Fine sound quality, strong industry reputation

belt drive vs direct drive with respect to longevity

The unit sounds great and perfoms flawlessly. Also, the closeout price is incredible: $299 sale price for an $899 retailed unit.

Similar Products Used:

Nakmichi MR-1 (pro unit), Denon model 740

Extremely percise pitch; makes good recorded tapes sound great;

Makes poorly recorded tapes sound worse;

some slight rubbing of dolby b & c buttons;

I have been using the DR-10 for exactly 1 week. It is absoulutely incredible. I have never heard my store bought pre-recorded tapes sound this good. It is true that the pressure pad lifter makes a difference in the sound. I thought it was a gimmick, but it is true. The machine is built to work like a horse. solid metal cabinet; solidly knobs and buttons; This machine is definitely worth getting; especially a this price. It is puzzleing why the two-head DR-8 is being sold for $400, while the three-head Dr-10 is being sold for $300. At this price, it is worth buying two of them!

This deck is, without a doubt, one of finest units available. Superlative insound, a minimalist deck with few bells and whistles that nonetheless beats
the pants off of even Dolby S decks.

Recording and overall sound quality; ease of use

Lack of a Real-time tape counter (linear counter only); Lack of dedicated remote control (remote-controllable only with a Nakamichi receiver's remote via hard wired connection to receiver)

In a nutshell, if you want the state of the art in analog recording capability, this is the deck. Using TDK SA tape, switching back and forth between tape and source while recording yields absolutely no difference between source and recording. I used to think that my 25-year old, 2-head Nak 500 produced recordings that matched the original, but the DR-10 shows just how flawed those recordings were. Recordings of LP's sound better than 'original'--better soundstaging, clarity and musicality, and CD recordings are identical to the original. And, recording with the DR-10 is so relatively painless, I was almost disappointed that I didn't have to work to set the deck up for recording, as with the old Nak 500. Chalk that up to 25 years of progress in cassette recording technology.

The DR-10 is almost stripped in the features category compared any deck at, and for that matter, below its price point. But the DR-10's recording quality more than makes up for this lack of features, and the recorded sound is what it is all about with a deck in this class. After using this deck, I understand why Nakamichi didn't bother with Dolby S, nor saw it necessary to employ Dolby HX: These technologies would not have added anything to the sound quality, and very likely would have detracted from it. Nakamichi's approach is clear: achieve the best possible result through careful, meticulous engineering of the mechanism. On the DR-10, there is no need for extreme noise reduction techniques such as Dolby S which can introduce subtle degradation in the sound for a few extra, and arguably needless, decibels of noise reduction. Nor would Dolby HX enhance the sound of a deck that can copy to magnetic tape every bit of the dynamic range and frequency response of a CD-borne digitally recorded passage. ‘Gimmicks’ like Dolby S and HX are reserved for lesser decks that require them just to equal a DR-10’s raw performance--but then they cannot match the DR-10’s purity of sound. Classic Nakamichi: perfect the fundamentals, rendering unnecessary audio processing tricks that take away as much as they add.

I cannot conceive of an analog recording device that could produce better recordings than the Nakamichi DR-10. If you are 'into' tape, treat yourself to this deck, while they are still being made. With digital recording via CD coming into its own, cassette recorders such as this are surely an endangered species. Too bad, because this deck proves that analog can sound exactly as good as digital--indeed, indistinguishable.

Similar Products Used:

Nakamichi 500