Music Media

[Camille]

Octupus

xxxxxxxxx

[Texas Contrarian]

Here's what the inside of an 8-track cartridge looks like:



No wonder those things got screwed up so easily!

[terbul]

Ah, sound quality.

I think the golden era in sound (amplifiers, speakers and tuners) was the 70s through the mid 80s. Not that there haven’t been products in other years with good sound, but the 70s/80s produced a lot of them.


My theory is that this was the time period when the art and technology of designing components that sounded good were optimally balanced; and the distribution model was based more on expert advice than mass marketing.


The ability to design better gear was enhanced as technology to produce repeatable, accurate, and comprehensive sound measurements was coming into it’s own, but the final design decisions were based on what the component sounded like to the designer. The ability to measure was helpful in developing designs but the end product was based on the human test. Resulting in an era when there was great diversity in design, leading to different but good sound.



In speaker design for example there was a significant difference in basic design (and resulting sound) amongst KEF, Infinity, Bose, Allison, Tannoy, Chartwell, Klipsch, etc. But they all were good (some better than others to individuals taste) and didn’t all cost an arm and a leg; they all had mid range product. They all reflected the design bias of the designer.


But remember, that was also the era when the stereo store was common. A place where you could go listen to the gear, do comparisons and with some relatively profession advice from the people that worked in them. If you preferred flat sound, they could direct you to the brands with that characteristic. They could and would set up a demo so you could hear the difference amongst the amplifiers and determine which one you liked; Bryston, MaIntosh, Ampzilla, Carver, etc. Now those were higher end lines, but Pioneer, Sansui, Kenwood, etc. produced solid products as well.
The tech specs were there, people looked at them, but by in large the decision was made on the basis of listening.


That changed as the brick and mortar store began to fade in the 80’s. Mail order (remember that?) became a significant part of the distribution model. As did the early big box stores. No more knowledgeable sales staff, mass marketing became the replacement. And it’s very hard to mass market a particular sound.



Much easier to say our amplifier has .0001% total harmonic distortion and 100 watts per channel, not .05% like those other guys and 55 watts like the other guy. The fact that 55 watts and .05% thd actually can sound better (due to the complexities mentioned in previous posts) is very hard to sell in a print ad. And ABC warehouse (or the others) has neither the staff of the environment to provide the comparison.


Stereo component design (in the mainstream) became little more than a numbers game; easy to design, easy to advertise; if it sounded good that was a bonus. Yes, there were gems out there that bucked the trend (NAD comes to mind), but for the most part the products designed to sound good ended up more at the high end.

[rachet3375]

The beauty of tube amps whether they be stereo or guitar amps is that immediately at power on the vacumn tube starts to degrade from the heat generated by its components. A tube is similar to a lightbulb only a tad more complex. It may be due to the non-linear clipping that occurs with tube amps, or due to the higher levels of second-order harmonic distortion, common in single-ended designs resulting from the characteristics of the tube interacting with the inductance of the output transformer.
More can be found out about tube amps here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_sound
Some amp manufactures such as Line 6 are making "modeling amps" which are solid state circuit amps that will emulate various classic tube amps from the 60s such as VOX and Marshall, old Fender Black Tweeds, etc.... The macintosh amps were killer and I wish I had kept mine along with an old Leslie cab.
Back on subject I have an extensive collection of 33 1/3 LPs (approx 700) and about 200 CDs half a dozen cassettes and gave all my 8 tracks to my Pops. 8 track refers to the # of tracks the tape carried, 4 R and 4 L = 8. Number of songs on tape was irrelevant.

[Guest083011]

Originally Posted by Camille

and I'm guessing there were 8 tracks in total on the tape? That sucker looks massive though. It wouldn't fit in your back pocket easily would it lol?

It was about 4" by 5" by about 3/4" thick.

Originally Posted by Rudyard K

As I remember they held the full album of an LP...but separated the songs into groups of 3-4 songs...4 groups in all. I have no idea where the 8-Track name came from...lol.

Two tracks times four (left and right times four, see below, now color coded). The grouping depended on how to balance the most even layout of songs on the tape or the least amount of blank space. The tape was a continuous loop (single piece of tape spliced together head to tail). so yes ease of use was great. Reliability was bad. If the tape bound up, you'd toss it out.

Originally Posted by SR Only

And they generally soundly like crap and broke a lot (absolutely the cheapest tape available. And the heads fell out of alignment too so you'd hear two tracks instead of one. It was a format that should have died much more quickly than it did.
Tape (and Head stack) layout:
1 left
2 left
3 left
4 left
1 right
2 right
3 right
4 right

And the head would move up or down. All covering a 1/4" tape.

I hope that is clearer. Camille, if you are not clear on this, you'll have to stay after class with "teacher." Me.
Or I've made a complete mess of an eight track's description.

Ohhh, I like this break down:
http://www.8trackheaven.com/work.html
Camille, you will still have to stay after class for extra credit.

[Guest083011]

Originally Posted by Camille

and I'm guessing there were 8 tracks in total on the tape? That sucker looks massive though. It wouldn't fit in your back pocket easily would it lol? xxx

FWIW, in recording studios the multitrack tape was 2" wide with 24 tracks. One company did experiment with a 3" tape but ran and failed horribly at the Audio Engineering Society show (seventies). Talk about bulky. Those 10.5" reels of 2" tape were very heavy. Big ass tape transports to move that tape. Here's what one of those machines with tape looks like:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-MCI-JH-24-2...item45f5729b53
I haven't operated one of those in 25 years. Seeing those pics brings back a ton of memories.