WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

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!

Cassette tapes were NEVER audiophile period. I only made cassette tapes for mobile and that was simplified when CDs got cheaper AND easier to make. I challenge anyone to hear any SQ difference in a PeterCar at 70 mph.  8 track before that. A buddy had cassette in his van 1970, claimed it was better, I didn't care.  Another buddy had a 8-track recorder, plenty of mixtapes around.  At least I had a splicer from my R2R to key them going.
Nowadays cassette decks are good for archival recordings and movie props.The only "compatibility" issues with R2R was speed and track layout. A 4 channel 1/4 incher can play anything. It won't be quite as solid with a half track recording but a half track head is worthless trying to play a 2 sided quarter track tape, which are the majority of consumer recordings. You can always digitize and correct the speed.
Now to find a 4 channel USB interface to turn tracks into files before mine is broken for good.