I've owned one of these W-1200 decks for the better part of 2 years and I've honestly been very happy with it. The features these decks have really make it or break it and I've found the parallel recording, the DNR noise reduction and especially the pitch control really useful features. I have better decks around from the likes of Nakamichi, NAD and Technics which are superior but don't have the feature set the modern TEAC and TASCAM decks do. If you're going to buy one of these, it's for the features, not necessarily for the discerning audiophile that's going to pick it apart. Nothing says you can't have more than one cassette deck either. One for the features, one for sonics.
Honestly, if you want audiophile you shouldn't even go for cassette at all the only real option would be digital 24 bit 96khz with a good converter and good clock. Maybe master tapes.
@@xmlthegreat Haha yeah true for the real nut jobs! Although in all seriousness practically. The noise floor in even the most treated room and well isolated room is going to be higher than the range you have with 24 bit haha. Aliasing has basically been fixed with dither. 32 bit is good for internal processing but is not needed for listening even in the most critical situations.
I miss the old days of walking past a HiFi shop and seeing some of the new decks they had in stock :( plus you couldn't beat spending the day going through your records and making some tapes for the weekend
@@johnjaleco5683 All you see these days are the generic Maxell tapes which are ok'ish but not sure where i read but Richer Sounds may have blank ferric tapes which were meant to be pretty good
@@Eyerex cheers , and I'm guessing that they're not as cheap as they used to be . Normal is ok for me as I'm not as picky quality wise as I used to be .
The "open box' listing is probably that way to stop retailers who might sell this product from having to compete with the prices of the manufacturer selling direct on Bay. They can claim they don't have to match the prices because it's 'open box'.
Also I think maybe it had something to do with TEAC changing their U.S. distributor. Maybe as part of the agreement they weren't allowed to sell their stock from the old distributor as new, so they're selling it as "open box".
Hello Michael, getting backto tapes, CDs an Vinyl is not overall correct. Tapes and vinyl was an analog storage of music signals. The amplitude of the noise signal was, is in both case transfered in an analog strength of the magnetic orientation of the tape particles or the grove depth an sideward peak. On the CD the noise signal and amplitude was first/is cutted in steps of 44khz and transfered in a digital value. The only problem was with the first CDs that a „private“ digital copy method was not available and a copy on cassette tapes need the same time like copying from vinyl, apart from „big“ advantage that a pre-selection of song numbers on the CD-Player was possible an the copy of on CD in one step. No lifting the Turntable arm song by song and leap nonpreferred songs and start and stop of the cassette recorder for each song. By the way, I will not go back to these terrible times when I was copying about every 3 years my vinyls, later the Cds on new tapes for several hours and days for my car stereo, because the used ones begun to wine and jam or create tape spaghetti. Today I have all my portable music on USB-sticks or on my smartphone, about 42 GB in ACC 320, more than 4000 Songs which is music for 10 days non stop or the volume of more than 150 cassettes a 90 minutes. To add or remove songs is a work of minutes. And finally the quality and the depandabilty is superior.
I've never given up on cds or vinyl. However usually I'm listening to FLAC copies. But I threw out all my tapes 20 years ago. Maybe I just never had a good player - but I have no desire to try again
Tapes and vinyl yes, but nothing digital. Digital is the worst thing to ever happen to music, video, and still photography. I would also like to see a retun to magnetic tape for video. Digital is totally fake, and sounds and looks fake.
Gerald, sorry but than you must say any copy is a fake. The kind of storage method is different, but a copy is a copy and any copy can be manipulated. Even old photos were manipulated with the begining of photography.
I remember JVC getting around dolby licencing by using anrs. It was so close to dolby I couldn't tell the difference. I wonder if Teac could do the same. The lack of dolby could leave some people a little hissed!
That’s not the point of cassettes these days. I have a Sony Walkman NW A55 with a 512gb micro sd card filled with high resolution flacs and DSD, it sounds amazing, it’s convenient, and my entire music library fits into something the size of my fingernail. However I also own a Walkman WM F31 from the 80’s and play modern cassette releases through it, it’s a pain to find a specific track, it runs on AA’s which don’t last that long, and cassettes don’t sound that great, but it’s just fun to have. Cassettes are collectibles, a fun novelty now, not the most accessible option for portable media like they once were, but they’re not supposed to be anymore.
Whenever I feel like messing with any tape based format I almost never bother with any noise reduction of any kind. Tape hiss is a part of what makes a cassette tape just that, if you want noiseless music you can just play it off CD or stream it anyways. Although I find playing back Dolby C encoded tapes back with the system turned off gives an interesting sound signature. It is all about how YOU want to listen to your favorite music!
