Recently my CT-S600 Pioneer from 1989 died on me. Being that Pioneer doesn't stock the parts for this unit any longer, I started on my quest to find a tape deck to be able to play my extensive cassette collection. Sadly to say, the cassette deck has gone the way of the 8-track player. There are only 4 manufacturers that make cassette decks (JVC, TEAC, Sony, and Onkyo), and they are all double-decks, which I was never a big fan of. Too many features to break, and the sound quality was always questionable. On top of it all, none of the stores here had a demonstrator unit to be able to listen to it before buying. I found a second-hand, and mint DR-8 Nakamichi cassette deck at Audioproz,com. The DR-8 was one last models that Nakamichi manufactured from 1999 to 2002. I have always enjoyed the sound quality from Nakamichi decks, so I had no hesitation on ordering the DR-8. The sound quality of this deck is flawless! It plays tapes solid. The sound quality, whether it be from tapes I recorded on my Nakamichi DR-1, or even older tapes that I recorded on my CTF-500/CT-S600 Pioneer decks, all play excellent. Strong detail, and very clean sounding, with solid bass. No fatigue on your eardrums, just the amazing sound of your recorded music! What I always liked about Nakamichi tape decks, and their other products, was that they were very basic, without a lot of extra features to flaw the sound, or break-down later on. The DR-8 follows the Nakamichi philosophy of "less is more". The DR-8 features Dolby B&C, auto-repeat, auto-record, tape selector for norm, chromium, and metal tapes. As you can see, there are not a lot of bells and whistles on this deck. The sound is what counts. Cosmetically, the build quality is solid, and this unit is made in Malaysia. If you are like me, and would like to get a deck that will play your tapes without colouration, distortion, and most of all reliable, the Nakamichi DR-8 is in a league of it's own, for sound, and quality.

Recently my CT-S600 Pioneer from 1989 died on me. Being that Pioneer doesn't stock the parts for this unit any longer, I started on my quest to find a tape deck to be able to play my extensive cassette collection. Sadly to say, the cassette deck has gone the way of the 8-track player. There are only 4 manufacturers that make cassette decks (JVC, TEAC, Sony, and Onkyo), and they are all double-decks, which I was never a big fan of. Too many features to break, and the sound quality was always questionable. On top of it all, none of the stores here had a demonstrator unit to be able to listen to it before buying. I found a second-hand, and mint DR-8 Nakamichi cassette deck at Audioproz,com. The DR-8 was one last models that Nakamichi manufactured from 1999 to 2002. The one I bought is from 1999 because it has orange LED record level meter on it. The 2000-2002 had orange/red LED meters. I have always enjoyed the sound quality from Nakamichi decks, so I had no hesitation on ordering the DR-8. The sound quality of this deck is flawless! It plays tapes solid. The sound quality, whether it be from tapes I recorded on my Nakamichi DR-1, or even older tapes that I recorded on my CTF-500/CT-S600 Pioneer decks, all play excellent. There are not a lot of bells and whistles on this deck, it features the basics like Dolby B & C, auto-repeat, tape selector (normal, chromium, and metal). The build quality is solid, and this unit is made in Malaysia. Nakamichi's philosophy was "less is more". The sound is what counts, the other features like auto-reverse, tandem-play, etc are of no interest to me. I find it difficult to switch over to CD-R/MP3 because these formats don't even come close to the warmth, and musical sound of a Nakamichi tape deck.

Really good sound from old tapes. Really good recording especially from CD. Main controls

Lack of features like search or remote control. Poor design of some controls

I always wanted a Nakamichi, so naturally when these became avaiable at a paltry £200 - I jumped at it. I wasn't disappointed either. The idea was to play my old tapes - often poor quality and they really do sound good. I don't record much now but from CD, recordings are really good (onto TDK Super D) and not too bad off vinyl. This player seems like an old '80s design when you first use it. It is solid though, and the main control bank is the most ergonomic I ever used - you can use it in the dark. None of the other controls are even remotely easy to use, especially the power switch. I used it with: Arcam Alpha 5 CD player Rega Luna integrated amp Rega EXs power amp Mordaunt Short MS20i spkrs Puresonic interconnects

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JVC (entry model)

Good build and good under the skin engineering.

Expensive..

