Sounds very good without any kind of Dolby using premium
quiet tapes.

Display, knobs all too small.

An excellent value for the money. Use high quality, premium cassettes for best results. I like the sound of TDK SA. You don't need to use Dolby at all but the S sounds very good. You may have trouble in the future with tapes recorded with Dolby S since most decks will not have S. Tapes made with Dolby B sound good but not as clear as those made without any Dolby. I have used this deck for 2 years and it has been very reliable.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer, Kenwood, BIC, Teac

Great sound. Great value. Nearly great all round.

Mine has busted 3 times. Dodgy cos when u press eject when it plays the capstan is broken. Mine has been repaired 4 times now but i still luv it.

Dolby S sound 4 £100.
That is great value and Hyperfi are cheap for them.
Get one if u like tapes but get minidisc for 21 st century.

Similar Products Used:

NONE

Excellent sound, auto calibration

2 heads

I bought this tape deck as a floor model in 1997. The salesman said it was being discontinued, but Sony still has it on their website as of February 2001. I suspect analog tape decks are so mature that Sony doesn't feel a need to come out with new models any time soon.

Anyway, this is a very good tape deck for $170. The sound is excellent, possibly as good as one can get from a cassette tape. The auto calibration feature is very nice, and the transport works well (although with the usual solenoid "clunk"). In the three years I've had it, this tape deck has never eaten a tape.

It offers a few advantages over other tape decks. It is not an autoreverse deck, so it won't have the problem that one direction works better than the other. As a single-well deck, it presumably can offer a better built transport than a comparably-priced dual-well deck (I can't confirm that it is better built, only that it does work well). So, less convenience translates into better quality. This tape deck also offers Dolby B+C+S, all of which are incompatible with music reproduction.

Overall, a very good tape deck at a modest price.

Auto-calibration (makes even crappy blank tapes record well on this machine), three different versions of Dolby (B, C, S), great performance for the money, no reliability-destroying auto-reverse

No convenience-enhancing auto-reverse, only two heads instead of three, noisy when changing modes

NOTE: This is a review of the Sony TC-K461S (the predecessor of the Sony TC-KE400S).

I bought this cassette deck when I became somewhat disappointed with a JVC single cassette deck with auto-reverse. I initially bought a Sony dual-transport (but single-record) cassette deck with Dolby S noise reduction and auto-reverse on both wells. What a piece of cr@p it was! That deck's recordings sounded OK only on it (and no other deck), but played back on other decks the sound is weak, muffled, noisy and very low in volume. Also, I noticed that on pre-recorded tapes, playback in the reverse direction was different in pitch than in the forward direction. I gave up the ghost on that deck, returned it to Best Buy and exchanged for this single-deck. What a difference it made! The recorded tapes this deck made sound just the way they should! Only bad thing is that my old JVC now has trouble playing tapes this deck made (but those same tapes have no problems whatsoever playing back on my auto-reverse Sony and Aiwa cassette walkman players).

Bottom line is that the Sony TC-K461S/TC-KE400S is a great inexpensive analog cassette deck, but if I were buying a recording deck today I'd pick one of the increasingly popular portable MD player/recorders.

Auto bias adjust, rich analog sound

No volume control for headphones

A good deck for the price, I use this deck to make analog recording of vinyl records for listening on my audiophile walkman (Sony WM DD9). I use Maxell MSX90 metal tape, and the deck auto-adjusts the bias, a feature once only found on high-end decks like Nakamichi. The results? I've listened to CDs since they were first commercially available, with a high-end portable (Sony D-777) and Sony's new home CD player with hybrid-pulse D/A converters (seems to "anti-alias" the rough edges of digital sound). Now, after listening to a recording of an analog vinyl LP made with this deck on metal tape, my CD player is collecting dust--I just don't use it much anymore. That's because the warmth, dynamics, and stunning stereo imaging the analog tape has over most of my CDs is undeniable. Argue with me all you like about CDs' superior specs, but come have a listen, and I think you'll agree with me on this. I'm not sure if it's the analog source, the metal tape, the auto-bias adjust, or what; CDs just sound flat and lifeless compared to tapes made on this deck (from an ANALOG source... NO digital mastering, etc.). I don't use Dolby (I found Dolby S compresses the dynamic range, otherwise it's a good compander), and ONLY use Maxell MSX90 tapes, no other tape of any formulation or length gives the same results. The sound is flat, rich, textured, detailed, the stereo imaging is supernaturally exact, and the bass is a revelation. I know this review has turned into an ad for analog sound, but I can't deny what my ears are hearing, and I don't care how much the S/N ratio is on that CD player compared to tape. I go by what sounds best to me. A good deck for the price, with very high quality recording capabilities that are really brought out by good analog sources.

Got it for about $180 a few months ago. It works great! You can still just barely tell it's a tape if you listen to a CD and then a recording (dolby s) back-to-back, and most of my circle of audio nut friends can't tell it's a tape either. It's really fun to invite them over, tell them to wait a sec while I put on a CD, put on a tape of the cd instead, and then listen to them admire how good it sounds. Then I tell them it's actually a normal-bias(!) cassette, and they're amazed. Heck, I'm amazed too. I think this is the cheapest single-well deck with Dolby S out there, and it makes an excellent case that the good old cassette ain't dead yet. It doesn't have 3 motors or 3 heads or dual digronificators, but it does a great job anyway. By the way, it works just like any other Sony product: just fine, no suprises, kinda busy/cheesy looking face. And there's no volume control for the headphones. Other than that, a steal!