> 8-track

Oh lord. Inevitably playing Barbara Streisand's greatest hits in my grandpa's light blue Dodge Dart.

While DAT was an expensive and equivalent stepping-tone, CDs were such a vast improvement because they delivered human perceptible Nyquist bandwidth-complete reproduction (PCM 44.1 kHz @ 16-bit 2 CH stereo). And still audiophiles and other sorts of liars insist on making absurd claims without evidence or demonstration that they "can tell the difference" between CDs and higher sample rates because it's simply beyond the laws of physics and limits of human perception. 44.1 kHz @ 65536 levels of sample choices is plenty. If anything, better quality DACs and preamps/amps would be more beneficial.