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Welcome to Hell, here's your 8-Track

Neil Postman once said, 

"Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided."

I'm pretty sure that we know that the 8-track was more bad than good.

Question for audiophiles here who might know -- was there anything good about 8-track technology that was lost when it went extinct? And what was that good, audio-wise, specifically?

 

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Showing 3 responses by edcyn

edcyn
1,876 posts
 

desktopguy -- The way I remember it, 4 Track cartridges and players existed before 8 Track ones. My sister had one in her Mustang.

edcyn
1,876 posts
 

I know I’ve mentioned this countless times before, but my dad was an unmitigated hi-fi nut of the WWII generation who always had to have the latest HiFi gadget or tech, from transistor electronics to stereophonic to quad to various media sources. Of course, he got into Four track cartridges and then Eight Track cartridges. Whenever his hifi shelf got too crowded he’d give me whatever he was tired of.

In any case, before long I inherited an Eight Track Recorder/Player, and I got to say it was maybe the worst piece of audio technology ever brought to market. Cartridges that never failed to either unravel or stretch their tape to produce nausea-inducing wow. Frequency response made AM radio seem mellifluous. Whew!

edcyn
1,876 posts
 

Over the course of my audio existence I’ve had Reel-to-Reel, Four Track Cartridge, Eight Track Cartridge, Cassette, CD, and Direct-to-Bits recording media. I’ve spent more than my share of time making recordings off the radio, and off of various borrowed LPs & Singles. I also made recordings of records I’d gotten sick of and wanted to sell for pocket cash. Anyway, of the bunch, in terms of SQ I gotta tell ya that Eight Track was the proverbial ugh-o-rama.

And oh yeah. over the years I have made many live recordings of me and my musician mates.

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