WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

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Here you go GK, this will help illustrate it for you:

https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/images/6/63/Main_chart.jpg

Good luck!

Gk you might be mistaking hiss (noise) for air (which is part of the music).

"Air" refers to most of what you hear in music above ~15-16khz.

But that’s OK. If you are also truly hearing Bob Dylan say that as you repeatedly insist, you may have other much bigger issues to deal with. Good health brother!

Yep Uber my first music maker was a Hitachi portable cassette recorder ~ 1972 or so. BEfore that a Panasonic transistor radio.

I graduated to a $200 Sanyo compact system with radio, phono AND cassette a year later. Woohoo I was in heaven. Until I started to visit the "high end" hifi shops in the area a few years later..

This was an interesting read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_deck

Cassette tape format was originally designed for voice recording applications, not hifi.

Started with your typical portable cassette tape recorder. Then later adapted to tape decks for use in hifi systems.

Follow-up technologies enabled cassettes better for hifi music applications.

" " The "compact cassette" (a Philips trademark)[1] was introduced by the Philips Corporation at the Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin in 1963[3][4] and marketed as a device purely intended for portable speech-only dictation machines.[citation needed] The tape width was 1⁄8 inch (actually 0.15 inch, 3.81 mm) and tape speed was 1.875 inches (4.8 cm) per second, giving a decidedly non Hi-Fi frequency response and quite high noise levels.[5]"

Frequency response of hifi cassettes was up to 15khz or so.

Back in those days, I could hear to 20khz and easily noticed the difference (lack of air) with cassettes.  Noise reduction technologies like Dolby B and C helped keep the tape hiss noise levels down.

Nowadays, 15khz would work fine for most older ears like mine that no longer hear to 20khz.

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.
 

I worked at a Tech Hifi back in what I suppose was part of the "cassette era" (1978-1980).

We sold a lot of cassette decks along with the receivers, amps, tuners and turntables.

Nobody that I recall ever demoed a system using a cassette deck by choice to show off the sound. Cassette decks were demoed only when someone wanted to buy a cassette deck.

I do not recall anyone ever demoing a system with any pre-recorded cassette tape of the time. I don’t recall ever hearing a good one. Plus they were not made well and prone to jam.

We sold lots of good brands, Nakamichi, Tandberg, Akai, TEAC, Pioneer, KEnwood, Aiwa (these were very good and very popular  back then), and others.

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.

You need to talk to Geoffkait. My understanding from him is  he is still in the “cassette era”.