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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
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.
markpao
519 posts
 
Wow! Interesting responces. I was going to sell my (basically unused) Dragon after watching Michael Fremer's "Guide to turntable setup" CD and look for a nice reel to reel, but now I think I might hold on to it.
timrhu
2,779 posts
 
I'm sure it wasn't the best deck but my Teac V-800X was very good, especially with dolby C. Years ago I was living in Champaign IL and one of the local hi-end shops had a Nakamichi tech come in offering a free check and tun-up for any model. I took my Teac in and was amazed at its performance on the test bench. The guy did a very thorough check, he seemed to be a bit surprised himself. He recommended I keep it.
Not surprising the V-900X sounds as good as it does.
spiro
115 posts
 
Nakamichi Dragon, as well as the CR7A in the modern grouping.
DBX does often like higher levels. But even speaking to a gent from Dolby Labs in the 80's the reason that many didn't like nr is that they were recording at lower levels and killing the sound.
Your machine seems to be tweeked in some way as I've found your numbers to be a minimum for dolby with DBX being higher. Also, tape seems to be unable to record certain waves so it does change the sound. I found harsh CDs much more articulate when I would run it to tape Dolby C. but i used to record listening to the third head for the "sweet spot" or stereo center image after studying the music. I couldn't get a good recording going just by numbers. Also, warm up all gear before recording for that last little bit of definition.
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