walkman DD9 + HOME TAPE DECK help please...

[lamboption]

so I am looking for the right home deck to record tapes for my WALKMAN cassette DD9, which Im about to buy on ebay!! I have an SME 30 , triplanar ultimate and lyra titan feeding my manley preamp.Ive sourced the best NM vinyl recodings of classical pieces and now want to upgrade from my iriver mp3.
It is clear to me , and if you disagree then youve clearly never heard:
vinyl>cassette>cd>mp3.my ipod is not even CLOSE in quality to a £200 tape deck recording on a regular tape from a high end vinyl rig.portable CD players compress audio to provide skip control and may be worse than mp3.
if the cassette is metal high end and the tape deck rocks , such as a dragon.However the dragon does not make good tapes for playback on other machines.my primary desire is an awesome portable cassette solution (which will spank my iriver hp140, optical out to microdac then supreme headamp to er4p)
so...
which tape deck will make awesome recordings to a maxell mx-s for playback on dd9 please ?

 

[Sparky191]

I've not much experience with these things, but I picked up a used Sony TC- KE400S last year and I've been quite happy with it. A basic deck perhaps but decent quality IMO.

 

[lamboption]

thanks for that...I did wonder if a sony deck might be best....however I do have a £20k+ turntable setup and want to get the absolute maximum best performance from my dd9.
the freq response on the walkman is 20...20k I think, ie the same as a good metal cassette
this sony home deck is 30...16k from what I can see.So I think there may be a better deck out there ?

 

[Sparky191]

Well I'm out of my depth with that kinda of a budget. What does the different in Freq response mean? Why is 30...16k < 20k?

 

[lamboption]

the freq response for cassette is from 20 hertz to 20000 hertz ie it can play notes as low as 20 cycles per sec and as high as 20k per sec....it jut means it can play all the high and low notes.I think cd is the same ,my vinyl rig is 5Hz upto 45000 hz , but only my headphones get close to playing this full range, speakers would need to be 3 feet wide to do it

 

[Sparky191]

Didn't realise that.

I've had a look around and I can't find any cassette decks that have that range. Some say they do but when you get into the nitty gritty on the specs, the range isn't much better than the Sony. Its seems common across the web to get the freq response wrong in specifications (for cassette decks) unless they are on the manufacturers site.

This seemed like a good list. I didn't have time to go through the higher end stuff here. A lot of cassette decks seem to have been discontinued so one option is find a good older deck on ebay.

http://audiotools.com/cass.html

 

[lamboption]

yes thats a good link thanks.
I am looking for a second hand machine not new, since as you say only the old machines have a good enuf spec.I was wrong on the wm-dd9 btw , its range is 20...18k , dodgy websites

what I dont know is what level to pitch at

 

[Sparky191]

While I like my cassettes. I also like MD/HiMD I feel they have a natural, enjoyable sounding compression compared to other devices. Its probably just placebo effect. But who cares. The MD/HiMD have the range you are looking for. Both in decks and portables. Of course its not analog.

http://www.minidisc.org/part_Hi-MD_Onkyo.html

Otherwise keep a look out of old cassette decks on ebay.

 

[lamboption]

thanks again

yes hi-MD is a definite contender. do portable MD players use compression to prevent skipping which makes them inferior to an mp3 (iriver hp140) with external DAC ? can you get ones that dont compress ?

 

[Sparky191]

I don't know if the buffer is compressed. You might ask on Minidisc.org. HiMD can play uncompressed PCM (Wav) so I'd assume that shouldn't be compressed by a buffer. But you never know. Theres no digitial out on the portable HiMDs but there is a analog line level out most of the units. There might be Digital out on the Decks.

I've posted a question about the buffer here.
http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=19077

 

[lamboption]

nice , thanks

 

[Stevieg330]

Hi,

If you are still considering a tape deck then I would recommend a Sony TCK-A6ES(N). I have one of them and short of a CR7E or Dragon I would say it is the best recording cassette deck around (especially today). You can calibrate it for different tapes and I would recommend TDK-MA (or even better MA-XG if you can find them).

I wouldn't get too hung up on frequency response as you will find it depends on what db level the measurments were taken. Some manufacturers gave their machines fantastic frequency response figures but the parameters under which the measurements were taken were so loose as to make them pretty meaningless. I've heard some machines with supposed wide frequency response sound terrible.

If you have good tape, set up the calibration correctly, then this deck can make superb recordings, very difficult to distinguish from the original.

I too have minidisc (as I don't yet have a good portable cassette player). It is very good especially for it's size. I have not heard a DD9 but I would think that the A6 recordings played back on it would be better and with a good pair of headphones (earphones) should sound glorious

Good luck whichever way you go.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Sparky191]

I assume you have to source that Sony TCK-A6ES(N) 2nd hand. Looks a good unit though.

 

[mrarroyo]

Back in college (late 70's) I had a Mitsubishe DT-30. See: http://www.vintagecassette.com/Mitsubishi/DT-30