WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

The ‘tape deck era’ was still a vinyl era. If you didn’t have an audiophile tape set-up, you probably just spun vinyl. I didn’t have a tape deck for a long time, in fact, one of the reasons to finally got a deck was to record my CD’s for my car before CD players were a typical car audio inclusion, and were a luxury buy. Tape players were commonly included in your autos audio system at that time. At that point point, I also began recording my vinyl for the same purpose, but also bought quite a few retail label audio tapes as well.

Cassettes were always for the car.  Or for when I didn't like an LP enough to buy it but somebody I knew had a copy that I could duplicate.  It didn't hurt that that a couple of buddies were in the record business during the heyday of the cassette, making it easy for me to borrow many hot new releases.  If I truly loved the music I'd buy the vinyl.  If I didn't, well, I would listen to the cassette a couple of times and then record something new over it.  It was truly rare...but it did happen a couple times...that I got a pre-recorded cassette that truly sounded good.

So true. Records were much more common, cars mostly had radios, and if the car had a tape deck it was about as likely 8-track as cassette. Yes the all-time worst format ever, 8-track, was actually pretty common for a while. Probably was a year when there were as many 8-tracks as cassettes, at least in cars.

I never really thought of it as a tape era. It was records. Other formats like tapes were for cars, or making party tapes. Records were for music. As it was then, so shall it ever be.

It went Vinyl, Reel to Reel, cassette 1969 (?) (it didn’t catch on) then 4 track, then 8 track, then cassette finally caught on 1979 (?) maybe 1980. 8 track was already gone. Boxes everywhere at garage sales and swap meets. The problem with cassette was the cheapest narrowest, format of all the the tape, types.. There were 3-4 different Reel to Reel formats too. You have to be carefull, buying some of the older RtR, it’s not all compatible. Some reelhead can chime in.

I haven’t used my RtR much for the last 25 years.
The magnetic media was starting to degrade from the 40,50,60s
in the 90s, I’ll have to check again, they only get worse. Some were in real good shape, some lost there luster..
My wife still has boxes of cassettes. We had to special order a cassette for a new car, it was a big deal..
Still sound bad, but it's the Stones, suppose to sound bad.. I think.

Regards

Of course vinyl ruled back then, but as a college kid I had a musical appetite that far exceeded my budget to buy all the music I wanted on records. And RTR tapes were not cheap either, so the most cost effective way to build a music collection was with cassette tapes. There happened to be a music library where I lived, which lent LP's at a discount to students. With the right timing, you could pick out the latest releases before anyone else did and before the 'handling marks' became offensive. In those years I learned how people treated records they didn't own themselves. 

Anyway, when I finally had the money to afford a decent sounding cassette deck, which really meant Nakamichi, I wanted to re-records everything. The difference was not imaginary. Of course not anywhere near the level of high speed 2 track RTR, yet worthy of the aspiring audiophile on a budget.

Fast forward 40 years and all the music I've ever wanted has been accumulated on pristine original vinyl. But I still operate a nicely refurbished Nakamichi 700II for compiling 'mood' tapes, just like I did in the old days. A ridiculously anachronistic way to pass the time, but to me it's fun. I now make these recordings with a system I could only dream of back then and I'm actually amazed just how good cassettes can sound. It's a format that probably shouldn't work due to its limitations, yet it does.