5 years later, an 8-Track "tape" feature for iTunes music

[hal]

there was no fast fwd or rev on 8 tracks - that's why they were so crappy (among other reasons) - that is in no way similar to 8 track experience...

this is a 'high end' 8 track player (quadrophonic!)

if you were lucky, you had 1-2-3-4 buttons to jump to different areas of the tape, but that's about it

[M A V I C]

So other than there being a picture of an 8 track tape on the interface... what's the relation?

I'm not sure what the original request even was of "the 8-track FEATURE would be neat in itunes."

My 8 track player got so hot you didn't want to touch it.

[Jimmypoo]

Mini 9 wrote:

So YOU were the filthy impostor!

[deckeda]

It's not nitpicking if the metaphor is as completely bungled as this one.

8-track tapes couldn't be rewound, because they didn't need to be rewound: the tape was a continuous loop. Similarly, they didn't offer fast-forward.

The nature of it being a looped tape, and with part of the transport inside the tape (the pinch roller) meant that it also didn't need "play" or "stop" buttons---nor did they have them, although recorders had a pause feature. So that whole interface on that app is dumb.

This app's features to play a few songs by one artist before moving onto another, or to shake to go to the next artist are distant analogies to the fact that an 8-Track tape could only play for a few minutes on each "track" (actually, track-pair for stereo) before having to be switched to the next track in order to continue hearing the program material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape

... the Stereo 8 could switch between tracks automatically, with the use of a small length of conductive foil at the splice joint on the tape, which would cause the player to change tracks as it passed the head assembly.

The Stereo 8 also introduced the problem of dividing up the programming intended for a two-sided LP record into four programs. Often this resulted in songs being split into two parts, song orders being reshuffled, shorter songs being repeated, and songs separated by long passages of silence. Some eight-tracks included extra musical content to fill in time such as a piano solo on Lou Reed's Berlin and a guitar solo in Pink Floyd's Animals.

In rare instances, an eight-track was able to be arranged exactly like the record album version, without any song breaks. Examples of this are Quadrophenia by The Who, and some versions of Days of Future Passed by The Moody Blues. Other examples of this rarity are Freeways by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Live Bullet by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Caught Live + 5 by The Moody Blues, The Concert in Central Park by Simon & Garfunkel, and Octave by The Moody Blues.

The S&G Central Park concert? That was 1981---I didn't realize 8-Track tapes were still being made. That's pretty close to the CD's intro.

This iconic Panasonic player has a "dynamite detonator" t-bar for manually switching to the next track:

[deckeda]

deckeda wrote:
...
The S&G Central Park concert? That was 1981---I didn't realize 8-Track tapes were still being made. That's pretty close to the CD's intro. ...

Heh---my wiki link above says the end came in 1982 for retail tapes, 1988 for record and tape club tapes, and "ever since" for indies and bands with a sense of humor.

Like this, released in 2009!

[$tevie]

All I really remember about 8-tracks is the horrible gap in the middle of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" and thinking that my roommate had wasted her money on that crummy player.

[Mini 9]

I remember that panasonic player.
The two 8-tracks that got the most use by me was Steve Martin's tape. (Can't recall if it was let's get small or a wild and crazy guy. and BSG's theme music.

I had a friend that got the first (wave) of CD Players. Yamaha. One had a remote the other did not. I think it was like $499. CD-1 and CD-2?

That was when the electrostatic LP/vinyl de-static-izer was finally put to rest.

Here are some SETUPS!!!

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=85819&page=12

[Jimmypoo]

There's a lot of low power Marantz and pioneer "toys" in that stack. Waste of space.

I have the last two Marantz stacks - 3600 series pre-amp/250M amp (plus tuner/cassette)
and 3800 series silver, with 300DC amp (tuner/cassette).

[davester]

Jimmypoo knows how to poo-poo.

[Mini 9]

JP - yeah, they're not mcintosh, etc. But I look at that and am reminded of the types of crap my friends and I could afford, though not in that quantity.