The Compact Cassette one, I really don't get. I saw a guy eagerly rifling though a shelf full in a second hand shop the other day!
The home recordings I did on TDK-SA used to be pretty good but the pre-recorder ferrite tape releases were always rubbish.
The compact cassette thing is a vibe I'm not feeling either. Tape (unless reel-2-reel) was always a consumable format, used mostly for
pause pushing. If I wanted to actually
pay the record companies, I'd buy a CD - because those were a zillion times better than crappy vinyl. I only ever used chrome tapes in my Kenwood deck, as they sounded good with DolbyB and were very affordable in packs of ten. All ferric tapes were good for was, turning the pinch wheel brown and making into mix tapes for mates - who I knew would screw up the tape in their rubbish car radio-cassette player, which back in the day was an in-car status symbol. I once used a set of metal tapes for recording a mate's band, but really TDK chrome dioxid' was more than adequate. Wind on (or jog on) and have you seen the price of 'new old' tapes on eBay? Me thinks I should bulk erase the big box of tapes as I'm sitting on a
small fortune.
On the subject of winding on, one culture shock for new players is the notion of winding stuff on and changing sides. There are no menus, drop downs or voice activations, just your finger on the FF and FW. The fast cueing of tapes is a lost skill.
btw, for any European looking for eco friendly record pressing, check out
https://deepgrooves.eu/ecofriendlyvinyl/ in the Netherlands.