i remember working in a radio shack store in the late 70s. we took delivery of some new "clarinette" model 8-track compacts, put on a carpenters tape and were surprised by the vivid sound quality [better trebles than any cassette i'd heard up to that point] coming from those speakers, with an absolute minimum of background noise. they had another 8-track player in the store, one that recorded also and had dolby NR, it sounded thin and dull in comparison. so i figured that this had to be a happy accident of matching tape azimuth between the carpenters tape and the clarinette player.
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?