Inspecting memory address contents in GDB

Hi
Pasting some output lines from a core dump gdb session below.
I noticed after "x/8c" the line seems stuck in ASCII mode. So when I do "x/8b" it doesn't go back to output in hex, is that expected?

It goes back to hex after I used the command "x /8xb"

~$ gdb --version
GNU gdb (Ubuntu 12.1-3ubuntu2) 12.1

(gdb) x/8b 0x000044d1bd2827c1
0x44d1bd2827c1:	0x0f	0x0b	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc
(gdb) x/8c 0x000044d1bd2827c1
0x44d1bd2827c1:	15 '\017'	11 '\v'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'
(gdb) x/8b 0x000044d1bd2827c1
0x44d1bd2827c1:	15 '\017'	11 '\v'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'	-52 '\314'
(gdb) x /8xb 0x000044d1bd2827c1
0x44d1bd2827c1:	0x0f	0x0b	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc	0xcc

I know the values turned out to not be ASCII in this case.

Kind regards, Jonny