WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

If you frequent the Nakamichi forums or even talk to Willy Herman direct you will find that while the Dragon was a superb piece of high tech gear it did have reliability issues and was not truly the best choice for an everyday driver so to speak.
That honour lay at the door of the zx7/9 machines.
I will NEVER part with my zx7 ever!

Then of course, there are the Nak pre recorded issues....

Audiophiles listened to vinyl.  Cassettes--no thanks.  The MP3 of the 70's.  Heard a few R2R decks that weren't bad, but still not vinyl.

Cassettes of the 80s and 90s crush vinyl. Cassettes were never a target of the Loudness Wars conspiracy. In fact, many cassettes crush CD dynamic range too. Vinyl tends to be wimpy by comparison to cassettes, especially after vinyl got caught up in the Loudness Wars. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Without dynamics you got nothin’ - audiophile axiom

Just to put it in words that hopefully can explain my perspective a little.
I have to ask a couple of questions.
Do you own a top flight cassette deck in full working condition to factory specs?
Do you own a number of Chrome or Metal tapes that have been recorded on said cassette deck?

If you cannot answer yes to both then you just cannot understand or comprehend my viewpoint as you cannot hear what I hear.

And that is not meant as any insult or disrespect to anybody else here but I am not working of a possibly flawed 40 plus year old memory with my cassette tape experiences that I am posting.