Cassettes still rock!

Never stopped listening to cassettes. It helps having a top notch machine to play them on such as my Aiwa ad f770! Frank Sinatra on reprise cassette sounds spectacular!? 

I don’t think I would go as far as to say Cassette sounds better than lps but on a top flight deck, Nakamichi or similar with a top quality tape they can be very good indeed.
Certainly better than some members give them credit for.

I was a big fan of TDK MA and SA tapes, have some Maxwell as well. Yes, some have froze, but very few. That just seemed to be an issue with the medium, even ‘back then’. My larger issue is those damn felt pads falling off a few vs freezing of the rollers ;-)

I really thought I may purchase some old record label releases on cassette again, as you can find them pretty cheap, but not sure I will, as if the vinyl album is available, that’s what my preference would be. Especially not knowing the quality of the mastering/tape. That could change if there were more ratings by users of tape releases on places like Discogs, but those are few and far between. From the tapes I already had/have, it is a crap shoot at best knowing which ones will sound good, and which ones won’t.

I would agree on pre recorded tapes quality.
A while back I bought up some " old stock" tapes from a dealer, about 400 I think.
Of that 400 I threw maybe 100 away as even though still sealed the rollers had frozen or tapes deteriorated.
Of the 300 left, probably 200 were just ok in quality.
Of the 100 left maybe 75 were very good with about 25 being spectacular.

So yes not very good odds really.. lol.

I have a restored Nakamichi BX-300 and a few tapes, some of them recorded from LP's in the late 80's and well preserved. When the recording was done well on quality tape, cassette playback sounds very good on the BX-300. However, I think cassette sound quality is not really audiophile compared to vinyl and digital.