#8 TRACK TAPE RECORDERS PORTABLE#

Multitrack recording of sound is the process in which sound and other electro-acoustic signals are captured on a recording medium such as magnetic tape, which is divided into two or more audio tracks that run parallel with each other.

JSTOR ( May 2013) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)ĪMPEX 440 (two-track, four-track) and 16-track MM1000 Scully 280 eight-track recorder using 1' tape at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: 'History of multitrack recording' – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Although there are reports that brand-new tapes are still coming out of Nashville with truckers as the intended audience, these sightings have not been confirmed.This article needs additional citations for verification. Record clubs like Columbia House offered 8-track tapes well into the 1980s (Madonna’s early albums, for example, as well as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” were offered to club members on 8-track).

#8 TRACK TAPE RECORDERS PORTABLE#

8-track was the preeminent portable and car audio format of the 1970s. By the late 1960s, several companies were making players for the other tape loop systems, including 4-track, but the only serious competition came from cassette tapes (which appeared at around the same time as 8-tracks) and the almighty vinyl records.Įight-track tapes were with us for quite a long time.

In the 1967 model year, Chrysler and GM offered the same. All 1966 Fords offered a factory installed in-dash 8-track player. While some of Lear’s improvements over 4-track are a bit dubious, his real refinements were in the area of marketing. A 4-track, with its wider channels, is more forgiving of misalignment. This means that the slightest misalignment of the tape head (or for that matter of the tape itself within the cartridge) in an 8-track system means that you hear shadows of other tracks bleeding into the program which is playing. Both systems involve a tape head which repositions itself along the width of the tape in order to change programs. While this doubled the potential playing time of the cartridge, it also created a new problem. Lear divided the tape into eight channels (tracks).

This restricted the total playing time to something like 40 minutes, because of the limited length of tape which could be contained within a cartridge. Another difference between them is that 4-track divided the tape itself into four channels (tracks), comprising two stereo programs. This refinement was probably intended to reduce tape tangling (and any tracker can tell you how well that works), as well as to help Lear secure a patent for his invention. The main mechanical difference between the two systems is that in a 4-track, the pinch roller is part of the player, whereas in an 8-track, the pinch roller is part of the tape cartridge.

Lear’s 8-track was by no means the first such system, in fact, the Lear cartridge is in most respects identical to the 4-track tape which came before it. During the early 1960s, a number of shell-encased continuous-loop audiotape systems coexisted. William Powell Lear, the man behind LearJet, was also the inventor of the 8-track cartridge tape system.

8 track tape recorders