Stereo 8, commonly known as the 8-track cartridge, is a magnetic tape technology for audio storage, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Stereo 8 was created by a consortium led by Bill Lear in 1964 of the Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford, Motorola, and RCA Records. It followed the similar Stereo-Pak 4-track cartridge. A later quadraphonic version of the format was known as Quad 8 or Q8.

History

The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was reel-to-reel audio tape recording, first made widely available after World War II in the late 1940s. However, threading tape into the recorders was more difficult than simply putting a disc record onto a phonograph player. Manufacturers introduced a succession of cartridges which held the tape inside a metal or plastic housing to eliminate handling. The first was RCA Victor, which in 1958 introduced a cartridge system, but until the introduction of the Compact Cassette in 1963 and Stereo 8 in 1964, none was very successful.

Development of tape cartridges

The endless loop tape cartridge was first designed in 1952 by Bernard Cousino of Toledo, Ohio, around a single reel carrying a continuous loop of standard 1/4-inch, plastic, oxide-coated recording tape running at 3.75 inches per second (9.5 centimeters per second). Program starts and stops were signaled by low-frequency tones.

Inventor George Eash, also from Toledo, invented a cartridge design in 1954, called the Fidelipac. The Eash cartridge was later licensed by manufacturers, notably the Collins Radio Corporation, which first introduced a cartridge system for broadcasting at the National Association of Broadcaster's 1959 annual show. Fidelipac cartridges were used by many radio stations for commercials, jingles and other short items right up until the late 1990's. Eash later formed Fidelipac Corporation to manufacture and market tapes and recorders, as did several others including Audio-Pak (Audio Devices Corp.).

There were several attempts to sell music systems for cars, beginning with the Chrysler "Hiway hi-fi" of the late 1950s (which used discs). However, entrepreneur Earl "Madman" Muntz of Los Angeles, California saw a potential in these "broadcast carts" for an automobile music system and in 1962 introduced his Stereo-Pak 4-track stereo (two programs, each consisting of two tracks) system and tapes, mostly in California and Florida. He licensed popular music albums from the major record companies and duplicated them on these 4-track cartridges, or "CARtridges", as they were first advertised. Stereo-Pak tape cartridges were commercially available from a number of companies, notably Fidelipac.

Introduction of Stereo 8

The Lear Jet Stereo 8 track cartridge was designed by Bill Lear in 1964. The major change was to incorporate a neoprene and plastic pinch roller into the cartridge itself, rather than making the pinch roller a part of the tape player, reducing mechanical complexity. Lear also eliminated some of the internal parts of the Eash cartridge, such as the tape-tensioning mechanism and an interlock that prevented tape spillage. In the Cousino, Eash, Muntz, and Lear cartridges, tape was pulled from the center of the reel, passed across the opening at one end of the cartridge and wound back onto the outside of the same reel. The spool itself was freewheeling and the tape was driven only by tension from the capstan and pinch roller.

With a reel turning at a constant rate, the tape around the hub has a lower linear velocity than the tape at the outside of the reel, so the tape layers must slip past each other as they approach the center. The tape was coated with a slippery backing material patented by Bernard Cousino, usually graphite, to ease the continuous slip between the tape layers. While the design allowed simple, cheap, and mobile players, unlike a two-reel system it didn't permit rewinding of the tape. Some players offered fast-forward by speeding up the motor while cutting off the audio, but rewinding was never offered.

Muntz's cartridge had used two pairs of stereo tracks in the same configuration as then-current "quarter track" reel to reel tapes. This format was intended to parallel his source material, which was usually a single LP record with two sides. Program switching was achieved by physically moving the head up and down mechanically by a lever. The Stereo 8 version doubled the amount of programming on the tape by providing eight total tracks, usually consisting of four programs of two tracks each. Lear touted this as a great improvement, because much more music could be held inside a standard cartridge housing, but in practice this resulted in a slight loss of sound quality and an increase in background noise due to the narrower tape tracks. Unlike the Stereo-Pak, the Stereo 8 could switch between tracks automatically, due to the use of a small length of conductive foil at the splice join on the tape, which would cause the player to change tracks as it passed the head assembly.

