WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

I wouldn't have called myself an audiophile back in the 70's;  I was just doing what everyone else in my group was doing - my teen/early 20's years.  Making my own mix cassette tapes with selected songs pulled from my records, trying to get the sound level just right without distorting, keeping the break between songs to a couple of seconds.  I had both an 8-track and cassette deck for my car that I could swap out for each other with a bracket under the dash.  I had a few acquaintances that did RTR, but that never would have been a good solution for me, as I listened to most of my music in my car (lived in an apartment, small bedroom, very thin walls).  I bought a Technics SL-1200 just so I could speed up the last song on a tape ever so slightly so that it would fit.  TDK ruled the day; first getting the cheapest (and longest running) 10-pack I could, then buying the better ones as time went on if I could get deals on them.  Maxell came next, then Denon.  I still have my discrete head Nakamichi DR-10 (never could spend what, $1800 for the Dragon?) and it doesn't get a lot of use nowadays - need to change the belts and rubber wheels - but I was surprised how good some of my tapes sounded with my current system.  The 8-tracks never sounded good and were a nightmare to repair if they got eaten by your machine, so they didn't last long with me once I got into cassettes.

I still have a Harmon Kardon HK 2000 cassette deck. I used it to make tapes for the car. It was a good deck back in the day. Don't know why but can't bring myself to get rid of it. Nostalgia I guess.

I still have my Denon 3-head deck from 1991 in my system as well as my old mix tapes. It great to play back these old tapes and remember the good times from that time. It is good nostalgia.

Nakamichi Dragon & TDK ALL Metal tape

Cassettes were for collecting and trading Grateful Dead concerts.  Did they have any other purpose?  ;)   

Every Dead Head I knew had at least a few tapes, many had 100s.  When I went to college (late 70s), the people with the best Stereos (that's what we called them back then) were the Dead Heads, hands down.  Most non-deadophiles had the all-in-one Panasonics, Sonys with the cheap turntable on top, cassette built in and radio with crap speakers hanging off the sides.  But the Dead Heads had real 'stereos', separates with most of the money going into the cassette decks to make sure they could make the best copies.