This KX 393 is now many years into it's `useful life', it has never had a fault and on good quality recordings sounds as good as CD, on some kinds of music, better (treble tones are more lifelike). the machine exhibits a little noise while starting and stopping a function, but is otherwise silent in use. I have yet to see any of these machines with a cassette door that sits straight!! But it opens and closes properly and the cassette stabiliser does its job well and maybe the reason it is lopsided when the drawer is empty. The build quality is excellent and the cosmetics look great if you like black. It has all the features you would expect in a deck of this level, maybe the earliest reviews on here weren't familiar with these when they complained of a dull sounding playback?? If the player trim was fully counter clockwise, it would be!!
Would I buy another one? Oh yes, or even the KX 493, both lovely pieces of equipment 15 years on.

I would like to think of something but Iam struggling somewhat.

Poor playback quality. Poor recording quality. Reliability issues.

Purchased brand new in feb 2000 as a means to record from CDs to keep a constant supply of tapes for in car use. I checked a couple of UK audio mags and saw that the KX393 got rave reviews and in some cases 5 x Gold stars hence my decision to buy it. This was my 4 x cassette deck in around 20 x years of owning hi-fi systems and I expected it to be the best. Wrong. Very poor recording quality straight from the box,muffled and uninspiring. Within 9 x months the tape motor packed in and was replaced under warranty. I estimate it would have been subjected to aroung 20 x hrs use max at that time !!. The next fault that occurred about 2 x months later was the recording level on the left channel would drop right off. I intitially thought it was dirt on the heads but no. The machine was swapped and the new deck,like its predecessor was poor quality and also suffered from signal loss on one channel. I sold it for £30 and good riddance. Ive bought a second hand sony deck (TC-WE435). The Sony does what I want it to do. Good quality record and playback. The next time I will think twice about buying a product on the strength of a hi-fi review.

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Other parts of the hi-fi are a dual record deck,marantz cd and arcam amp.

Very simple to use. Well suited for classical and (light) pop music.

Recording ''drum & bass'' or soul does distort, in most cases very much.

I purchased the Yamaha KX-393 from Richer Sounds the one day and returned it back on the next day. Although it is highly rated by one particular hi-fi magazine, it does distort recordings when recording tracks that manifest very deep basslines. For example, ''Soul II Soul - Keep On Moving'' did not sound no where near as the cd version. On the other hand, recording ''snd/mp92'' sounded extremely distorted and out of phase.

Fantastic sound, especially on TDK MA-90, nice highs

looks

A no nonsense tape deck that does the job.

I replaced a Kenwood deck thathad motorised eject mechanism.

Although the sound quality is similar on same tapes, the Yamaha sounded very slightly better and on par with some earlier AKAI decks.

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Kenwood

Clear, Undistorted Sound quality, Single tape deck, Good build quality all at a reasonable price.
Dolby B and C NR works great without destroying high end sound.

Small rec level controls may be awkward for some to use.

I bought this cassette deck recently after being impressed with Yamaha's KX230 which I owned a few years ago, I sold that deck when I moved to Toronto.
The sound quality of KX393 is extremely clear, the highs are clear without being shrill, the lows are solid with no distortion, I've found best results with TDK SA-X tapes, however that's my preference, I'm sure there's others which are good too. There's an Auto-Bias adjust feature which optomizes the deck for a particular brand/type of tape, as well as a fine bias adjust. The controls are clear and well laid out, though the record level control is small, might be a problem if you have big hands and short fingers ! (I don't)
The deck is a single tape deck which seems to be something of a rarity these days, however the engineering has gone into building one very good deck up to a high standard, not two mediocre decks down to a price range, which I personally prefer, as I never found dubbing tape to tape to be of sufficient quality anyway, however if dubbing tapes is a requirement, then this isn't the deck for you.

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Yamaha KX 230 (Early 90's Predecessor)