For those of us old enough to remember 8 Tracks, which did you prefer?

I always bought vinyl because I just couldn't see spending money on a tape when I could make one myself from the vinyl. However, when it came to tapes, I definately preferred 8 tracks. The sound was much more powerful on the tape and there was far less tape hiss than cassettes. Cassettes had Dolby but the players with it were too expensive and I never noticed the difference when I finally got one. Also, with an 8 track, you could play it on the stereo and really shake the walls. Cassette players during that time were mainly on boom boxes only and stereos that had them were too expensive.

8 tracks had their flaws though. For instance, you had to listen to a complete program to play a particular song again. There were fast forward buttons on some of the stereos but those were too expensive. I eventually was able to get an 8 track recorder and then the damn tapes went out of style a year or two later. I think if they had advanced the players by adding fast forward, rewind, and pause buttons, 8 tracks would have definately been a better alternative when vinyl went out of style rather than cassettes because the sound was so much stronger. I never bought cassettes (except for blank ones) until vinyl became extinct. Keep in mind, CD players were around in the very late 1980s but the players were expensive as hell and the CDs themselves costed more than the alternatives. I never got my first CD player until 1994 so I am stuck with cassettes from the early 1990s and cassettes really age badly. I don't remember sound ever dropping or fading on 8 tracks so they probably would have aged better. However, they didn't last long enough for me to find out once I got into them fully.

Anyway, which was your choice?
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[Edited 4/4/06 1:06am]

All my parents 8 track players had fast forward buttons.

CD players were available to the public since 1983 , invented in 1979/80 ;

http://www.oneoffcd.com/i...torycd.cfm

I never had 8 tracks unfortunately

Dewrede said:

Really???

Never knew that...

8 Tracks couldn't hold a whole album. In many cases, they would leave some tracks off so you weren't even getting all the songs.

Whatever better audio quality they may have offered was offset by the fact that they were too big and clunky to carry around,

Dewrede said:

I had a cd player in 1983...got it for christmas with the thriller cd

My parents were like....uh...you need to get a job to pay for these things.

Cassettes were easier to deal with.

I really though cd's were going to be a fad. I did not get a cd player until a few months before Love Sexy came out. I was using DAT tapes.....

Dewrede said:

I was wondering about that the other day...

Rhondab said:

Dope!!!

CinisterCee said:

omg, look at carlton...

i don't think my folks ever owned a 8-track player...my mom had a big-assed stereo with 2 cassette decks and a turntable.




[Edited 4/4/06 11:44am]

CinisterCee said:

man I had this really cool reel to reel.....I wonder what happened to that thing...

Never fell for the 8-track system once I saw the inside of one of those tape mechanisms...



...If it jammed it was next to impossible to fix because you could never get the tension right.

Had/have quite a few standard cassettes.
The best ones were homemade from LPs using a...



...Yamaha Natural Sound K-2000 deck w/dbx noise reduction.

Also, the cassettes used were high-end TDKs made of clear thick plastic mounted on a metal frame.
I'm thinking they were MA-90 or MR-90s. I'll have to check when I get home.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

8 tracks are before my time, and after seeing the inside of one of them I was appauled that it took off, with the tape rubbing against itself like that!

CinisterCee said:

Center-fed tape = thumbs down.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

I never had an 8-track...I was in college and could not afford such luxuries
....my ex-husband still has a TEAC reel-reel if anyone is interested in buying the dinosaur....this is what I would have done to it....

cubic61052 said:

Teac? That was top of the line stuff..

Cd's were introduced in the USA in 1983, Europe and Japan already had them in 1982.

mistatee said:

Rhondab was an early adopter!

My family didn't see one of those things til 1990.

CDs seemed to be such an audiophile thing in the 80s.

i had 2 8 track recorders and i used to use them for "overdubs" when i did mixes and then i used 4 cassette decks for the same process

Graycap23 said:

Yeah...I guess back when he bought it (the 70's) it was....now it collects dust along with all the tapes he made to use for parties.....

CinisterCee said:

i didn't get one till, what, 1998 or so...? most of my youth was spent with listening to stuff on either vinyl or cassette.

i was one of those "linear edit" cats... gimme some chalk and a razor blade... and i was on point

I've never owned 8-tracks, only my parents had a real modest collection. Actually I don't know what they had, but they got rid of them once that went out of style. I'm a cassette-aholic with easily over 400 cassettes. Most of my friends can't believe how stubborn I was with holding out the inevitable crossing over to CDs. It took me until the mid-late 90's before I slowly gave in. I'm listening to cassettes now only because of the untimely demise of my Dell DJ player after two years. Talk about taking a flying leap back. I'm miserable, but hopefully in a month I'll get another one or try the public's fave Ipod. I don't know how I dealt with cassettes for so long. The walkman is a huge monstrosity compared to the Dell.

funkyslsistah said:

its Ness, where da fuck u been

funkyslsistah said:

Don't feel bad. I've had them all. mini disk, digital cassette, DAT, reel to reel, Adat, you name it. hell I still have about 500 or more cassettes. Time for a garage sale I guess.

Graycap23 said:

if u got some old WBLS shit.... hook a cat up

IAintTheOne said:

\

WBLS?

Graycap23 said:

was a station in NYC.....

IAintTheOne said:

i wish i still had all the stuff that i taped off of KUCB in des moines when it was still on the air...i probably have at least one tape in my tape drawer in my apartment or back at my dad's house that's got stuff from "soul plane", "WRF's album spotlight" and wes hall's friday afternoon shows.