This article is from the rec.arts.movies.tech FAQ, by Scott E. Norwood snorwood@nyx.nyx.net with numerous contributions by others.
While regular 8mm was never designed to have a soundtrack, someone
figured out that the edge opposite the perforations could have a thin
magnetic stripe applied to it in order to carry a recording of film's
soundtrack. This, of course, uses the same principle as an ordinary
tape recorder. Unfortunately, though, this format was never
standardized, and never received wide usage. Complicating the issue
was the wide variety in the `sound offset'-i.e. the number of frames
ahead of the picture that the sound must run. If a film with an
18-frame sound offset were run in a projector which supported a
20-frame offset, then the sound would run slightly behind the picture.
Sound quality here is quite variable, depending upon the quality of
the striping job, the age of the print, and the quality of the
recording.
 
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