It is almost impossible to source Quality NEW Cassette tape these days.
NAC (national audio company) in Missouri USA is the only place that I'm aware of
that is still assembling quality Type II (high bias) tapes that are outstanding.
The 747 Cobalt and The 751 Chrome are on par with old Sony/Maxell/TDK high bias.
Maybe not as good as the best of those from the eighties, but certainly close.
The Maxell XLII & TDK SA of the past decade or twelve years or so were junk in
comparison to eighties & early nineties TDK & MAXELL. Sony still had quality
tape products. Now in 2012, NOBODY IS PRODUCING TYPE II tape, outside of NAC
which probably has a huge amount of tape product on hand to load into shells which
was still produced when Tape factories were producing Type II stock.
I suggest that those interested in old school TAPE, r2r , Cassette that they may
want to visit
http://www.tapeheads.net/forums.phpThere are a huge number of ANALOG fans there. Some of those there are
retired engineers who once worked for the large firms building/designing Tapes & Decks.
There are others who are experts at rebuilding and recalibrating and re-belting old tape
decks so that they operate as they should.
Old equipment that is off its game, will never perform = to what it would have in the eighties/seventies
when it was functioning properly.
My suggestion is if you have a functioning deck is that you should seek all of the USED quality TDK, SONY, MAXELL
type II tapes produced when the quality was superb. Ditto for Maxell r2r tapes circa 1978-1984.
Those machines aren't any good if you don't have decent tape to play around with.
NOS tapes can get Pricey$!
There are plenty of them out there still.
Tape decks can make wonderful recordings if you know what you are doing and the deck functions properly.
I had an Akai X-200D purchased in '71 that was a basic r2r that made good tapes for the twenty-five years
that I used it. Many of the later day r2r decks were far superior, but that Akai was still a good performer.
Cassette decks of the eighties, especially the TECHNICS dbx and YAMAHA dbx noise reduction decks were
the best ones ever produced. dbx was never popular because it never appeared in car stereos/boomboxes but
it gave S/N ratio unequalled by any other analog tape. s/n range of 92 to 95 , very close to modern digital stuff.
Dolby S, Dolby C, and Dolby B never came close.
The dbx noise reduction used on latter day high end r2r machines was different than the cassette version but it
made those early eighties R2R machines so equipped the most sought after, to this day. Huge improvement in
s/n ratio which on most old r2r decks was not that good approx 65 for most without noise reduction, though they
have wide frequency ranges to 25k, hiss is still a factor when rec levels drop.