WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

Uh, you can’t even buy cassettes from the 70s. They’re all gone Except for a few original Ampex clamshells, etc. which are nothing to write home about SQ wise. The really good well-made cassettes came much later. So please don’t bore us with tales of woe from the 70s. It was when the humble cassette had to compete head to head with the CD in the 80s and 90s that cassettes became reliable and high quality. The Golden Age for cassettes was circa 1986-1994. Much closer to the sound of the master tape than a CD ever thought of being. But I digress.

I don't miss cassettes one whit.  Some sounded pretty good but trouble with a capital T.  Unless, of course, you let them bake for six months on the dashboard.

Could be commercially produced cassettes got better in the 80's and 90's.   Don't know.  There was certainly a lot of room for improvement.   I dumped the format in favor of hifi VHS by then. Then came digital recording.

The format is still inherently fragile though.     A lot of quality improvement would be needed to make later tapes live longer than their predecessors.  Especially if played often.
 

Whiner alert 🚨

Wake up and smell the roses 🌹 🌹 🌹

Mapman
I would have to say that not ALL tapes from the late 80,s and early 90,s were better so it is not a general statement of fact imho.
However there certainly are a lot of good examples and obviously the newer the tape then the newer the tech internals and less aged shelf life.
So it is hard to just say 90,s tapes are better than 70,s tapes due to the 15 to 20 year age difference for starters alone.

This format will always have its haters and thats fine, leaves more tapes for me!