[JML]

This is for the, ahem, older folks out there. Anyone have any experience with the sound quality of the Sony WM-D6C? It seems to be the only portable Dolby-C cassette player/recorder available (except for one big Marantz) and my old Aiwa Dolby-C portable is dying.

More ever than before, now that SACD has proven the inherent limitations of 16-bit CD sound, I'm still one of those preserving analog sources and listening to them. Vinyl via a Linn LP-12: soundstaging, delicacy. listenability, and all that stuff.

Thanks.

 

[chadbang]

I had a WMD-6. It served me very well for several years. It was a fantasic unit, so well built and handy. You cannot beat if for portable use and it also doubles as a great home tape deck. Stereophile has been listing the WMD-6 Pro among its recommended components for at least 15 years. The mini-review of the unit states "that there may not be any reason to spend more money" (or something like that) . I always thought they meant that the WMD-6 gets as close to top quality in a cassette deck as you can get - without moving into the astronomical price range. I think I paid $350 for my WMD-6 way back when. Soundwise, well its tape and has tape's inherit limitations, but it was always one of the best-sounding pieces of audio equipment I owned. Great dynamic range and quiet. The only drawback was I kept breaking the miniplug imputs and outputs. Whether they were especially fragile, or if it was because I carried the unit everwhere, I can't tell you. But I miss that deck! Solid!

 

[lini]

JML: I still have one and like it - and it's got one of the most powerful jacks to be found on a portable audio device. But it eats batteries like mad, too. And I hope you know it's quite big and bulky. So if you don't need the recording part, you'd probably better look for a used WM-DC2 (typical WM2-look, black, quartz drive, needs two instead of four AA cells, jack is a little weaker (I think 2 x 20 mW instead of 2 x 30 or 40 mW)).

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Peddler]

Obviously if you're a cassette user then this is without a doubt the finest portable cassette unit on the market but if you have a choice of media you could do a lot worse than use a mini disc recorder - these little machines are modern miracles and with the exception of the headphone output power, will almost certainly show the D6 a clean pair of heels.

I hope this helps.