In Reply to: RE: In a word... posted by Mkanke on March 10, 2013 at 21:33:44:
And the best of the Japanese decks, except for Nakamichi, were the Harman/Kardons. They had pretty good transports, excellent switches and meters (LEDs), and they used Dolby HXPro which is an encode-only system that results in *noticeably* better sounding tapes. And that better sound is realized on any deck that plays back the tapes. BTW, the HX in HXPro stands for Headroom Extension. Google it and get the details.
The very best sounding decks, IMHO, were the B&Os and the Tandbergs. B&O was one of the inventors of Dolby HXPro and their 9000 series decks made astonishingly good tapes. It took a keen ear indeed to tell the source from the tape providing you used a top quality tape like Maxell, TDK, or Denon chromes or metals. IMHO, Denon made the very best sounding tape with Maxell 2nd and TDK a close 3rd.
The Tandberg decks were a close second to B&O, their ActiLinear system is somewhat akin to HXPro. The Tandberg TCD-340 and TCD-440 would make awesomely good tapes. And nobody but nobody had a deck that could rewind or fast fwd a tape faster than the Tandbergs, they were *blazing*.
The Naks were also *very* good decks. But Naks were known to use a slightly different biasing scheme from all others so that a tape made on a Nak should be played back on a Nak. It's not like it will sound bad on another brand, but the best playback quality is realized by using a Nak for playback.
-RW-
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Follow Ups
- I made *many* tapes back in the daze... - rlw 14:09:01 12/03/13 (0)