LP/8 track comparison

I just got a minty copy of Santana's Abraxas album on an early '70s
TC8. When I opened it up, it was obvious that the tape inside wasn't
the usual Scotch, but rather, more like Ampex 381. Other than that,
it was a pretty normal TC8. After my usual treatment with PTFE and a
new Win-Gibber, I took it in the car with me to go run a few errands.
It sounded great...probably one of the best prerecorded 8 tracks I
have. So, when I got home, I did an A/B comparison with the LP on the
big system, knowing that I have a good 8 track copy with which to
compare. The differences quickly became obvious; the 8 track was
definitely deliberately compressed, obviously to make it sound better
in the car...the old "loudness" game played for decades by radio
broadcasters. Of course, this was a pre-Dolby copy, so tape hiss was
quite evident everywhere, but the healthy dose of compression did a
lot to cover it up. OK, just how much compression did they use?

I patched in my trusty UREI compressor and ran a dub of the LP onto
RTR at 15 IPS, trying various compression thresholds and rates.
Result? 8 tracks are about as compressed as average commercial FM
radio programming...which is a LOT...about 15 dB's worth. Thus, peaks
aren't any different, since LP mastering generally uses a limiter
anyway, but the "quiet" stuff on the 8 track is up around the ears of
the vocals in typical FM radio fashion. So, I dubbed a copy of the LP
onto a Scotch blank with no compression, and went out in the car.
Sounded pretty good, except a lot of detail was lost in the tape hiss.
Once you start the engine and start moving, though, you lose a LOT of
material. So, back home, I dubbed another copy, this time using about
15 dB of compression with the UREI. Into the car it went, and I got
essentially the same thing as the prerecorded dupe...sounds "louder"
due to all that compression. Sound "better?" No, not to the cultured
ear; all the dynamics of the LP are gone, replaced by basically "pink
noise." I also must add that the home deck isn't capable of the kind
of bass fluxivity that those old Ampex dupe decks could deliver,
either. A commercially recorded 8 track hits the tape harder than any
home deck could, probably all in the name of also "sounding louder in
the car," which is why they added all that compression in the first
place, and a primary reason I like Ampex 381 and other "hot" tapes as
a "car tape."

Lots of kids today are into this new "hyper-reality" method of
mastering, which I opine is another pseudonym for "over compression."
This simple test proved that it's the same thing...all these kids are
today are doing is compressing the crap out of everything on their CD
masters just like the labels did on 8 track and like the broadcasters
still do on both AM and FM. However, once you get into the reality of
car audio (I mean SANE car audio; not these 1000 watt lunacy
installations the hip-hoppers are into now) you realize that without
all the compression, you don't hear anything except the vocals and the
top end. This, of course, varies from car to car; my Cadillac was
quiet enough inside on the road to take advantage of "real" fidelity,
whereas the typical beater is simply too noisy an environment in which
to enjoy it. The extreme of this was the VW diesel; I didn't even
bother putting ANY system in that, since I could barely hear the radio
anyway. Such is the price for 56 MPG! However, the new VW diesels
are very quiet in comparison. Too bad VW has such a lousy reputation,
or I'd buy one today. Biggest VW problems: electrical failures and
parts availability...REALLY bad.

Anyway, the assertion that was made in "SWTR" by the guy that cleaned
out a warehouse in Lancaster for 4 and 8 tracks that the 8 track has
the same "credentials" as an LP release is definitely false, as the
fidelity is compromised by heavy compression to make the 8 track
suitable for car use. If you want "fidelity," you simply have to go
for the LP or CD, and even then, the signal's been messed with
considerably at the mastering stage.

One thing that's really ****ing me off about CDs these days..."hyper
clipping," even on re-releases of classic rock and pop. For years
now, bands come into studios and demand that they "be as loud as these
guys" as they wave a current release from a band from a major label.
Just how are some of these mastering rooms making these CDs "loud?"
They drive the audio level up into clipping on peaks, which sounds
gawdawful, but the uneducated ear thinks it means it's "louder."
(Remember Spinal Taps' "our amps go to 11?" This is the CD
equivalent.) It's happening, as I said, even on re-releases that have
been remastered from the '80s and '90s first releases. Rip some
tracks and put them in an editor, and you can see bass and drum peaks
clipped all to hell, all in the name of making the CD sound louder.
It seems they exploited all the compression that the listener would
allow, so now this is the latest wrinkle in perceived
"loudness"...adding the horrid distortion of clipping! In the hip-hop
world, people aren't smart enough to know the difference, and just
like the head numbing effect of all that crap played at hypersonic
levels, anyway. But to clip Zeppelin or Yes? Sacrilege! Of course,
a fidelity conscious artist or group, like Steely Dan, would NEVER
allow this, and a look at their latest CD remasters shows this quite
plainly. The same goes for classical or jazz; a mastering tech who
clips a classical rerelease will be looking for a new job soon, no
doubt.

