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 1 response by immatthewj

The title of this thread made me think of my "Alice Cooper Goes To Hell" 8-Track.

Anyway, I remember back in th early to mid 70's getting a portable cassette player for X-mas one year.  In the little town we lived in, I could find very few prerecorded cassettes.  (I did wind up with a couple by Jim Croce & Tony Orland & Dawn and some pirated looking stuff by CCR & Johnny Cash and Three Dog Night and I ordered some stuff that was advertised on TV, but there sure wasn't a lot in that town available.  So I joined Longines Symphonette Record Club and ordered 12 cassettes, but the ba$tards sent me 12 8-tracks.  I sent them back and told them that they screwed up, and they sent me 12 more 8-tracks!  Anyway, in '77 I put an 8-track player ( the first of a few) and started buying 8-trracks.  .