ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hi,
I have bought a Beocord 5000 and I wondering if any particular cassette tape brand is best for the unit.
Bestwishes
All tapes would sound a little different on your deck; everything including sensitivity, brightness and bass response. Generally there are a couple of assumptions:
Type I tape is the ordinary ferric tape which is the only type still available new. It is generally a great tape for rock and pop music as the bass response is very good and involving - treble is a bit grainy and undefined but still very good with a nice tape that can be recorded very hot.
Type II is a chrome or ferricobalt formulation which is more refined. Typically less noise and better treble response. Bass is more neutral though. The BASF pure chrome tapes are very nice and noise level is 3-5 dB lower than TDK SA.
Type IV is the metal tape, very expensive on the auction site and generally only noticably better with the better 3-head decks with bias adjustment facilities. Recordling levels are extreme and the sound quality is excellent with a properly adjusted deck; the base noise level is pretty high though.
I have a bunch of different cassettes laying around, PM me if you want some for testing your deck
Vinyl records, cassettes, open reel, valve amplifiers and film photography.
Nice advice there Soren!
I have just found my old 1984 B&O catalogue and at the back of it, there are tape tests for the BeoCord 5000. Ferric is BASF LH1, Chrome is TDK SA and Metal is TDK MA :)
The TDK AD was a very nice ferric cassette and I loved Maxell XLII, TDK SA and the BASF Chromdioxid II :)
I remember when I was saving for my Century, the showroom has the Century in the window with a Maxell Vortex metal & gold cassette in it :)
Thank you for all the info, a great reply. many thanks
I have a few B&O tape decks, the later HX Pro versions, an Ouverture, Beocord 5000, Beocord 8004 and a couple of B&O music centres and I cant really tell the difference between my ferric and chrome tapes, sound quality wise. I believe this may be due to the superior performance of the HX Pro system, or It could just be my 59 year old ears being a bit clapped out high end wise.
Hi Dave - probably quite true. The BANG&OLUFSEN tape decks seem to make excellent recordings on the majority of the good brands - TDK, BASF, Maxell, SONY
The problem of course if finding tapes in the more advanced formulations. Last time I looked around, the only "new" tapes available (at least where I could find them online) were pretty low end standard tape formulations, the only CrO2 or metal tapes were old stock you find on places like eBay.
So, make sure you keep your capstans and pinch rollers clean and your heads degaussed! If you eat a tape it's not likely to be easily replaceable. Not like the days when you were baffled by the sheer number of different choices for formulations and brand at the local audio store.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
The information is really useful.
Thank you for the replys.