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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
kirkus
502 posts
 
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.
A big, big part of this is the dbx noise reduction system, which unfortuneately never really took off . . . it's main disadvantage is that dbx tapes are pretty much unlistenable without a dbx decoder, in contrast to Dolby B . . . making dbx unsuitable for pre-recorded tapes. The dbx system can also be prone to "pumping" artifacts when used on poor-performing machines. But when it's set up correctly . . . it kicks butt - similar dynamic range to a DAT machine, and virtually no noise floor to speak of.

My stereo system in my early teenage years included a Tandberg 3300X reel-to-reel, with an external dbx Type II noise-reduction system that I bought for $50 from the DAK catalog. I would take this rig over to a friend's house whose father owned a B&O Beogram 4000 with a MMC20CL cartridge. Most of my new record purchases were played their first time here, and recorded directly to tape . . . the results were pretty stunning. I still have many of these records . . . and they're definately nowhere near as quiet and dynamic as those tapes were.
shinytoys
41 posts
 
Nakamichi Dragon
76doublebass's avatar
76doublebass OP
254 posts
 
I agree with Kirkus. I think I found something very special with this machine. It is soooooo quiet and dynamically revealing in macro and natural dynamics.
I have played in our orchestra for the past almost 20 years
the Bass Trombone and I can recognize artificial artifacts
on most recordings and tape playback devices.The
DBX on this machine must have been calibrated with such precision and attention to detail.It is an utter joy to listen to. Previously I can recall in my younger years listening to the 3 Band DBX and not enjoying it at all with all that artificial pumping. I just can't hear it on this Teac at all. I have also downloaded the 72 page service manual and did notice some of the measurement adjustments they do take at the lower -7 DB on the scale from 0 DB. I notice the Teac does have its scale up to +7 DB which I did attempt to record to. Of course its sounded very distorted and ugly indeed. As long as I keep the levels down on this Teac something special really does occur and its to bad DBX never really did take off.
blueranger's avatar
blueranger
719 posts
 
Tandberg 3014A. Case closed unless you are lucky or crazy enough to have one of the Tandberg 910's of which only 400 were made. Mike
ghostrider45
449 posts
 
I vote Dragon.

BTW 76Doublebass, you're confusing dbx's expanders (1bx, 3bx, 5bx, etc) with its companding noise reduction system for recording. The former were single ended and intended to enhance/restore dynamics to existing material. The latter were designed for tape noise reduction and used an encode function on record followed by a decode function on playback. They are entirely different classes of product.

dbx noise reduction used brute force 2:1 compression on the encode side followed by 1:2 expansion on playback. It is a constant slope system and did not really require calibration to the tape, unlike Dolby B,C, and S.

The Dolby NR schemes did little processing when the signal level on tape was above a predefined point (the Dolby level - look for the double D symbol on the cassette deck level meter), and performed most processing on signals below that level. That also meant that if playback levels did not match record levels exactly, the Dolby system would mistrack. This made pre-recording tape calibration and playback azimuth alignment especially critical.

dbx simply applied constant compression/expansion to the signal without regard to level. As others mentioned, that made the signal unlistenable without dbx decoding.
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