 
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Outland said:
For a while I believed that 8-tracks were developed before cassettes. That made sense, as 8-track was developed early, and took over the car industry. Then the cassette was released, which slowly edged out the 8-track with it's superior design and sonic quality.

Apparently this is not so. The cassette was developed before the 8-track by a margin of several years.

This begs the question, why was 8-Track developed, and why was it so much more terrible than the compact cassette?

Just a thought..
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1tumbleweed said:
I'm not sure what your question is. Stereo cassettes were available in 1968, perhaps earlier. Car units started appearing in 1970, but the cassettes themselves were available earlier. The format was standardized by Philips when it was introduced...unlike 8 track, which was kind of like the Wild West...
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The second paragraph doesn't match what I remembered or read. Just that 8-tracks were readily available in mid 60's, while stereo cassettes weren't - perhaps it's more of a media issue, not a hardware one.
 
I don't know why 8-track exists :scratch2:
But recording capability was an important factor in the popularity of cassettes. The cassette player/recorder provided an affordable means to copy (steal?) audio from radio, records, and tape. Of course the rise of CD burners and later Napster and Peer-to-Peer networks superseded cassettes.

Roger
 
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