The old "open box" tactic - I don't know about for online sales but this was very common at places like Fry's Electronics where they would simply open boxes before placing new items on a shelf and then either fold the flaps or in some cases just slice the plastic "tamper" stickers before putting the merch out. I've seen that with apple products (iPods) in the early 2000's where Apple held prices for new items at a certain level but stores could sell "returns" or open box items at a deeper discount. In your case it may have been the items that were inspected from overseas - customs may have thought it odd that new cassette decks were coming into the US and wanted to make sure that there wasn't other items in the box ;-)
I've seen many of the Border Security reality-TV episodes for the UK, Canada, Australia and the US. Customs officials at ports of entry routinely conduct random audits of incoming goods - opening the boxes and removing the contents to check for potential hidden contraband and/or inadmissibility of the goods. Customs officials compare boxes with the importer's customs declaration, and if something arouses their suspicions they will also open a box or two to check if any contraband is concealed within the box or packaging, or if there are undeclared valuables buried inside the box.
I think you are right. From what I have seen, both decks with recording capabilities is pretty unusual. They did make them back in the day though, I have an early 90's Denon that does, but it's not common. It is a nice feature though because you have a fully functional back up deck.
@@jhschmidMD4 I just ran across your deck here on RU-vid. It was featured on a channel called DrCassette in a video called "Testing 9 newly acquired cassette decks" He was blown away by it having dual recording.
You most likely know this already, but the difference in spec between the TEAC and TASCAM versions is explained by TEAC being the "hifi" / domestic brand and TASCAM being the "professional" brand - i.e. aimed at musicians, DJs and sound recordists. Hence the TASCAM gets the 19" rack-mount ears and the special play mode (dual monitoring) while the TEAC doesn't. And professionals would have their own cables already. :-)
That WRMS reading is equivalent of those 90s Pioneers (at least listed in the manuals) that are often seen as the last great tape decks. This certainly seems appealing for someone like me, as I've had zero luck with buying used tape decks, and trying to find parts and belt kits are a nightmare.
Thing is while those numbers seem correct today and will be enough for most of us, I still have beside me a very unassuming Hitachi boombox that blows both this deck and many component decks from the 90s out of the water with its 0.04% WRMS (yes, you read right). It's a TRK-W235 from 1991 that I got recently at a thrift store. I don't even recall myself that boomboxes could perform that well.
@@stuartleckie I’m struggling with a Technics 2 head and a Kenwood 3 head. Belt kits for the Kenwood don’t ship to the US and the Technics has an issue with one channel not working. The RS-B series seems to have issues with that.
The "Longhorne" skin on that XP PC took me back to 2006 real hard. Nice breakdown of the newer deck. Glad to see there is still SOME quality cassette decks out there in 2021.
I have had the Japanese version of Teac W-1200, in Silver, for a couple of years, which coming from Japan, cost more than the US version, but I had good results with it.
Nice Video. Good to see you got similar results as my Test results. The Quality Control is impressive. They were made and sent to different parts of the world and still perform almost identically.
I bought mine in January of 2020, also a Open Box version, for $171.20 with tax and shipping. So they've definitely gone up in price. (Different seller back then.) That being said, I really like this tape deck. If this was the last dual cassette tape deck ever to be made, it could be a lot worse. It certainly does everything I want out of a tape deck. I've even had cause to use the USB output function, which is something I never intended to use when I got it.
I think the best way to go about this is to make a Kickstarter for the sole purpose of getting the attention of China-based copycats to start making their own mechanisms.
@@andriealinsangao613 You'd be surprised how many stupidly niche products got bootlegged the moment their Kickstarters took off, some even making it to market before the real deal. Tape mechanisms are not out of the question and would certainly be better than that one mechanism every company is using for modern tape players
That's unfortunately the kind of snobbery you can expect with pretty much any less common hobby. In my opinion it only discourages new people from becoming into it, but something tells me that's more or less what they want anyway.
@@Windowsfan100 I'm not sure if it was snobery or just a flat out joke, but I hear what you are saying. For the few fortunate enough to own a Dragon, they are not so fortunate when it comes to the cost of keeping it up to spec, Naks are finicky as all get out and crazy expensive to own.
@@ARandomOven Sony WM-D6C are crazy good portables, but are different animals than a full sized component. I've never owned a Dragon and I never will, but have owned decent 3 head Naks and when they are in good working order do sound and record fantastic. Problem is they are finicky and keeping them up to spec at their best is pricey & out of my budget. In my humble opinion.
Loving the Tandy 1000 in the background, I have a 1000SX with colour monitor I bought when I worked for them in the UK in the late 80's and it's still going strong.
