Do not listen to old-n-good. He knows nothing about cassettes, because if he did he would know cassettes can have a sound quality up there with reel 2 reel, take a listen to what nakamichi produced in the 80's. ever heard of a nakamichi Dragon.

price- less than the cost of lunch

When will everyone realize that cassette decks are not true high fidelity ? The tape speed of a cassette is only 1-7/8 IPS. If you want good sound, use vinyl or reel tape- heck even the old 8-track cartridges moved at 3.75 IPS and sound better- and even a 78rpm shellac record would sound better than a cassette.

This deck selling for what it did at SA, is the major reason why I stopped buying new stereo components in 1986- just like new cars, there's nothing new coming out worthwhile, and what is out costs $200, and in reality is worth $10 or less.

if you want good stereo stuff, buy vintage 1950-70's gear.

this is LAUGHABLE- this deck for $10

I just found this deck at Salvation Army yesterday for $10

Hard to believe that a $200-300 cassette deck, would basically be THROWN AWAY as useless trash by someone.

It was in the box and included owner's manual.

Customer Service

who knows- why would anyone service a $10 tape deck ?

I'm giving this deck 5 stars because it can now at least be sold on Ebay for $30 or so. That's beer money for a weekend.

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tons of vintage tape decks- turntables- receivers- amps- pres- speakers for the last 30 years, all vintage stuff

very durable. excellent sound quality.solid deck for the price

it should have come with a remote.i have heard decks with a slightly taller ceiling, but sounds very good

see strengths and weaknesses

This deck is very good in recording for music and professional audio settings.

None Significant

I have owned this deck for almost 2 years and have been rather impressed with its clarity when recording tapes.
As the owner's manual suggests, I have stuck with Maxell (but I have test recorded on TDK) and love the tonal balance and clear definition of this deck.
I have used this deck to record services at church and everyone who listens to the recording is impressed with the quality.

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Onkyo TA-RW 709 (Cost too much for its performance)

Seems well made, not to expensive (I paid $150)

Lacked good high end frequency response. I returned it

Kept it only a day. Had much worse high frequency
response than my 5 year old AIWA AD-S40, so I returned
it. Also, it seemed like it needed more individual
segments in the recording level display. But, since the
high end frequency response seemed relatively poor, I
took it back, and I really didn't have much time to
evaluate other features of the deck.

I recently purchased an Onkyo TA-RW544 tapedeck. I am thoroughly satisfied with my decision to buy one. This is a brand new product for 1998 from Onkyo.
It is a quality unit with quite good features for the price; About $260. Both transports have autoreverse record/play functions as well as the typical Dolby B, C, & HX Pro.

I have it linked to an Onkyo TXSV-747 receiver with AudioQuest Turquoise interconnects. The sound is very pleasant and nuetral. I have not experienced any harshness or deviation in sound quality during playbacks.

Recording is straight forward with no muss or fuss. Although you cannot "sychro record" while using a non-Onkyo CD player.

One gripe I have though; it took five weeks to recieve it. New product or not it should not take that long to ship.

I have reviewed it against decks from Yamaha, Marantz, & Denon and found there is really no difference between them. I guess I went with the Onkyo for compatability reasons with the receiver. Overall the unit is a great piece for the price. Just plug in and play.

Good build quality

None so far...

After reading the review below about the unit having high frequency problems and not noticing that problem myself, I decided to check it out.

I took my Radio Shack SPL meter (set to "slow" response and the "C" weighting) and mounted it on a tripod in the middle of my listening area. I then played an audio test CD that has test tones from 50Hz to 18000Hz over my player using a digital optical connection using my BA VRM60 speakers (known for their high freq abilities) and measured the sound output in decibels. The first two tones are refrence tones at +10dB above operating level. These results in are in dB and are shown below in the "CD" column. I then copied the CD test tones onto a Maxell chromium oxide tape using the TARW544 with no noise reduction and measured the playback of the tape in the same manner as I did for the CD, but playback occured over the TARW544. These results are shown in dB under the "Tape" column.

Hz CD Tape Tape-CD
1000(R)72 72 0
315(R) 82 82 0
50 60 61 1
100 74 77 3
250 72 75 3
500 66 69 3
750 62 67 5
1000 63 64 1
2000 57 58 1
4000 66 67 1
6000 74 74 0
8000 70 66 -4
10000 64 72 8
12000 61 61 0
14000 58 57 -1
16000 61 57 -4
18000 61 <50 <-11

As you can see, my living room is far from acoustically ideal. The CD tones sould all be at 60dB and the refrence tones should be at about 70dB. That's something for me to deal with later (with the little lady's approval, of course). Anyways, since no part of the setup (or my lving room) was changed between the CD and tape playback, the two should have the same acoustic profile.

It looks like there may be some diffrences. A difference of 3-4dB's is probably not significant, because the meter is an analog device and the needle does wander a bit. On top of that, I didn't do replicates so I can't estimate what difference is actually significant. There was a spike at 10KHz of 8dB and the response crashed somewhere between 16KHz and 18KHz. Metal tapes are supposed to crash at 17KHz, so that's not unexpected.

Apparently the TARW544 does keep a fairly flat response at higher frequencies...

Aside from that, the unit has top notch build quality, recording in both wells, and excellent fittings and features. I'm nothing but happy with it!

If you want a new tape deck, you can get one of these for 200$. That's a "giant killer" deal!

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Some panasonic thing