So, there's a dichotomy in 8 track..."noise" for the car vis à vis
fidelity at home. The 8 track became someone annoying at home after
listening awhile on the JBL monitors...no dynamic contrast, just lots
of noise. The LP sounded much better, "better" in this context being
what the listener would perceive as being there in the studio when the
tracks were recorded. Of course, since the dawn of the multi-tracking
age of recording in the mid '60s, such a witnessing would never
happen, as albums were cut in studios all over the country...drum
tracks here, vocals there, backups somewhere else...a bit of a fraud,
actually. Ever vocalists on 8 track were compressed heavily; I have
copies in both formats for some Tony Bennett releases, and the 8 track
contains a bigger dose of compression than the LPs, although Columbia,
for reasons lost to me, seems to like to compress their vocalists'
band and orchestral tracks a LOT anyway.

Conclusion: 8 track is, and always was, a "car format." If your
looking for fidelity, get a near mint copy of the LP or a late '80s or
'90s CD rerelease. If your looking for something to bop along in the
car with, or on a "spaceball," 8 track's fine...IF you like FM radio,
too. For a lousy system at home, like the crappy "all-in-one" things
sold by NudoFraud® Industries, 8 track's also the way to go over LP,
since the cheap turntables on those thing grind up a good LP in a
scant few passes.

dB

8-track is also good for quad, where it has much over the quad lps. One
thing about compression besides 8-track, is that it pushes up quiet bits
while stifling extreme peaks, great for car noise or bar noise, or for
inferior equipment that just can't do a whole lot. While compression
kinda sux on a serious rig, for a loud bar or a loud car it's an
absolute necessity!
....and yeah, Columbia did compress the hell out of their vocalists from
the late 50s till the late 60s did they not? )
Both methods seem sensible to me. I just got a brand new xterra with cd
and when I played beethoven moonlight sonata on cd, you had to crank it
to 24 (out of 32) just to -barely- hear it!
The car is super quiet too, nice japan construction super tight and
secure, if not top of the line ))

....one more thing, I don't know if Columbia is systemic to compression
of 8s in general. Perhaps another label may be a different story? Here's
one for you to try if you can.....find a stereo pressing of Beatles '65
and compare it to the black shell 8. I think in many ways the 8 sounds
better, except of course in its muddier high end.

8-Tracks RULE over any other form of media. 'Nuff Said!

Danno Rex..the French King Of The 8-Track World!

lennon fan wrote:

...one more thing, I don't know if Columbia is systemic to compression
of 8s in general. Perhaps another label may be a different story? Here's
one for you to try if you can.....find a stereo pressing of Beatles '65
and compare it to the black shell 8. I think in many ways the 8 sounds
better, except of course in its muddier high end.

--

Daniel and Kathy Gibson
http://www.katestrackshack.com
"Kate's Track Shack -Your Internet Home For Inexpensive 8-tracks!!"
AND...
http://drnooseandjambone.com
"DrNoose And Jambone - Do It To The Optigan!"

Yodedude2 wrote:

8-Tracks RULE over any other form of media. 'Nuff Said!

They're definitely more fun than LPs. later, ron

Yeah! Ever tried to fix an LP? I put splicing tape all over one, and it
did not sound any better. Go figure!

Dan - PhD in General Knowledge.
--

Daniel and Kathy Gibson
http://www.katestrackshack.com
"Kate's Track Shack -Your Internet Home For Inexpensive 8-tracks!!"
AND...
http://drnooseandjambone.com
"DrNoose And Jambone - Do It To The Optigan!"

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:03:44 -0500, (lennon fan)
wrote:

8-track is also good for quad, where it has much over the quad lps. snip

No doubt there...8 track's THE quad format in analog. SQ matrix was
problematic at best as I remember it, and was a real obstacle course
for even high end cartridges of the era. The incompatibility of the
two formats, SQ and CD4, also was a real pain. 8 track made it
easy...4 discrete audio tracks, no demodulation scheme to worry about,
just "plug 'n play." Only thing better was 4 track/4 channel ¼" RTR,
and those were VERY rare. I still have a Teac A3440S that can play
quad RTR, but I haven't seen such a tape in at least 20 years.

thing about compression besides 8-track, is that it pushes up quiet bits
while stifling extreme peaks, great for car noise or bar noise, or for
inferior equipment that just can't do a whole lot. snip

In the recording industry, a lot of the new generation are calling
this "hyper realism" now, when it's nothing more than the old "high
compression" of old, but using digital algorithms instead of analog
compandors. The result's the same, no matter what they say.

