Which Nakamichi to choose?

I had cassettes in the "old" days and if I used dolby the highs were gone and if I didn't there was tape hiss. I wouldn't go back. As far as cd's and vinyl, the only formats I run other than streaming, some are good quality and some not so much. I would hesitate to say any one format was better than another.

There is more than just losing highs with dolby - sound loses fullness. Tape hiss is inevitable but can be minimized, you do need excellent deck and tapes for that. Besides, almost all older recordings have tape hiss to various degree.

Cassettes were never the subject of the loudness wars, like CDs and vinyl. For that reason the dynamics on the humble cassette can be quite surprising. Tape is a natural medium. It breathes.

I have been listening to the Sony Cassette deck all morning, and I discovered that it has a beguiling quality, that wouldn't let me turn it off; especially when I quit comparing it to my other sources.

Maybe that's the key to the cassette; just quit comparing and enjoy.

inna

There is more than just losing highs with dolby - sound loses fullness. Tape hiss is inevitable but can be minimized ...

There’s always been a lot of confusion and misinformation about Dolby NR. Assuming a quality deck and tape that have been properly aligned with each other, Dolby does not cause a loss of high frequencies when compared to the original. Of course, if you have a Dolby encoded tape but choose to listen to it without Dolby decoding, you will hear more highs than if the tape were properly decoded. That’s by design; Dolby is a companding system. Dolby NR actually ensures better HF response - when properly used - than you can achieve on the same deck and tape without it.

To be fair, there were many poorly-made cassette decks during the cassette era, and many were so badly constructed that they couldn’t maintain proper alignment. Dolby was doomed on those machines.

Please consider that "proper alignment" includes correct bias, eq, azimuth, and alignment to Dolby level. Different manufacturers used one of several different standards for Dolby level, further contributing to the misunderstandings of Dolby NR’s effectiveness.