WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

I was in Japan in '76 and heard the NAK Dragon "GOLD" edition.
Don't remember the amps or other details except for the JBL 4350 monitors.  Absolutely blew my head apart, never thought a cassette could sound that good. And, yes, the 'tables at the same location, Hiroshima,
blew the cassette away.  Interesting experience, I spent a lot of time there. But, was really never a cassette fan, not even in the car.  Couldn't
hear sheeit over the exhaust in the vette! 427 baby. 

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.

Uh, you can’t even buy cassettes from the 70s. They’re all gone Except for a few original Ampex clamshells, etc. which are nothing to write home about SQ wise. The really good well-made cassettes came much later. So please don’t bore us with tales of woe from the 70s. It was when the humble cassette had to compete head to head with the CD in the 80s and 90s that cassettes became reliable and high quality. The Golden Age for cassettes was circa 1986-1994. Much closer to the sound of the master tape than a CD ever thought of being. But I digress.

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.