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?

 

128x128hilde45

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

Haven't posted in some time, but had to respond to this post. I have to disagree to the bobbergman post. My 4 track was superior in many ways to my Panasonic 8 track player/recorder. Having only 4 bands on a tape the same width as an 8 track, there no hearing overlap of 2 tracks, the totally annoying changing tracks in the middle of the song. It was a Kraco (sp?) player and most cartridges were made by Muntz. Can't remember it ever 'eating a tape' either. I did like painstakingly recording various songs on my Panasonic 8 track and timing them to end correctly. Manufacturers preferred the 8 track because it only used half the tape length. I'd been buying LP's for some time, but you couldn't play them in the car. I also acquired an ac/dc converter to play them at home. Sounded great thru my Lafayette speakers circa 1968. Good times indeed.

@nonoise 

When I first read the header of this thread, I thought it was going to be something along the lines of what we audiophiles are in store for when we do get to hell.

I think hell will be worse. We'll be trapped in discussions exclusively focused on speaker bracing, DAC chip comparisons, isolation materials, and whether the crappy electrical wires in our walls make all power cords a waste of money.