The Stereo 8 also introduced the problem of dividing up the programming intended for a two-sided LP record into four programs. Often this resulted in songs being broken up, or long passages of silence.

Commercial success

The popularity of both 4-track and 8-track cartridges grew from the booming automobile industry. In September 1965, Ford Motor Company introduced dealer-installed 8-track players as an option on most models.^[1] By 1966, all of their vehicles offered this upgrade. Thanks to Ford's backing, the 8-track format quickly won out over the 4-track format, with Muntz abandoning it in the early 1970s (although tapes were still available for some years afterward).

Despite its problems, the format gained steady popularity due to its convenience and portability. Home players were introduced in 1966 that allowed consumers to share tapes between their home and portable systems. "Boombox" type players were also popular. With the availability of cartridge systems for the home, consumers started thinking of 8-tracks as a viable alternative to vinyl records, not only as a convenience for the car. Within a year, prerecorded releases on 8-track began to arrive within a month of the vinyl release. 8-track recorders had gained popularity by the early 1970s.

Quadraphonic 8-track cartridges [introduced by RCA Records in September 1970 and first known as Quad 8, and later just Q8], were also produced, with the major auto manufacturers being particularly eager to promote in-car quadraphonic players as a pricey option. The format enjoyed a moderate amount of success for a time but faded in the mid-1970s. These cartridges are prized by collectors since they provide 4 channels of discrete sound, unlike matrixed formats such as SQ. Most quadraphonic albums were specially mixed for the quad format.

The last cartridges

There is a debate among collectors about what was the last commercially released 8 track by a major label, but many agree it was Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits in November 1988.^[2] The last 8-track tapes by major recording companies were from record and tape clubs in 1988 like RCA (BMG Music) and Columbia House (CRC). There are reports of bootleg 8-track tapes being made in Mexico as late as 1995 [1]. Some independent artists have released 8-track tapes as late as 2006 [2]. Apart from a select group of highly collectible artists, the record club issues, and the quadraphonic releases, many 8-track tapes seem to have limited value to most collectors, especially if they have been misused or are worn-looking.

In the U.S., 8-track cartridges were phased out of retail stores by late 1982. Some titles were still available as 8-track tapes through record clubs until late 1988. Many of these late-period releases are highly collectible due to the low numbers that were produced. Among the most rare is Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood. Another is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's Live/1975-85, which was one of the very few box sets to be released on vinyl, cassette, compact disc, and 8-track tape.

Reliability and usability

The cartridges had an audible pause and mechanical click when programs were switched, due to the mechanical action of the device and the presence of length of metallic sensing foil, which signaled the end of the tape and acted as a splice for the loop. Furthermore, due to the expense of producing tape heads capable of reading eight tracks, most 8-track players had heads that read just two tracks. Switching from program to program was accomplished by moving the head itself. Since the alignment of the head to the tape is crucially important in any tape system, and because 8-track systems were generally designed to be cheap, this configuration further degraded the sound of the 8-track tape. Among audio service technicians, there used to be a joke that "the 8-track is the only audio device which knocks itself out of alignment four times during each album."

If the azimuth of the head became misadjusted, there would be a faint audio bleed of adjacent tracks into the currently playing track, known as "double-tracking", as well as a loss of frequency response, as with any misadjusted tape system.

Stereo 8 tapes and players developed a reputation for unreliability, due mostly to splice failures and the phenomenon of the player "eating" the tape. The auto environment, with its temperature extremes, vibration, dust, etc., caused many failures as well.

A decrease in the quality of the parts used in the 8-track cartridge was one of the direct downfalls of the format, as problems developed with the reliability, sound and smooth playing of the tape. Due to these problems, the 8-track developed a notorious reputation for being "finicky" and somewhat unreliable; however, it can be argued that most of the problems that plagued the format could have been entirely avoided if the manufacturers had only developed quality control standards for both the cartridges and players.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Stereo 8".