Good machine..good for playback, but lacks 3 head to perform perfect recording of source. If i could have streched my budget i would probably gone for DR 10 or Dragon..but nevertheless still good machine.

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pioneer CT-95,91a,Arcam Delta 100S and Akai Gx95 MK2

This tape deck really sounds good as long as you play back the tapes in this machine only. When I play the tapes made on this deck on other machines, the highs are so lacking that I can't stand to play a nakamichi made tape on any other deck. On the other hand, tapes made on other decks sound fine on the DR-8. I have tried tapes made on this machine on my other decks, in the car, and on my neighbor's decks, and they all sound too dull and lifeless to listen to. But pop the same tape back in the DR-8 and it's fine. Go figure! A good deck but this is a serious limitation to its use.

Simple to operate. Excellent performance

No remote

Not much to say except that this machine delivers clean performance with out drowning the user with all sorts of bells and whistles and gimmicky what nots to tickle your fancy. Operation of the Dolby functions are straight forward and deliver with out flaw. Bias and tonal functions do exactly what they are intended to do. If you're looking for a good machine that performs really well, don't waste your time shopping too much, try out the DR-8. Nakamichi is legendary for their tape decks and I must say this is no exception to their commitment to quality.

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Yamaha ?, Teac ?

Built like a tank. Great sound. Price on closeout. Love that orange LED and the back-light.

Eject button too close to power switch. Power cord is not detachable.

I bought the DR-8 on a closeout from getplugged.com for $249. This baby sounds great and brings cassette listening to a new level. I've pulled out all my old tapes and am really enjoying the experience.

WARNING: As an analog device, the sound of this deck (if not most decks) is cable dependent. Initially, I was using DH Labs BL-1s with it and the sound was thin and uninspiring - almost downright annoying. That's probably because a "bright" wire such as the DH Labs will accentuate the inherant thinness of analog sound (however, it sounds GREAT with a digital source such as a CD). I replaced the DH Labs cable with a Transparent Link 200 and the sound became full, rich and truly enjoyable.

You will absolutely love this deck. But, get 'em while you can. They've been discontinued as Nakamichi has gotten out of the cassette deck business. This may be your last chance to obtain a high quality, single-well deck.

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Too many to name.

Playback compatability, Dolby setup, sound quality, build quality.

Ergonomics, single capstan, no level calibration, tape counter isn't in minutes & seconds.

I bought my Nakamichi-refurbished DR8 on eBay for about 80% off the list price, though there are quite a few places to buy a new one for about $250-300. Mine looks new and appears to perform as new. The 5/5 value rating would still be appropriate at $250-350. This deck sounds great - skip to the last paragraph if you want a summary.

I always wanted a Nakamichi and now that I have one I'm not disappointed. Well, at least not totally disappointed. It far exceeded my expectations for playing back prerecorded tapes. You'd be surprised how good those sound - through a decent system they're far better than what 95% of the population is experiencing with their flashy CD changer systems. I'd even go so far as to say I probably couldn't have got a new CD player that's as easy to listen to for the same price ($130, remember).

Recording from radio is close enough to the original that you probably wouldn't care about any difference. I'm sure it's there but I've never bothered to identify it. It's recording from CD or DAT that you can hear a difference. Using Dolby B and good type-II tapes like Maxell XLIIS or TDK SAX it's great, but not perfect (MXS & MAX are a little better but then you have more hiss). There's no way you'd mistake it for the original, but if you heard only the tape you'd probably be happy. All of the 3D soundstage is preserved beautifully and everything stays where it's supposed to be, it's easy to pick out individual instruments, there's virtually no hiss, the bass goes down forever and cymbals and voices are clean. But the pitch isn't totally stable. It's very good, but you can hear it occassionally on pianos or acoustic guitars.

The main differences between this deck and the DR10 are that this one has 2 heads instead of 3, and 1 capstan instead of 2. I think the single capstan is the bigger factor affecting the sound here, and it's pretty surprising to find a deck that retails for $600 and only has one capstan. That said, for a single capstan deck it's incredible. The DR8's wow & flutter specs are actually about 50% worse than the Sony Pro Walkman specs, but I think Nakamichi were just more realistic because it is a lot better than the Sony in this respect.

