WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

For the hardcore junkie cassettes are pure heroin, everything else is methadone. 

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.