8-Tracks provided better bass and highs as Dolby variants outside of "A" decreased volumes in the cassette era. Spent many hours making my own mix tapes and used whatever was available including the Memorex brand. I preferred 90's, which as I recall was 45 minutes a side. 30 minutes on a 60 is not much music compared to what CD brought about. Personally, I think Dolby was a gimmick or a way to charge more money. While it reduced noise, some music lost the luster after the fact. I recall some of the later Cassette Decks - especially Nakamichi - that had quite the technological extreme look to them and were pieces of art, but all cassette decks could eat your tape. Tape eating was especially bad on 8-tracks, which is a great reason not to buy one. Even when I used alcohol and a q-tip to clean the head and spinners, some decks had a mind of their own and would eat tape for inexplicable reasons.
