WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

Uberwaltz, I was just responding to the OP. I was not knocking anyone’s choice of playback hardware. I don’t use vinyl anymore either and was an early adopter of computer audio. I totally respect your choice to access music the way you like, although that’s not my choice for music reproduction. To each their own Brother.

If i hear tape hiss on an older record, I know I'm getting an even better recording without filtering.

Tuberist.
It's all good as I was not knocking your choice and I know you are in the land of digital now and enjoying every minute.
It was more just an observation and likely would have worked as well without your name in headlights.... Lol.
Peace!

But to all those who just bleat repeatedly cassettes are crap.
You need a modern day listening education.
True there were/ are some pretty poor pre recorded tapes and at the age of a lot of them big issues with frozen mechanisms etc.
However there were also a high number of glorious issues on chrome tape etc that with the right electronics could bring immense listening pleasure.
Nuff said, everyone entitled to their own opinion.

The appeal of cassette decks versus other sources of yesteryear like vinyl and radio was always that they could make decent quality recordings.

I stopped using my cassette deck to record when vhs hifi recorders came out. Much better format! Less tape hiss and better dynamic range and much more durable.

I still have VHS hifi and cassette tapes around and occasionally play ones I want to hear and don’t have otherwise.

I had a lovely Aiwa ad6550 cassette deck for many years. Excellent build quality and feel. Sound quality was very good but not quite to level of the best. I gave it to my future wife when we were dating to use as she had tapes and nothing good to play them on. That Gained me a lot of brownie points with her to this day.

I don’t recall ever coming across a good quality pre-recorded cassette tape but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. The tapes Recorded and played on most good quality cassette decks of the late 70s and 80s and later always sounded much better.

I still have my 90s vintage Yamaha deck connected to my system and use it on occasion. Getting harder to play older tapes without issues though.