8-track Cartridge

The 8-track Cartridge is an endless loop magnetic tape introduced in the early 1960s by Lear and discontinued in 1988. It was later revived in the 2020s with the most notable new releases being the Christmas albums from Meghan Trainor and Dolly Parton. 8-track Cartridges tend to be very unreliable (Katie Cadet despises 8-track cartridges and wouldn't take the risk). Some 8-track Cartridges tend to go up to 16 kHz of frequency response if used in high-end equipment like the Pioneer HR-99. Most of the 8-tracks that you will get tend to not have a lot of genres compared to the other formats, and repairing 8-tracks can be quite a challenge to the consumer. 8-tracks also have very high wow and flutter, and tend to bleed through the sound in between tracks. 8-tracks tend to rearrange the tracks that is undistinguishable to the other formats.

8-track Cartridge players sometimes can contain Dolby B-type Noise Reduction, and you can record onto blank 8-track Cartridges on high-end equipment as well. A multichannel 8-track cartridge exists, which was the precursor to the digital-based DVD-Audio and Blu-ray Audio formats. In the late 80s, you would get your 8-tracks via Columbia House Mail Order. The flaws with the 8-track cartridge have been improved and carried over to Philips' Audio Cassette format with the CrO2 High Bias formulation. The 8-track cartridge system did make its way into the hard-to-find Milton Bradley OMNI, which uses proprietary data tracks for answering trivia questions of popular culture while retaining the ability to play standard music cartridges.