If anyone is interested I have been working some very new technology for cassette decks, such as adaptive noise reduction and digital bias. I am also working on a tracking system for cassettes, like what we had with video cassettes, but I have now place this project on hold due to a lack of support.
Thanks very much for your extremely in-depth review of this and the Tascam 202mkvii! If not for your review I would have just bought a cheap boombox type player to transfer my old cassettes, now will definitely look out for one of these units.
The optimus decks also accepted the 1/8 plug that worked with the Pioneer amplifiers of the mid 90’s so that the remote was completely compatible. God I miss all that old audio equipment.
Thank you for doing this review! If you watch other reviewers you get the idea that the only thing that can play cassettes these days are cheap boomboxes
Somebody has been watching and borrowing from The Cheap Audio Man channel! Love it! For you, it works excellently!! Anyway, based on your Tascam review of the A850, I bought the Teac version. Nice to know you included my comments from there, here in your presentation. I'm in the camp of take it or leave it with Dolby NR. I am so enjoying my Teac deck bought last year. All aspects work beautifully. Thanks for keeping your channel "pure" by not being sponsored by product. You call it where/as it falls. Although, on occasion, you under sell some excellent products due to your penchant for using technical examination toys. But, you are a favored electronics channel.
I have a 2022 open box TEAC W1200 from Richer Sounds in the UK which I bought for £310 which is $373.61, that is more than you recommend but it is the UK where everything costs a little more so it ain't that bad a deal, I'm quite happy with mine, it's way better than my sisters old Panasonic RX-DX1 that is about 20 years old now.
Dolby B - and even more so, Dolby C or S - were great additions to tape technology. Many people don't get it, because they have dull, crappy tapes that sound "better" without Dolby. But that's not because Dolby is bad. That's because switching it off, gives them a treble boost in the part of the spectrum that their tapes are lacking - destroying dynamic range at the same time, of course. What they need is an equalizer to boost whatever they need to boost, while leaving Dolby on. The playback NR on this deck seems to work great.
In your opinion, is it better a good old deck (used mechanism, used heads...) or a mean new deck (new mechanism, new heads)? Since I own an Onkyo TA-RW311, could be useful buying this new TEAC deck?
Nice that there is a good one available these days. But tapes, vinyl, cd's and cassettes are a distant memory. And never again. Loved a treasured them back in the day.
The Dolby symbol in the level meter is there to tell you that the 0dB mark equals 250 nWb/m of magnetic flux at 315 Hz. This is very useful when leveling recordings on blank tapes that are sensitive towards oversaturation. A true chrome back in the day did not take well to levels beyond 0dB on a 250 nWb/m scale but xould take up to +4 on a scale that had 0dB at 160 nWb/m (which had the Dolby symbol close to the +3 mark).
Agree with you, over the decades the Dolby level marking on record level meters merely means the magnetic flux (recording) level, not necessarily whether Dolby NR is incorporated into the deck. It's useful given that different cassettes have different MOLs.
@@jessebrook1688 Or me. At 48 I am limited to 13K. I have no need for noise reduction, as my ears do the very job for me! Certainly makes cassette listening more tolerable these days. I recall them hissing like rattlesnakes in my teenage years.
I bought a used deck for less than 50 bucks and it has Dolby. Honestly after directly comparing it to disabled noise reduction, it's not even a contest. The Dolby blows the normal tape out of the water. So I can't quite understand how you say that this price for the deck is "reasonable" when I paid less than a quarter for a deck that has all these things that this doesn't.
Wow just picked up mine from repair due to shelf rack collapsing & left cassette door repaired with new door had it for several years outstanding addition to any stereo system.
its nice that teac is trying to keep the tape cassette alive, but until it can be bought in a brick and mortar store, it won't reach enough people, also I tried looking for that teac ebay store and found it empty, found it on newegg selling for about $680 USD but typical of newegg its not for Australia
Thank a lot for your indepth review of the best new deck available...and yes, still not as good as my Nak Dragon..but a very reasonable purchase if one needs a new device. I am looking forward to see how the Panasonic (is it MMI-6S2LE?) motor can influence on W&F as I heard it might be better than those EG-530AD-2B found in many decks including hight end Pioneers like CT-95 or its variants (I have few in my collection and would like to try this mod on them). I hope you won't give up on this idea. Thank you!!
I bought a fully refurbished Kenwood dual cassette deck about a year ago and it works great. I still love making mix tapes. Vinyl to cassette like I did in the 1970’s thur the 1990’s. Still fun to make. I even make CD to Cassette. How do you think your Kenwood sounds?Which is probably the most important thing for me. A little hiss from the tape is fine with me too.
