I replied to a similar post a few weeks back. This is my subjective opinion, but I tend to think I have pretty decent set of ears, however inexperienced in engineering I still am. I have a TASCAM 488MKII I was using (actually only recorded one full song tracked out, a couple of "live" recordings in my recording room with a harp player and some partial tracks to other songs I have had written for a few years, but...) but I used two different tapes, TDK SM60 and Quantegy 472. Alot of the immediate differences you will hear in recording a small, a few larger, but most are subtle but the collective adds up to the final product which is usually very noticeable at the end of the day. Long story concluding, I noticed a fairly audible difference between the two aforementioned, and Quantegy is my clear favorite for sound quality. More simply, I just like the sound of the Quantegy tape more. It was the last cassette Mars had before going out of business and I found TDK SM Pro at Musician's Friend, and of course with the words "Pro" in the title thought this is the way to go. I'm not saying I dislike the TDK, but between the two I heard a noticeable difference in the two in favor of the Quantegy. Now I know you can get these online, but at the time was new enough to my machine that I really didn't search. That's what I like anyway.