What cassettes do peaple like these days ....

Minidic, man, minidisc. Cassettes are quite inferior.

I am running TDKs on my Naka and never had any problems with them
Good luck!

I have to agree with UraniumCommittee on this.
You should try to transfer your tapes to minidisc!
I had a Sony JA20ES unit that worked nice for this
purpose.
This way you can listen to the Minidiscs,
anytime you want, WITHOUT the fear
of WEAR AND TEAR! OR EATEN TAPES!
PLUS, you can add TEXT to Minidisc!
I currently have 2 Sony JA3ES units right now,
AS well as a Pioneer DIGITAL 616 cassette
player, to play into Minidisc recorder.
NOW, as far as tapes are concerned,
go with Maxell Metal!

I always liked the best Denon tapes, I just found a box of Nak high bias tapes sealed for surprizingly not too much money.. sometimes these Nak tapes are pretty over priced. Have yet to try them out yet.

Why would you put anything on mini-disc?!! It was great in it's day, when one couldn't record CD's. Having owned a few mini-disc recorders/players, I seem to recall that mini-discs are only 14 bit, compared to redbooks' 16 bit.

And if you want to record vinyl, I certainly would want to record them on an analog medium.

But you are right about tape wear, and eaten tapes, not to mention stray magnetic fields. Pre-recorded cassette tapes are quite inferior to mini-discs, but home recorded cassettes on a good machine will blow away a mini-disc.