@@tturner12341 honestly I have been impressed with it so I'm happy with what I have. Still plan to buy a cd multi player changer for the setup but I'm good.
I never liked Dolby NR myself, i'd give it another go now and again, but always come back to thinking i'd rather have a small amount of hiss and hear the full spectrum of the music. Dolby just cut out too much of the high frequencies.
I just received my deck, but I'm noticing some sounds from the motor. I can hear it more on deck 2 compared to deck 1. The sound isn't constant; it seems to fluctuate as if the motor is speeding up and slowing down. Despite this, the overall sound quality is good, and the speed appears to be fine. Is it normal to hear these sounds while the deck is playing? I had some bad luck when I tried to insert a brand new cassette; it couldn't rewind because it was somehow stuck. The cassette was only able to play into one direcion. I hope it didn't ruin my deck. However, I did a 60-minute recording, and it turned out perfectly.
If you need a recording device for your hifi system, then a solid state recorder is the best solution. The sound quality of a SSR is better than a reel to reel.
i god the cd 580 of tascam same casset mechasnism, no noise reduction. is not a black dragon but quite good for what we can get now, in my case also comes with a dap, and cd so iam happy
i thought I'd add that TEAC has used these mechanisms for quite a while as the recorder i have was made from the late 90s to early 2000s which is the TEAC R-H300, the only difference between the drives is that the R-H3OO has been set up for auto reverse and horizontal loading like a cd player, from what I've found is it makes good recordings when running forward not reverse as there is only one metal disc for the forward direction not reverse , it still plays fine but has it's moments when one flywheel jammed causing the chewing of a tape, mainly because i missed it's cleaning routine so it was mainly my fault. i also believe the drive used in the R-H300 is a genuine tanashin.
This is an exact copy/reproduction of a Teac deck from the 90's...I have had an identical deck in my studio for over 15 years and it works and sounds very good. The one I have has no remote and has the same color display as the Tascam deck in this video...but I imagine the actual heads and transport mechanism are of a higher quality on my old one than the new one. But I'm not sure.
JVC had a their own noise reduction called Super ANRS back in the day. It was designed to be "compatible" with dolby recordings without requiring them to license it. In my opinion it sounds way better than dolby. I have never had success with dolby NR on tape decks, no matter what i did, tape type, bias dolby type etc it just muddied the recordings and playback. The JVC Super ANRS significantly reduces noise floor and improves dynamic range on even poor type one tapes with no NR applied to the recording. That said the TEAC looks like a respectable deck considering it is a new production. Still wouldn't trade my KD-A33 for it though.
I payed a lot of money for my *NAKAMICHI* and now, after thirty five years of intense use, it still sounds like the day it was new. Of course I've always kept the deck in perfect working order by doing regular maintenance. For me there is only one truly professional cassette recorder brand and that's *NAKAMICHI.* The second best deck in my rack is the heavy duty *TASCAM* recorder.
Generally as RU-vid's channel 'Techmoan' said, there are very limited quality tape cassette drive unit manufacturers (only a couple really), so, if you're looking for decent tape deck units, just buy a decent condition Sony/Technics/Pioneer/etc unit from the 80's/90's. I have an 80's Technics SU-600 Class A amplifier, and it still works brilliantly... Those were the days when HiFi units were made properly, and as the saying goes, "They don't make them like they used to".... 🤔😏😎
I will keep my pioneer and Optimus rebranded dual auto reverse decks. Someone told me cassettes were a dead recording medium on a RU-vid comment thread. I hopefully educated then that they are wrong. I really hate when the leader breaks on album you like with auto stop fast rewind/forward.
hell they have no idea what they are missing out on we use to use them alot for dj mixs cassette decks used alot that and record players too , if you use them long ago old school then you know this is good news good to see them back and as for buying new cassette tapes no way just go find used tapes and record over them
I bought the full range of these, which you can see in my Channel play list and love them. RW890 CD Recorder Teac A850 Cassette USB/Deck/CD player Teac W1200 Double Cassette Deck Teac R650 Integrated Stereo Amplifier.
Any chance of some episodes suggesting which Music Centres you would recommend people to look out for? Maybe one for the 70's and one for the 80's. I know this might upset the audiophiles but I bet many of your viewers used them, and loved them, back in the day. And there were some good ones but maybe you could shed some light on which stood out from the crowd. Thanks.
By your spelling "music centres", I'm guessing you're in the UK, in which case Bush and Ferguson were two major brands of them. The late River Huntingdon (AG3304) did many videos about restoring and upgrading them.
