Chime in.What's the Best Cassette Recorder ever ?


I just recently purchased a used Teac V-900X from a local
used Hi Fi shop and was amazed at the specs of the machine,But more amazed at the sound coming from this unit. I had my CD of Ray Sings Basie Swings and dubbed it onto my Teac cassette recorder with DBX fully engaged on the machine and levels kept at 0 DB or -4 on peaks with my Maxell New XLS Type 2 tape. All I could say was WOW, WOW.
The tape copy had lower noise then the CD and more dynamic punch. I used my old Mit 330 Cable as a dubbing cable from my Toshiba DVD SD 2705 to the Teac. I know thats not much of a front end for playback, But I do not have hardly any Cd's in my collection just tapes and reel to reel live recordings along with a huge collection of live Dat recordings as well .
I did some research on the net and came upon the specs of the Nakamichi 1000ZKL. The freq. response is better then the Teac, But the Teac is no slouch either.
The owners manual on the Teac V-900x state Freq. response 30 to 21k + or - 3 DB. Signal to noise 92 DB(dbx in at 1K,
dynamic range 110 DB DBX IN, 1KHZ PEAK LEVEL. I opened the lid to the machine and I noticed it only has one belt in it not the typical 8 or 9 belts seen in others. The machine has 3 motors 1 DC FG SERVO DD capstan motor,1 DC REEL MOTOR,1 mechanism control motor.Now all I need to do is snap up as many virgin Sealed Metal Tapes I can get my hands on and then have some real fun. I will be recording live on the Teac V 900x next week with a small symphonic community group and will report my findings to all of you on how it holds up to a live recording which I am sure will be a challenge to keep the meters at 0DB.
In the past I have heard the Nakamichi machines most all of them along with the Revox decks as well and I cannot recall the noise levels down as much as this machine can do along with the dynamic range as well.
Waiting for your comments
Don
128x12876doublebass
Pioneer ctf 1250. I owned many including the dragon but always prefered the sound of the pioneer.
the Naks were wonderful

still have an LX5 (sitting in a box in the closet)
the ZX7 was my pick even over the dragon

too bad they are now like 'who builds the best typewriter"
Well I still like my Teac V-900X. I've been taking the machine through its paces and I'm becoming more acclimated to the built in DBX system. As long as I keep the levels down to -4 DB on recording I'm just fine. Any higher and the distortion starts coming in along with a cut in the high frequencies.The bass is really incredible. I ran a sample value on a Norah Jones cut Shoot The Moon and the left channel was -87.532DB and the left channel was at -84.728 DB.So the noise level is wwwwwwwwway way down.
On another track with just acoustic instruments playing single chords in each channel and nothing else going on u could not hear any background noise at all; absolutely nothing. I was utterly amazed at this and I had to be careful with extended headphone use your ears could hurt
because the tape hiss was simply non existant which in the past would give me a reference as to what sound level I could use.
I've been dubbing for about 6 hours since I have had the machine for 1 week and have become much more accustomed to the DBX. I will be doing a live recording tommorrow of a small community symphony and will report to u my findings and how everything went.
Cheers Talk To u Soon
Don
Dragon, because the Dragon adjusts the azimuth for each tape, which maximizes the potential quality of playback; it literally cannot be any better. It is not an acacemic question, like "best typewriter". I have several thousand cassettes, many incredible bootlegs, masters I made myself. The clarity of a master tape exceeds anything commercially available in certain ways. It sounds "alive" in ways no studio or commerial release possibly can. Note, however, that the deck you made a tape on may be the best playback deck for that tape. - the azimuth will automatically be correct, unless it has changed for some reason. Note also that the eq curve for Naks was non-standard. Note also that the eq curve for Naks was non-standard, so there can be compatibility issues if the tape was made on a different deck. That said, I want a Tandberg 3014, because the are said to be more reliable that the complexity of a Dragon - occasional visits to the shop are to be expected.
So I'm a bit surprised about how long-lived this thread is, and got to thinking . . . what is the particular nostalgia that we have for our cassette decks?

The thing that I remember about cassettes was that it was a a way to share our pride and enthusiasm -- both as music lovers, and as audiophiles. As I look through my collection of CDs and LPs . . . I realize that a huge percentage of my taste in music was formed and expanded by exchanging cassettes with my friends. Most of those cassettes are long gone, but I still have the collection they inspired me to buy.

When I bought my first really good cassette deck . . . the motivation definately wasn't for listening to pre-recorded tapes . . . how stupid is that?? It wasn't even really for playing back the tapes that I got from my friends. It was so that the tapes I was RECORDING for my friends would sound absolutely as good as possible . . . and I could thereby share with them my love for audio in addition to my love of music.

It's kind of ironic that in this age of big-time lawsuits, legislation, and copy-protection schemes over the sharing of crappy MP3s . . . that home-recorded, top-quality cassettes can probably still fly totally under the radar. I for one might still be quite interested in sharing some cassettes . . .