While compression
kinda sux on a serious rig, for a loud bar or a loud car it's an
absolute necessity! snip

True enough. Unfortunately, it eliminates the choice of the listener
as to what he/she wants to hear. For SR or PA work, live compression
can get a band "over the crowd" a lot better than not, and in car
audio, compression's pretty much a necessity to make things "loud"
without being "louder."

...and yeah, Columbia did compress the hell out of their vocalists from
the late 50s till the late 60s did they not? ) snip

OHHHH yes. I call it the "Percy Faith sound," where the strings and
vocals were both compressed a ton, with oodles of plate reverb added.
"De-essing" wasn't a tool available in those days, so a lot of this
compression made for some NASTY sibilants in many vocal tracks, as can
be heard on any Bennett release from the '60s ("I left my heart....in
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSan FranCCCCCCCCCCCCISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSco...") or Andy
Williams ("That ol' Bilbao moon...I won't forget it
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSoon....") Yoikes...blows your tweeters right out of the
box every time! RCA was a lot more conservative in this regard, as
its releases by Como and others clearly show.

Both methods seem sensible to me. snip

Both are necessarily in their proper place.

I just got a brand new xterra with cd
and when I played beethoven moonlight sonata on cd, you had to crank it
to 24 (out of 32) just to -barely- hear it!
The car is super quiet too, nice japan construction super tight and
secure, if not top of the line )) snip

Classical music has a much wider range of dynamics than any popular,
and is always a problem in a car, even with moderate compression.
Classical music fanciers HATE compression with a passion, and will
give an FM station engineer hell if he overdoes it, even to the
detriment of "hearability" in a car. I remember when Los Angeles'
longtime classical outlet KFAC went to Dolby FM in the '70s and
immediately caught the **** from none other than the LA Times' music
critic. Although the compression/expansion and switch to 25 µS
pre-emphasis DID materially reduce the noise floor, many thought it
was detrimental to the sound of most good classical recordings, and it
was dropped soon...but not soon enough before many people ran out and
bought new cassette decks equipped with Dolby FM decoders! It really
was a good system, especially for listeners in fringe areas, where low
signal strength, even with a very quiet tuner front end, would
encroach on the music program at hand.

I used to tape live broadcasts of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on my
351 Ampex and then, after Dolby FM came in, started taping them on my
Dolby FM equipped Onkyo. Due to the lessening of thermal noise hiss
from Dolby FM, the cassettes recorded on Maxell UDXL-II were
noticeably quieter than even the fine RTR recordings I'd made earlier
on Scotch 250 at 7½ IPS. What was great about recording Dolby FM was
that you'd record directly to tape only after compensating for the
difference between 25 and 75 µS de-emphasis, and the Dolby decoding
was done on playback. The bugaboo about it was having to rely on the
broadcasters to regularly broadcast the Dolby line-up tone, and most
weren't that good about being punctual about it. So, the recordist
would have to wait, pot tweaker in hand, hoping for it to come on!

That's the problem with all Dolby systems for analog tape and
FM...reliance on a calibration standard which may or may not be
readily available. On tape, different tape sensitivities would wreak
havoc with Dolby calibration; a difference in tape sensitivity of more
than 2 dB would introduce unnatural sounding "pumping", dullness or
other artifacts that were even worse than steady state noise. Most
people thought that using Dolby "B" made their playback sound "dull,"
and, nine times out of ten, this would be a combination of two errors:
lousy head alignment and Dolby mistracking. Once things were lined up
properly, Dolby "B" would sound great. Already I've noticed that
Dolby line-up can be a problem on prerecorded tapes if the playback
deck has been set up for a really "hot" tape, like Ampex. When a
Columbia Dolby tape is then played, it'll tend to sound "dull" until
the Dolby drive level is reduced about 3 dB to correlate to the Scotch
175 (or equivalent) tape that Columbia's carts usually had in them.
Great for a techie like me, BAD for the average listener!

dB

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:58:09 GMT, Daniel & Kathy Gibson
wrote:

8-Tracks RULE over any other form of media. 'Nuff Said!

Danno Rex..the French King Of The 8-Track World! snip

ROTFL! Can the French King send the French Frauder to la guillotine?
S'IL VOUS PLAIT????

