8 track tape vs 1st press vinyl

hennigan

thanks for the history, I was passing on what I read somewhere, you certainly filled in some blanks.
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rimci, the Pacer, you got me to LOL. Did you ever see the movie with Danny Devito, Drowning Mona where a Yugo was a central player? YWLYAO
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mcmvmx

yes, the premium tapes also used special equalization settings (your machine had to have those options), and DBX came along as an alternate to Dolby Noise Reduction you mentioned.

Way back, before 8T, Dolby was available for 4 track 7" reel to reel tapes, Barclay Crocker issued a lot of Dolby R2R. My Teac R2R machines have DBX Professional Noise Reduction as an option, not Dolby. I haven’t seen a R2R player with Dolby option, anybody?
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GuitarSam,

One of the advantages of any Tape format is the physical separation of L from R, separate pickup by the heads, then played back with greater separation.

Phono cartridges have varying degrees of separation during playback, good/better/best cartridge, good/better/best stylus tip to make good/better/best groove contact, not to mention the combo of cantilever/arm/deck/feet of a TT.

I suspect your memory of ’not so 3D’ LP was what you heard from a not so great cartridge/stylus shape/cantilever/TT, Thus LP less separation than your memory of 8T, especially in an era when track separation and experimentation was prevalent.

My new MC cartridge has channel sep of over 30db, channel balance 0.5db. It just retired my former favorite with sep 25db, bal 1.5db. I am sure the greater separation is why I prefer it.

My TT in the days of 8 Track was ..... certainly crappp

So, I’ll concede to your 3D memory, but never on 8T IQ.

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found this link, a site I didn’t know about

http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/8-track_Tape

excerpt
" in 1964 the 8-track was created by Ralph Miller, an associate of Bill Lear "

It seems 8T arrived in cars first, home players later, I had forgotten that.

I really enjoy eight track when the song stops in the middle and clicks over and restarts on the next track.

GUITARSAM 8-track tapes in 1969 were junk how is it that it be came gold in 2020 8track tapes have a 3D soundstage only with a sonny 3D space age stereo in pure white

AUSTINBOB if bill lear invented the 8 track tape 3D soundstage only at fifty thousand feet in a lear jet not on this plane called earth

vinyl is a different format to the master tape and 8 track is the same plus vinyl has eq applied and 8 track does not so will 8 track have better tone and soundstage than vinyl? i'm using logic here friends

Both formats have EQ applied. But 8 tracks were made from tape copies that were one generation removed from that of LPs. The reason for this is that 8 tracks were made using a high speed duplication technique that tended to wear out the source tape pretty quickly and so it had to be replaced often.

The LPs OTOH were often made from the master tape; if not that then a 1st generation copy, since once the LP was mastered, tens of thousands of LPs could be stamped without significant degradation if the 3-step stamping process were used. It should be noted that the LP has lower distortion, dramatically lower noise and dramatically wider bandwidth than any tape format and especially 8-track, even if you were using Dolby noise reduction. 3 3/4"/second simply isn't a good tape speed if you want to get those things right- as others have pointed out this medium was created as a convenience for Lear jet sound systems back in the 1960s.


I used to service 8-track players and recorders quite a bit when I worked at Allied Radio Shack back in the 1970s. Even then it was obvious that both reel to reel and cassettes had better performance. Another obvious thing is that no-one ever made a decent 8-track transport!