Quality is indistinguishable from the first playback. Tapes have a bad reputation because most people used them in the cars, which is the equivalent of storing them in an oven on a daily basis. A lot of car stereos were very cheap, and that lead to a lot of cassettes being damaged when they would have been fine otherwise.
Regarding the quality argument. Again, it's going to depend on the media and the equipment. I have a very nice Marantz tape deck, and I use chrome tapes with it. When recorded and played back with dolby noise reduction, it sounds pretty damn good!
I say this as someone that also owns a very nice turntable and has a digital FLAC media collection, so I'm not married to tapes in any way. They're just something fun to goof around with (and mostly to give my kid a more tangible experience with playing music at home).
Regarding convenience, I can't argue that they're the least convenient media. That said, I'm an album guy, so I like to listen to recordings in their entirety most of the time.
https://youtu.be/_dgJ4hRHBiw?si=IpjzdgAHJ4Q9yvb5
Quality is indistinguishable from the first playback. Tapes have a bad reputation because most people used them in the cars, which is the equivalent of storing them in an oven on a daily basis. A lot of car stereos were very cheap, and that lead to a lot of cassettes being damaged when they would have been fine otherwise.
Regarding the quality argument. Again, it's going to depend on the media and the equipment. I have a very nice Marantz tape deck, and I use chrome tapes with it. When recorded and played back with dolby noise reduction, it sounds pretty damn good!
https://youtu.be/jVoSQP2yUYA?si=db7QjRt37ENiLMFX
I say this as someone that also owns a very nice turntable and has a digital FLAC media collection, so I'm not married to tapes in any way. They're just something fun to goof around with (and mostly to give my kid a more tangible experience with playing music at home).
Regarding convenience, I can't argue that they're the least convenient media. That said, I'm an album guy, so I like to listen to recordings in their entirety most of the time.