As someone who runs an archive for a 90s radio show, I have to contratict partly. I regulary get tapes that are 30-35 years old. The quality of those audio tape

As someone who runs an archive for a 90s radio show, I have to contratict partly. I regulary get tapes that are 30-35 years old. The quality of those audio tapes is shockingly good. The old chrome audio tapes very rarely show signs of degradation compared with audio CDs from the same time period. Mid to late 90s we also got the metall audio tapes that are even better. I got a few DAT tapes from the early 90s that are in same league as metall audio tapes.