I mean, yes they do wear out but the rate is pretty slow if you look after them. I have some of my father’s old early LPs and they still sound pretty good.

You can get rid of a surprising amount of surface noise with a static gun and a line contact stylus (where shape is close to that of a cutting head so you get the biggest contact patch).

I think most people only copied to cassette if they want to use a Walkman, play it in the car or give a copy to a friend. It generally wasn’t for sound quality.

He said tape not cassette. Tape would mean real to real tape in this context - cassette doesn't make sense. Tape can be wider than cassette, only two tracks, and run faster - all give you a lot better sound quality. Not as good as a good digital system and it costs more but still very good.