Merci!

dB

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:10:17 -0500, (lennon fan)
wrote:

...one more thing, I don't know if Columbia is systemic to compression
of 8s in general. Perhaps another label may be a different story? snip

Oh, for certain. Check out Joni Mitchell on Reprise, manufactured by
Ampex. Although most of Warner's mainstream pop artists (Beach Boys,
Doobies, et al) are compressed more on 8 track than on LP (actually,
BOTH formats are pretty "squeezed" with Beach Boys stuff), stuff on
Reprise (Mitchell, Sinatra) is far more like the LP releases, if not a
direct use of the same master. On some of Mitchell's stuff, tape hiss
actually gets in the way of some of the acoustic guitar on a couple
tracks, even with dark oxide tape. Same for their Elektra and
definitely Asylum. Shelter's another one that didn't compress 8 track
much more than the album; Leon Russell doing anything's an example
there. Check out "Carney" and listen to the LP. Very close. Verve's
another one; my Zappa carts don't sound much more squeezed than the
LP, and Zappa hated compression as much as most classical folks, as he
claimed it wiped out "subtlety" in his guitar tracks. (Zappa?
"Subtle??" Hmmmm.)

However, as you get into the "radio pop" genre, you hear LOTS of
compression, and not just from Columbia. The #1 worst engineered 8
track release I've heard so far was Doobie Bros. "Minute By Minute" on
Warner...HORRID compression, must be more than 20 dB, all the top and
bottom WAY down in the mud and the midrange is just a seamless mash of
vocals and guitar...NASTY sounding. I've verified this same problem
on two different, like-new cartridges...same result, and it's not even
listenable in the car! The LP is nothing like it, and the MFSL
remaster's even better...if you can stand listening to Michael
McDonald's bellowing for more than a couple of cuts, anyway. Just for
****s and giggles, I dubbed the MFSL LP onto the same cart on the
Wollensak...MUCH better, but now the loss of compression means you
can't hear some stuff in the car, just like you'd get dubbing any LP
to 8 track (or cassette, for that matter) without resorting to a
compressor...which most home recordists just don't have. I found
myself using my UREI to compress car cassettes years ago, so, yes, it
has its place.

Here's
one for you to try if you can.....find a stereo pressing of Beatles '65
and compare it to the black shell 8. I think in many ways the 8 sounds
better, except of course in its muddier high end. snip

Got the vinyl, don't have the 8 track. Was this released in the US as
a Lear product, or was this a later release done by the label? If the
former, all they probably did was dub right off the LP anyway. Lear
wasn't serious about fidelity until Ampex got involved directly, and
the first "flatpacks," according to the published lore, were just
basically dubs right off of an LP you could get in any store at the
time onto an Ampex 3200 dupe line set up with the .42mm tracks at 3¾
IPS...talk about "mid fi!" Later, they started using masters from the
labels, but again, they weren't too serious about quality. Remember
the story about them running around Detroit trying to find someone who
could handle 1" tape? So they went to Motown, and took a DUB from a
1" master onto a ½" dub, THEN used that dub as their "master" and then
dubbed "submasters" and "mothers" from that. FOUR generations of tape
loss before it hit the final product, completely unacceptable in the
record industry at the time, and remember that the 1" master probably
had at least a couple generations' worth of overdubs on it, anyway.
They obviously didn't have a clue, other than for making a buck.

The few "flatpacks" I've run into were worse in quality than what I
could turn out here at home on the Wollensak from a good LP copy, I'm
reasonably certain. After Ampex started direct manufacture, quality
definitely improved, but then we're left with those godawful "five
hole" carts! I tried to rescue an original "Led Zeppelin" beater last
week (wasn't really worth it; 5 feet of tape was "accordionized"
inside and the oxide war worn almost down to the backing) and I
finally threw it all away. HATE those things. I've found the "jack
screw" method of opening them to be about 50% effective...if that. It
seems that highly "abused" carts (left in the car, dirty, scuffed up)
are much tougher to crack open that nice, home-kept carts, though, so
maybe that's also a factor on these.

dB

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 00:25:01 GMT, Daniel & Kathy Gibson
wrote:

Yeah! Ever tried to fix an LP? I put splicing tape all over one, and it
did not sound any better. Go figure! snip

Maybe you had the tape on the wrong side???

dB

DeserTBoB wrote:

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 00:25:01 GMT, Daniel & Kathy Gibson
wrote:

Yeah! Ever tried to fix an LP? I put splicing tape all over one, and it
did not sound any better. Go figure! snip

Maybe you had the tape on the wrong side???

dB

I don't think so. The problems really seemed to arise when I put the LP
into a cartridge.
--

Daniel and Kathy Gibson
http://www.katestrackshack.com
"Kate's Track Shack -Your Internet Home For Inexpensive 8-tracks!!"
AND...
http://drnooseandjambone.com
"DrNoose And Jambone - Do It To The Optigan!"