Price Paid:  $285.00 from Brandnamez.com

Summary:
I bought this unit for one reason only - to transfer old cassettes to a digital medium. I have since used it to make a few compilation tapes of non-critical-listening music (Christmas tunes on cassettes collected over the yrs.) I have tapes that were absolutely unlistenable on the Sony Dolby S unit, but played back extremely well on the Pioneer. It really does remove the background hiss. On some tapes, it will truly sound like a CD. I have even dubbed a few songs from CD's that had background hiss from the master tapes, and it removed this noise also (I then put this on MiniDisc, and the result was far better than a direct dub, assuming the hiss was annoying enough.). If your main concern is salvaging old cassettes and recording them to digital, this is the ONLY way to do it. If you have the extra pocket change, I would recommend the CT-05D or the CT-07D because of the FLEX circuitry which restores much of the high end. I have gone so far as to preferentially buying, in some cases, a cassette over a CD because it was much cheaper and would sound so close to CD quality.

Since I am not using the deck to record material for critical listening, I have not done a direct comparison between it and the Sony. However, most people will record on a home deck and then listen to the tapes on a portable or car unit. If you are intending to record tapes to listen to on another unit, a Dolby S unit is preferable since it plays back with better sound on a Dolby B or C unit. The Digital Processing System on the Pioneer only works when played on the Pioneer. If you want to make tape-to-tape compilations to be played elsewhere, I would highly recommend playback on any of the Pioneer decks incorporating DPS and recording on a Dolby S unit. Since this is not my intention, I have used the Sony only to transfer Dolby S encoded tapes to digital, and only when I didn't have access to my original material. Once I have finished all of that, I will no longer even use the Sony.

In summary, if you intend to make compilation tapes that will be played back on the same deck, there is absolutely no simpler and better sounding way to do this than with one of these Pioneers. If you want to salvage old (or ANY) tapes by recording them to a new tape or to digital, I wouldn't want you to expect miracles, but I dare you not to grin like a monkey on ether the first time you hear what this thing can do to a cassette. And right after that, you'll be getting out the Yellow pages to find your nearest used record and tape shop to do some bargain hunting.

Strengths:
Removes tape hiss AND background hiss from outside sources

Weaknesses:
Noisy mechanism, no Dolby S, Time counter doesn't function during FF or REW

Similar Products Used:
Sony TC-K611S - Dolby S unit w/ dual wells