WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

I owned an expensive Nakamichi and that was SOTA. Perpetual head cleaning and realignment, plus the tape wears out. Old tech I'm happy to no longer use.

Tuberist.
One could use the same analogy to records.
They need cleaning, stylus and cartridges wear out as do The records themselves.
Does that mean I should stop playing records too then?
😇😇😎😎

I didn’t say cassettes were perfect. But what is? Cut me some slack, Jack. At least at the end of the day you have music. Tape is a natural medium. It breathes. You wouldn’t believe what I have to do to get CDs to sound half as good as cassettes. 

I had a Nak Dragon and the only reason I had it was to record cassettes for the Nak deck in my car. When CD came along I tossed the cassettes and the Dragon. If you think they sound good you have a lot of work to do on your system. On ESLs with subwoofers they sound worse than an MP3 file. I can understand using a Garrard 301 long before I could understand using cassettes. They were the best you could do for cars back then but that is about it.  

In the 80’s I used a Teac X10R R2R, which I still have, with a dbx 224 type II noise reduction unit and dbx 3bx range expander.  I also had a professional Technics cassette deck with dbx 224.  I recorded about 40 reels and about a hundred cassettes. I loved the R2R sound, and the cassettes.  

In the 90’s my cassette recorder broke.  I was heartbroken, but by then I had moved on to CDs and ripped many of my reels to a NAS and my iPod.  I haven’t played my R2R in a while.  In the present, I enjoy streaming and my vinyl rig.