8-tracks

[ianbuckers]

A silly question but can you play 1 track on a 8 track tape?

Like a 'normal' tape player you can stop it at the end of a song. On most players you would have to pull the cartridge out when the song ended but some (very much the minority though) did have stop and rwd/fwd buttons.

[yymca6]

yymca6,

This Sgt. Pepper 8 track rip is only in stereo, do you have the quad rip of it?

Thanks, Rog

Sorry, this is the only version I have

[r9453]

Thanks everyone involved

[moptophugger]

[/quote]

Like a 'normal' tape player you can stop it at the end of a song. On most players you would have to pull the cartridge out when the song ended but some (very much the minority though) did have stop and rwd/fwd buttons.
[/quote]

No like 1 channel?

[Davenicks]

I've been trying to get some interest going on this for years.

There's seems to be zero interest in digitizing and sharing 8 track albums. I've joined numerous Facebook groups and the response to the idea was deafening...deafeningly silent.

Just my tuppence, but I think the lack of enthusiasm may stem from the relatively inferior audio quality of these tapes. I acknowledge that many people are very interested in cassette tapes, which are similarly inferior, so that may not be it. In both cases, they were usually duped at high speeds with "less than audiophile" quality control as far as the sound. In both cases, they run at slow speeds (1 7/8 ips for cassettes, 3 3/4 ips for 8-tracks), which limits the frequency response. In both cases, the track widths are very narrow (For cassettes, 0.15 tape width divided into a stereo pair in each direction for 4 tracks; for 8-tracks, standard 1/4 inch tape divided into 4 stereo pairs, or 8 tracks). By comparison, commercial reel-to-reel tapes were
1/4 inch tape either at 3 3/ ips or 7.5 ips, but divided into just one stereo pair in each direction for a total of 4 tracks. Granted, today's digital technology makes cleaning up the extracts from these tapes better than it's ever been, but all things being equal, a 7.5 ips tape or an lp can be made to sound pretty good, then the quality drops off significantly as you move down the scale of tape speed and track width.

Cassette and 8-track prerecorded tapes came on the scene at a time when steady progress was being made in high fidelity sound reproduction and proved that, for many people, convenience and low cost equipment trumped high fidelity, which was usually more expensive. The same history was repeated years later with the introduction of mp3 files and players.

If you set cost and convenience aside and just consider audio quality, extracts from cassettes are almost always inferior to extracts from lps or 7.ips reel tapes. My guess is 8-tracks only attract interest when the program material is not available in a better quality format.

People want what they want, so you should by all means go for what you're interested in; it may just be that not many people share your interest.

Dave in Nashville

[Mixerrog]

Davenicks,

I agree that 8 track tapes are definitely not very good quality usually with Wow & Flutter issues + the normal high frequency cutoff being about 12 khz which is lower than the average mp3 of 16 khz but sadly many true 4 track surround versions (that I am looking for) appeared on these that are not available anywhere else. Some are on much better quality 7 1/2 ips reel to reel which I prefer & still not available anywhere else.

Some of these have been re-mastered to Blu-Ray now in surround sound & some have been used for the Rock Band stems but many are still only available in quad in these poor formats sadly.

Rog

[mitchellmichael]

I guess I'm the only one nostalgic to hear it in a less than hi-fi format. That's how I remember starting out listening to them was on 8-track, so I just wanted to revisit the sound of my youth! Also, as I stated before, the mix can be very different as was the case with 13th Floor Elevators. The 8-track of The Psychedelic Sounds is preferable to the LP!
Thanks all!
Mike

[beatlesfanfromsop]

I never had an 8-track player.
I only had Cassette players,and I agree with beatles4ever that The Beatles Capitol
Cassettes had like a Stereo narrow mix which would be different than the
Capitol Stereo LP mixes.
Some of the Capitol Cassettes had the tracks in a different order.
I had almost the whole Capitol Cassettes catalog ,but they are not in very good condition.
Mike

[stereoman33]

Davenicks,

I agree that 8 track tapes are definitely not very good quality usually with Wow & Flutter issues + the normal high frequency cutoff being about 12 khz which is lower than the average mp3 of 16 khz but sadly many true 4 track surround versions (that I am looking for) appeared on these that are not available anywhere else. Some are on much better quality 7 1/2 ips reel to reel which I prefer & still not available anywhere else.

Some of these have been re-mastered to Blu-Ray now in surround sound & some have been used for the Rock Band stems but many are still only available in quad in these poor formats sadly.

Rog

Rog there was never a quadraphonic 8 track beatles release..only the following solo stuff was done.. Imagine,Walls and bridges,Live and Let Die soundtrack,Band on the run,Venus and mars and Goodnight Vienna...

[paul62]

I think everybody here would remember the handful of SPLHCB tracks that came out, split into four separate channels, but from a lo-fi source: these came out before the Rock Band .mogg files and were said to have come from a cassette found/bought by a collector (but I guess it might have come from a quadraphonic 8 track cartridge instead of a cassette). A quadraphonic SPLHCB LP was being mooted in the early '70s, so a quadraphonic 8 track cartridge would likely have come out as well if the LP saw the light of day. At any rate, I don't think we know the full story about this!!