[Audioarchivist]

Aah! What I would give to get my old Sony WM D3 Professional Cassette Recording Walkman back!!! Built in mic preamps were to die for, plus the bonus that tape can eat an overdriven signal, so way less distortion issues.
I switched over to MD so I could get two of them, so I could easily record ambient audience and soundboard, and quickly (well, sort of quick, at least easily) do aud/sbd matrix recordings... Easy to sync - drag and drop at 80 minutes at a time.
I've done lots of recording of friends in bands, as well as plenty of touring musicians through the years with this method. Even the crappiest sbd mixes help the ambient room mics sound up front and close. Officially sanctioned recording or stealth bootleg situations (no sbd there!) I still like to run 2 decks off 2 mics to stagger the inevitable disc flip in the middle of a song - at least one deck got that!
It's nearly impossible to keep phase issues out of sync-ing an analog tape (WOW and flutter = speed/pitch drift) versus almost any digital source.
Actually, what I'd do for a nice multitrack 8 in/8 out sound device and a laptop! Portable live multitrack rig...
The MD way I went was a low budget way to achieve this, years before it was so common.