The state of brand new cassette tapes

There's plenty of tapes being made in 2023. They're not all great, but they're not all bad either. I compare the ones I can get in this part of the world.
Short clips and my findings are the first 25 minutes of the video, after that you can audit the tapes yourself. Timestamps are below.

BUYING LINKS:

TIMESTAMPS
25:12 TDK D
27:30 RTM FOX C90
29:46 RTM FOX C60
32:01 GPO C90
34:18 Capture C60
36:33 ATR Chrome Pro C60 1
38:49 ATR Chrome Pro C60 2
41:05 ATR MDS Ferro C60
43:22 EQ Professional C90
45:37 Cassette Comeback NAC C456 C64
47:53 Gallunoptimal UR C90
50:08 TDK B60
52:22 BASF/EMTEC Tapestock

[rollingtroll]

They removed their comment, but I saw it anyway; Someone mentioned a strong wow in the piano recording. This is a fact, and also just a property of this Denon deck. I have three of those decks, and had other affordable 2-head denons of the era, none of them run particularly 'tight'. They sound good anyway though, and it's easy to hear whether a tape has a nice frequency response and tons of drop-outs. I don't use the Denon for serious recordings, usually. I used it for this demo because I didn't want to use a higher end deck as that wouldn't be a fair reference.

[keithbrown]

Hi. Great vid!

I think I put myself at a disadvantage. For a desktop computer sound setup, mine is pretty good (to my ears). But I always leave the eq at a certain place, so to me, most of these tapes sounded fine, apart from the second last one you tested.

I couldn't hear dropouts, but I could hear a high-end flutter. I guess we all know that wow and flutter are the two big bearers of bad news when it comes to tape.

But mostly I was just happy to know that there were still blank cassettes to be had out there, that they were still being made, and that there might still be new/old stock of tdk and maxell. Those were my favorite cassettes to work with when I was multitracking my own music. I think it was maxell that stood at the very top, for replay quality.

Thanks again for this.

[lawrencerasmus]

I was a slitter at Certron in the late 60's and the coating department always struggled to get good coating . The best was the Ampex tape recycled from 2 inch and slit to cassette on a mini slitter, coating was almost black

[lookoutleo]

Just the video I was looking for. Have an old tape deck and fancied doing some recordings, and instead of buying second-hand old tapes I was thinking of new, your face says it all with the TDK b tape :)

[Kartoffelliebhaber]

This was actually a very cool video man, nice to see a fellow Dutch person also interested in cassette tapes. I also really liked your method of comparison.

[DIDSworkedoutforyou]

i got aqddicted again to record cassettes because they sound great not like digital recorders who all sound the same and with many tracks recordings one notices some distortion not from the guitar amplifier but from the speakers on my systems

[EddieJazzFan]

This was fun to watch. I love cassettes. A good Nak CR-7A or Dragon is going for about $5K in the US, and vintage blanks prices are also very high so I think a lot of other people still like them too.

[KrikorHadidian]

Very nice recording. I am sure the source is very good, If the source is not good, and you use the highest tape, it will not sound good.

[bertheeren]

Did you tried the tapes with the bias adjusted too? In my experience it's essential to get the highs right. Too much bias will make the highs roll off and making it sound dull and not transparent, too less bias it will get bright and distorted. The optimal bias varies enormous from tape to tape, in my experience.

[Madjed]

Liked your video as I am a big fan of cassettes
I suggest you get in touch with the National Audio Company in Missouri USA. Steve who runs it has been working on a new magnetic mix and they now have a new tape that I believe is very good
On my NaKamichi amd on TEAC it sounds great

[chrisdeboden]

The FOX C60 sounds great on my Yamaha KX580 Special Edition, but after a few plays I already have to clean the heads. These tapes leave a lot of residue on the heads and I find that a big disappointment 😢

[mikesaunders]

GPO in the UK back in the day used to be the General Post Office ….looks like they nicked the logo with the crown 😀 I must have cloth ears as I can’t hear the dropouts. That or I’m just getting too old! Still interesting stuff. I still love cassette for nostalgic reasons ….who doesn’t like to watch tape rolling!

[theol]

The TDK D is a 1994-1998 model, not one of the last generation.

[returnoftheluddites]

They do sell the ferric tapes ;) I found a supplier and just ordered 25 for my band

[DIDSworkedoutforyou]

the fox tape does sound good and i own a denon DRM-700a and a DRM-800a, the only diference between the two is one having the famous but not loved amourphous heads because they make a faith full copy of the original and people prefer High´s high´s and more high´s ays, eyes, ays!!! bias turned to the left, the most possible, i turned them to the right to meet the original source or sauce, if good i love both

[anreoil]

Perfect video, too bad the winner is nowhere to be found - neither Amazon nor eBay remember EQ Professional.

[skald]

Why no Analog Fidelity ferro tapes from the Bandjesfabriek?

[adventureguy]

Just remastered Linguaphone Nederlands course Nice Language Useless to learn but I'm guaranteed I will be able to study it for the next 40 years.

[MrSlipstreem]

All of the tapes in this test that play back at weird output levels (ie, most of them) are going to cause serious Dolby mistracking errors in decks that don't have auto-calibration. I wouldn't even consider using most of these tapes without the help of Dolby C (or S) to combat tape saturation problems anyway. After all, that is what they're both specifically designed from the ground up to do, so it makes no sense to not use them unless a cassette deck is either poorly calibrated or broken. That leaves a person with no choice but to use an auto-calibration deck and recalibrate for every tape, although I understand why you didn't do that in this specific test.

[vidtech]

With those TDK B, there could have been a crapy batch of them, i have a few, and they are not brilliant, lol, but ones i have sound a Lot better, i have some recordings from a AM radio station and i tried recording music on them too on these tapes and are ok but not brilliant.