So, the sound is great, but not perfect. There's more to it than the speed stability but it's minor. There's some loss of detail, but not much, and it's better with Dolby on TDK tapes than on Maxell, which is unfortunate since Maxell tapes are better. Overall, it's very smooth, a little warm, and very easy to listen to.

With a Nakamichi cassette deck everything is secondary to sound quality, so it's missing the point to complain about ergonomics or lack of features, but I'm going to do it anyway. Only the first one has the potential to be a real pain.

Manual tape type selection is inexcusable! Maybe with one of these things you're expected to only ever use metal tapes, or maybe it's to make you think before you record, but everyone else manages to do auto tape type selection. Amazingly, though, I've never forgotten to set the tape type before recording. I think it's such a glaringly obvious thing to be missing that you never forget it's not there and get used to pushing the right button.

It has fine bias adjust but no record level calibration. This would help the sound on Maxell tapes with Dolby. Even better would be auto calibration like on the CR7 and most of the Sony ES decks but maybe that's not possible with a single record/play head.

It doesn't have Dolby HX-Pro but, to be honest, it doesn't need it. This has better headroom than anything else I've heard.

The tape counter is digital but counts up in some arbitrary units rather than minutes & seconds. While writing this review I wound a 90 minute tape from one end to the other - the counter reads 2338 at the end. Yeah, I'll remember that when it's at 2290 there's only a couple of minutes left. It's not even linear so it counts up more slowly as the tape progresses. It would have cost them $3 more to add the logic to do minutes and seconds.

There's no remote control unless you've got a Nakamichi receiver and connect the two together.

To summarize, if you've got a collection of old tapes, they'll sound better on this than on virtually any deck from any other manufacturer, and if that's how you're going to use it then it's probably worth about $400-500. Recording from other sources it sounds very sweet and slightly warm, and you'll be happy if you paid up to about $250-350. If you've got a recent Audi, the Dolby B seems to match the Audi cassette player perfectly so you'll have tapes in the car that sound almost as good as CDs. If you want exact copies of CDs or LPs to listen to on a good system at home, this isn't quite there. You could listen to the DR8 all day, and it's better than 160kbit/s MP3s, but it sounds pleasant rather than accurate. Try DAT, CDR or a Nakamichi CR7, Dragon (or maybe even a DR10 or secondhand DR1) if you want virtually perfect copies. My Sony DTC75ES sounds significantly better, has remote control, no tape settings to worry about and the counter shows minutes and seconds. But then it won't play my old tapes, blank DATs are expensive, and it probably won't last as long.

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Sony WMD6C, DTC75ES & WMDDT1, Aiwa F810

Built to last and very easy to use and very smooth operation of all controls.

I have owned allot of Tape decks over the years and without question Nakamichi is King without question! Very simple to use and sound reproduction is awesome and after owning one one would never switch back to any of the others. If there was a contest between all tape decks most other wouldn't even show if they know Nakamichi was going to be there and Nakamichi would win hands down every time. Awesome!

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Sony, Denon, Pioneer, JVC

it's still a cassette deck

I purchased this deck based on its closeout price (it's recently discontinued) and Nakamichi's reputation. I read the reviews here on the DR-8 and the DR-10, and figured I'd give it a try.
Make no mistake, this is the best cassette deck I've ever heard. I use it primarily for listening to old pre-recorded tapes that aren't available on CD, and I make copies of tapes for friends to use in their car stereos.
The old prerecorded tapes sound fantastic - better than they did new on my JVC and Sony decks. Recording is incredible too, but don't let anyone fool you: you CAN tell a difference between a digital source and the copy. I haven't tried tape to tape recording yet.
Cosmetically, it's beautiful. My only VERY minor complaint is that the level meter is all orange, as opposed to having red LED's when the recording/playback exceeds 0 db. That's so minor, though, it's almost not worth mentioning. I love the orange display and the orange backlighting to the cassette. The controls are straightforward, and as the previous reviewer stated, "do exactly what they are supposed to do."
I wouldn't normally spend $400 on a tape deck. I was looking for a quality cassette deck, and on impulse spent more than I planned. I am very happy with the purchase, however. Nakamichi's reputation is well-deserved, and if you want a quality deck that will make your tapes sound great for your grandkids (50 years from now), buy this deck. You just can't go wrong.

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JVC, Sony