With a cassette, tracking is the biggest issue, and if the adjustments are not the same deck to deck, things fall apart quickly. With a cassette you are dealing with both the quality on the tape and the ability of the deck to reproduce it. The best cassette recordings I have ever made have been on 3-head naks, and I consider a good recording one that works on all decks for playback. While I do believe it is true the naks are the best, there is a compatibility issue. Not for the fainthearted, the Nakamichi is a distinctive product in this price range, but you’ll have to live without the extras.I have no experience with the tandberg, (and I have learned that TWL has good and honest oppions that are trustworthy) but I have a lot of experince with a lot of cassette decks of many brands, and mostly naks. To describe the sound as raw but real is perhaps an exaggeration on both counts, but provides a fair flavour of the beast. Lack of Dolby tends to exaggerate the graininess of the sound, but it also helps to retain clarity and liveliness in a way that Dolby seems unable to emulate. It is also a good idea to avoid Dolby noise reduction. The sound has real balls, but needs the superior dynamic headroom and consistency of metal tapes to make it work at its best. The bass sounds a little lean and dry, and the treble is somewhat rough in feel, even taking into account the slightly exposed treble suggested in the measurements. But this deck also offers range and power, and a vivid sense of instrumental colour and texture in the bass and mid that is extremely rare from any cassette deck. Prerecorded material, for example, shows a trace of grit which was not expected from the measurements. The Nakamichi is proof – if proof be needed – that what emerges from the loudspeakers at the end of the day is not necessarily what the numbers say you are going to get. The other is an unrivalled backup which guarantees indefinite servicing to the full original specification, automatic replacement of consumables like belts and pulleys and automatic updates where available. Most decks these days have a single adjustment that forces all settings to track together. The first is separate, independent, internal L and R bias adjustors for all three tape groups. There are also less tangible benefits, of which two deserve special mention. ![]() These range from the minor – like automatic elimination of tape slack and the near silent transport engagement – to major points like a reengineered capstan, an improved servo, a rigid single piece chassis and increased headroom (20dB ref 0VU claims Nakamichi) in the record/play amps. There is a bias trim pot, Dolby B and C with an MPX off switch (but no Dolby HX Pro) and an electronic tape counter with a ‘zero search’ key.īut it is the details you can’t see that mark the CD2 out. The austerity message is reinforced by the decision to use manual tape group switching.Įlsewhere, the CD2 is about par for the course. £300 is cheap for a Nakamichi, so it was no surprise to discover that the CD2 is a two-head deck at a price level where most of Nakamichi’s competitors are producing more glamorous three-head machinery. ![]() The rather pedantic sounding moniker Cassette Deck Two was presumably an attempt to avoid the singularly inappropriate and perhaps misleading title CD2.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |