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Posted by WinField on 07/26/06 14:21
A walk down memory lane. Nice.
Phat Bytestard wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:23:18 -0700, WinField <doghouse@operamail.com>
> Gave us:
>>Cassette format was a small marvel reel-to-reel.
>
>
> It may have actually had roots in data storage. I have (had)
> several cassette format data storage tapes that worked in a rat shack
> "computer". Even though a consumer product, it was perfect for data
> as well at the time.
>
>
>>8-track was a gangly, LOOP-y format campared to the cassette. It was a DOG!
>
>
> It was big. The ONLY "advantage" (if one wants to call it that) it
> had was a slightly quicker traverse across the tracks of an album, and
> no turning the tape over (pre-auto-reverse).
I used to have an RCA cassette that was twice the size of an 8-track.
The tape machine itself that played this "compact" format was the size
of a small reel-to-reel. Needless to say, this design for home use by
RCA never went anywhere.
>
>>Almost 105 billion people knew how to re_align the 8-track heads, though
>>no one could get it perfect.
>
>
> 105 billion eh?
>
> Not true. Mine were perfect, and I even had a test/cal tape.
Which still wouldn't match those few 8-track tapes that always were
out-of-wack. At least you could hear a preview of what was ahead during
song endings/beginnings. Having playback heads that moved up and down
just wasn't the best idea.
>
>>With hi-performance tape formulations, the cassette made 8-track look
>>like a SICK PUPPY.
>
>
> That was because manufacturers had already rang the death knell bell
> for 8-track. It could have kept up just fine. The problem with
> 8-track was that the inner loops would tighten up. With a slightly
> better design, they could have fixed it, but it had already taken a
> dump at the consumer level.
Sure. Given enough support and good production/design quality almost
any system will provide satisfactory use.
These kind of resources were poured into the cassette format to lift it
out of being just a limited frequency "voice recorder" to a pretty
decent music format.
It was during this time I believe, that a small company came into
existence. Because of the narrower tape used in cassettes,
signal-to-noise ratio was a problem. (hiss) A tech I worked with used
to live in England. He passed up an oppertunity to join a small firm
working on the hiss solution.
I doubt anyone remembers ... Dolby Labs.
- Winfield
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