Is this what Yanks would call a "rack system", to-wit a single-brand-name packaged stereo system (i.e. Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Fisher) featuring matched stereo components, a display rack with a glass door, plus matching large floorstanding speakers? Rack systems were aimed at the mass-market, not at audiophiles. They were distributed and sold by full-service department stores, furniture stores and even discount department stores, not by stereo hi-fi specialty stores.
@@vwestlife Actually we turned our noses up at Bush and Ferguesson. I meant National Panasonic, Sony, Sanyo, you know, proper stuff. I was more wondering if you had any suggestions on which to choose. But thank you for the reply and your uploads are still top of the line and much appreciated over here.
dont get me wrong the deck is alright, but compared to the price of decks made like 30-40 years ago, you could get a deck that does more, has better mechanism inside of it, auto reverse etc for way cheaper
Economies of scale that no longer exist made that possible, when millions of cassettes were being sold every year (cassette tapes were the most popular re-recorded music format from 1983 to 1992). Now it's much more of a niche format. Also don't forget to take into account inflation. A deck that cost around $160 back in the mid-1980s would be about the same as what I paid for this new TEAC deck, in today's money.
@@vwestlife this is true, im not considering new prices for anything but you can get a pretty relatively high end 80s deck for around maybe half the price of this one, and yeah its a niche thing, i think new decks should become more of a thing but maybe once they can produce higher quality mechanisms to go inside of them, but yeah i know its impossible for them to beat the old decks of the 80s in prices and functionality
For 2021, That's An Awesome Tape Deck! I Need To Get One Of These! Amazing Sound Quality! I Need A Second Tape Deck To Link To My Existing Deck. By Increasing The Recording Level On A Recording Deck, That's How I Make Compact Cassette Tapes Sound LOUDER SHARPER CLEANER Than CD's and Especially MP3's.
Neat machine, I was not expecting this sound from it. Hope that tape comes back to fill the void. Amy chance to know the title of the song at 15:58? Found it, Turn On The Night by Steven McClintock
$ 320 for a non auto reverse cassette deck is not good for a proper return. To be fair, I don't think they will ever come back, but it's great to have brand new decks. My newest deck is from 1994.
I'm planning to get or rescue my old technics deck from the mid 80s. The thing is: what kind of tapes - bang for buck - should I be using to record and store things without having to worry (much) without much degradation? thanks in advance and thanks for your videos :)
Holy shit I think that denon deck is the exact same one my dad had when I was growing up. He had a KILLER rack setup for our entertainment center and I recognize that display and those buttons anywhere. I remember he used to show me just how good cassettes can sound if you play them through the right equipment. He had a really nice record player too. And laser disc, and a cd changer. Hell, we even had a really nice VCR that could do smooth variable fast fwd and rwd. I think I ended up just being a modern version of my dad with my pc gaming gear lmfao.
Good afternoon and God Bless you and your Family. Are the Doors for a TEAC W790-R the same Doors as a TEAC W890-R? I really appreciate you and your Videos; absolutely excellent. 🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼
A new deck without any Dolby circuitry won't match older decks. Some vintage tape decks seemed to defy physics because of the Dolby circuitry. Dolby noise reduction used complex filtering and bias manipulation. dbx noise reduction used similar, yet different companding circuits. dbx tapes are unlistenable on non dbx decks (but superior on dbx tape decks). Dolby S was excellent but wasn't widely implemented. Tape decks with well implemented Dolby circuitry could reproduce 20 kHz and sometimes even higher. For audiophile tape decks Dolby or dbx was essential.
Back in the 1960s, it is a pity that Philips didn't redefine the cassette to be a little bigger, so that it could accomodate C120 times for the same thickness as in (say) a C90 or even a C60. Make it run a little faster for better frequency response, and use a broader tape for better S/N. It didn't have to be as big as Elcaset. Oh, and why not a 1/2 track option for even better S/N ratio? Just me rambling on ....
Random question. You had posted a video some years back and i think it was about converting lps onto your computer. You had a large readers digest box set you were playing. I am trying to find it or more importantly find which box set it was. I think i found the same one in the thriftstore recently. Was it "Relaxation and Mood Music"? It was really descent music from probably the late 50s or early 60s.
@@vwestlife Thanks! I just picked it up for 1.99. The outer box is pretty messed up but the inner and all the albums are in great shape. Listening now. THanks for the recommend.
Good review, as always. You nailed it with the older decks. While they used to be higher quality than this one, they require maintenance that is out of reach for most people, needing specialized equipment, skills and experience to bring back to their former glory and specs. You could get an old high end deck and have a much worse experience than with a new one like this.
