Dolby S & C NR, Auto Bias Control and Rec. Level

i agree that the level is a litte low than usual
but that ok.

This is a great cassette deck with Dolby S the sound is very close to "CD Quality" this deck definitly Flagship of the Sony Hi-Fi dubbing deck. Cool Sound

Does anybody own this deck? I am looking for a deck with Dolby S and pitch control. I want the later because over the years, I have made recordings on various machines (mine and friends') and they don't all run at exactly the same speed (variations of up to 2%-quite noticable). I have a deck with pitch control (JVC) but it lacks Dolby S. I have a Denon single well deck with Dolby S and won't even consider buying another deck without it. I would rather not buy Sony because every Sony product I have ever owned broke within a few years of normal use. Does any other manufacturer make what I'm looking for? Since I am forced to rate this I am going to give it a 3. It may deserve a better rating. What do you think?

Dolby S, Remote Control, Very, very fast rewind

Too many small buttons

Well, I had an old clunker of a tape deck for 12 years and thought it would be time to get something a little better. I did some reading about Dolby S and was convinced that I could get better quality recordings using this "relatively" new noise reduction format. Well, I was happy with the results.

This tape deck makes excellent, almost CD quality recordings when using Dolby S. Even the high speed dubbing creates excellent quality copies. I was pleasantly surprised thinking the high speed dubbing process would add some slight noise and/or distortion to the recording.

I have found the buttons to be relatively small on this deck...it is however, a dual deck so I am not surprised given the small amount of room to include all the features available on this deck.

All in all, for a person who prefers digital quality, this deck is a great piece of analog equipment

Well,I went ahead and got this deck. Hopefully is doesn't turn out to be a piece of junk like some other Sony gear I have owned. This deck is for my bedroom system. In my main system I have a Denon DRM-650S and a JVC TD-W354. The Denon is a 2-head single well machine with Dolby S. The JVC deck is old and lacks Dolby S, but it has pitch control and I only use it to play back old tapes that need pitch correction. I only plan on recording with the Sony on Dolby S to Dolby S dubs, but out of curiousity I did try it out with CD. It sounds OK but the Denon (as you might expect) is clearly better. It has deeper bass and much more extended and detailed highs. What surprized me was the JVC is also better sounding than the Sony, but without Dolby S I won't be recording on it anymore. Not that the Sony in anyway sounded bad, just a bit bland compaired to the others. Playback of tapes made on the other decks sound just as good and that is what is important to me.
Feature-wise, this deck is loaded. About the only things missing are manual bias-fine trim, independent Dolby sections for each well, and back lighting for the cassette wells. The latter is annoying but I can't call Sony on this because neither of my other decks have it. How much could this add to the price, a dollar or two? I really like the real-time tape counters and the auto-level control works rather well, providing you have a CD player with peak-search, it sets the levels correctly and thus doesn't need to ride the levels (compress). The auto bias tuning doesn't seem to work as well as my other decks, perhaps this is the reason why recordings made on this deck sound bland. I admit I'm critcal when it comes to cassette recording. I'm sure most people would be perfectly happy with this deck. In my first submission I only rated it a 3 because I didn't have any experience with it. I now think it deserves a 4 so I will give a 5 balance the average properly.

dolby S, pitch control

no remote, should be built with higher grade electronic components, but hey, that's why sony has an ES line.

This review is for the tc-we825s, which is identicle to the 835s. It did not come with a remote control, but the cassette doors have larger windows. The dolby S tapes, that I make, work well with the dolby B Sony cassette player in my car. So far my unit has been reliable. My only gripe, eventhough it's not exactly audible, is that the level meters show a slight output variation between the two cassette wells(see weaknesses). . TDK SA-X tapes work well in this machine. The treble response is excellent, and it handles the highest recording levels without distortion.

Similar Products Used:

none

Remote control, Dolby S recordings, dual-record, extra-fast forward/rewind

Lower output level than previous deck

After using this deck for a couple of weeks now and putting it through it's paces, I'm quite satisfied. This is not for a discerning, critical-eared audiophile, but it does a great job for my primary purpose, which is to make great-sounding car tapes. This machine makes a really good-sounding tape when recording using Dolby S and metal tapes. But with Dolby B, and using High Bias tapes, it sounds great in the car as well. The weakness I mentioned above refers to the fact that I have to turn up the volume higher on playback than I did with my previous Technics deck. Despite this, it still does a lot better job of capturing the CD's clarity than did the Technics. It's nice to have a remote because the various buttons on the unit itself are somewhat small. Overall, this is quite a satisfactory cassette recorder for now, until CD recorder prices start coming down. I don't see myself ever buying another cassette deck, as long as this one holds up a while.

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Technics

its great, its got a remote my only gripe with it is that it is a bit noisywhen you are changing sides. I would have given it a full 5 but for that
But on the other hand I am not sure if there are any other competitive decks out there that dont make the noise.. clack clack while changing sides on the cassette tape from A to B or from deck A to deck B

Great sound and features.

None

I have the new 835S model which I love, using the best quality metal tapes and Dolby S the sound quality is almost that of a CD. There are lots of features like RMS programming whic allows you to listen to the "tracks" in the order you want like a CD. This tape deck has a solid build adn has dual head, dual motor design in each deck. Also included is high speed dubbing, super fast fastforwarding/rewinding, and other great options this is the best tape deck I have ever heard other than the Sony ES models which start at $750 dollars.

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Onkyo Optimus