Cassettes still rock!

Anyone have (or used to have) a Harmon Kardon CD-491 deck?   It was top of their line at the same time as Nak was selling the Dragon...it was <an obviously> less popular alternative, but had really great performance profile once dialed in.   I was recently going to sell mine, I think I even listed it for a day or two...I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger, for some crazy reason.   More than a few folks showed interest, I was a little surprised.     Best, stay safe...Jim

Anyone have (or used to have) a Harmon Kardon CD-491 deck?

I have a CD-391 deck.  Bought it from the original owner along with a HK590i receiver for like $75 for both.  Units were in mint condition and I use them in one of my record rooms.

Excellent cassette deck.

Didn't even read most of this thread past the first few posts--in the day i always recorded my vinyl one play--onto 7.5 R to R Akai deck and Nakamichi CR4 cassette deck, metal tape.  The cassettes are just so so now==the pre=recorded ones unlistenable--but the R to R tapes are still fantastic and have made up for my loss of most of my vinyl in a Houston warehouse flood many years ago--however, some of the cassettes have held up well and i still enjoy listening to them--no, they are not the best but the nostalgia is.  And i'm back to the vinyl which is the best--with most of my remaining albums having only been played once...

Well, they never rocked, at least in the sense of high audio quality. The typical dynamic range is about 8 bit (seriously), wow and flutter can be bad, they melt in hot sunshine and degrade with use. You may like them for sentimental reasons, but most cassettes sucked big time. They best metallic tapes with Dolby were respectable, but still not CD quality.

Ack chew ally cassettes generally have a better dynamic range than many CDs if you want to get technical, you know, what with the overly aggressive dynamic range compression that began for CDs right around the end of the cassette era. Besides, tape is a natural medium, it breathes.