Worst place an 8-track tape to switch

Here is my vote for the worst place ever that an 8-track tape could have switched tracks. I would have made a poll, but I could not think of any others that even compared.

Pink Floyd DSOTM - Time

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun    CATHUNK

What do you think?

One of the many reasons magnetic-tape media sucks. Make mine vinyl! (or at least CD...)

rewinding/fast-forwarding, hiss, tape-breakage, song interruptions (8-track), tiny artwork...glad it's dead!

Raymon7174 wrote: Here is my vote for the worst place ever that an 8-track tape could have switched tracks. I would have made a poll, but I could not think of any others that even compared.

I bet you also went for Sony Betamix video too, rather than VHS. I had a friend who swore by Phillips 2000 video - and don't talk about the Bang Olfsson variant of the Phillips 2000............

I had a student friend who had a Daimler Dart car fitted with 8 track, however, in Britain in the mid 70's it was almost impossible to get pre-recorded 8 track tapes............ However, 8 tracks were wonderful radio station tools, for short jingles - until digital floppies and then MDs came in.

Does anybody rememerr the late great dj Kenny Everett's early karoke sessions on Radio One and then Capitol, i.e. sing along with the original Beatles' backing. I discovered he did that by using commercially available, prerecorded reel to reel, and a suitable reel to reel tape deck, with which you could lose half of a channel. The way the Beatles were recorded in stereo usually meant that drum and bass in one channel, vocals and guitars inthe other, meaning removal of the vocal was easy. However, Everett also did the sing along on his shows with the Beach Boys tunes. During the early 70's you could buy in London, US imported LPs of Wilson and Co classics without the vocals. It sort of continues: David Weckl last couple of CD releases have been available, without one of the 5 instruments of the band's line-up. So if you're a budding saxophonist (or drummer or.....) you can play jazz along with the Weckl Band......................

Karnevil9 wrote: Wow man 8-track may have been a big sucess in the U.S. but it was a flop over here in the U.K...Some boast it was better quality than the basic audio cassette..wider tape or not..The medium sucks.

With some personal disbelief that companies can have such control; Sony/Phillips had the joint patents of many things hi fidelity, including cassette machines. Apparently to get permission to use such technology, a cassette deck manufacturers had to keep to the Sony/Phillips prescribed 1 and 7/8 inches per second tape speed of the original patent. Tape decks (and 8 tracks) were typically operated at 3 and 3/4 or 7 and 1/2 inches per minutes, (commercial multi-tracks  15 inch or more) - the faster the play speed less the effect of tape hiss. Hence if you purchased the apparent convenience of a cassette player, and you originally purchased built-in hiss. Dolby B and C came along (what was the  other main system of hiss reduction?),  chrome and metal tapes as alternatives to ferric oxide, better quality polyester (Mylar) tape less prone to creep and stretch under tension (also less magentic medium drop out), and then the expensive Nakimatchi tape decks with low signal to noise (who worries about signal to noise anymore??). When the patents went out of date, some cassette manufacturers offered two speed cassette players, at the original and double that.

It always amused me that for the US market, one cassette tape manufacturer actually went to the bother to establish the average length of an album, and  C42 tapes (or was the C43?) cassette tapes were retailed. Which in turn also amuses me that hard nosed commercialism never bothered, that while one division of a record company is making and releasing recordings, another division of the same company is making blank cassettes or CDR to enable you to burn and 'pirate' those recordings. (Examples: Sony, EMI). Home taping is killing the record industry?????????? No, more likely it's suicide thru' greed.