performance,looks,digital input

no remote control,though,2000 model has one

Over the last 4 months Ive become a huge fan of the Elite Line.Having used Marantz,Sony,Carver products for years,I recently started to up-grade to the Elite line after reading many positive reviews in home theater and audio magazines.I can say that this deck offers superb performance for analog tape recordings.I love using tapes even though CD-recorders and mini-discs are the in thing now.I even have a Onkyo Mini Disc.This tape deck offers 20 bit digital sampling of the analog signal,creating a really fantastic tape recording.In my opinion,every-bit as good as the best Mini-Disc Recorder! This model also has power doors,excellent heads and a smooth operating mechanism.This,along with its great looks and price offers great value! Though 400 dollars might be alot for some to pay for a analog recorder,I feel the value to those of us who still like tapes,but want digital perfection in sound recording,need look no further the this model..!..Bravo Pioneer!

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Pioneer Elite VSX26,THX Reciever,Elite 300 cd-changer,Toshiba DVD and Sony DVD,Eosone Towers,Polk FX surrounds,Polk SW200 powered sub

Great sound reproduction

Rewind is a little noisey.

This is a extension of a earlier review I did for this tape deck. I just got around to making my first recording with this deck I taped selections from various cd's onto a Fuji Metal Z cassette tape. The reproduction was fantastic. It is nearly impossible to tell the recorded tape from the original cd's. This is the most flawless tape I have ever made. The sound is truly spectacular. This deck deserves fifteen stars. If your looking for a cassette deck, try to find one of these, if you do you'll have a incredible cassette deck.

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Pioneer ctw-900r

Performance, Style, Construction, Digital input and processing.

No remote control. No Dolby S.

I just received this Pioneer Elite Ct-07d cassette deck about three days ago. So far I've played three tapes on it. One of the tapes was pre-recorded. All of the tapes were old but this deck made them all sound like brand new. The sound was difficult to distinguish from cd"s and sounded just as good as any mini disc. The deck has a digital input and converts all analog signals to digital while processing the sound. The result is a virtually totally hiss and noise free reproduction of the sound. Some of the tapes actually sounded better than when they were new and played on my previous high end tape deck. It's difficult to describe exactly how great this deck sounds. It has to be heard. It's no longer being produced so to find one you have to search for a retailer that may still have one in stock. It's a bit pricey, around $375.00 but if you want to listen to quality sound from a cassette tape, it's well worth the cost. It also looks great and has motorized doors. It's a pretty jazzy piece.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer CTW-900

Also,I want to have Pioneer CT-07D
Where can I buy it at the lowest price?
Anybody know?How much?
Pls email me at kiat_c@hotmail.com
Thank you
Ken

I bought the CT-O7D because it was the only cassette deck I could find that has digital input. Because the digital input is coax, rather than optical, I also had to buy a converter box. I haven't yet recorded on this machine, but I _have_ upgraded some other components of my system, most notably replacing a modest Technics receiver with a Marantz PM-68 integrated amp.
The CT-07D is amazing. I have played old, pre-recorded tapes that sound almost as good as CDs; in fact, they sound better than some CDs. What's even more amazing is that some of these old tapes don't even have Dolby B. Doesn't matter, the CT-07D makes 'em all sound wonderful. I like it so much that I look for reasons to play tapes. It is a fancier version of the Pioneer CT-W616DR, reviewed elsewhere in this section. The CT-W616DR does not have the digital input.

With a couple of good CD changers (Onkyo 540, Sony CA7ES on the way) and a Sony MD unit, I had just about given up on cassettes, except as a medium for playing in my truck. That's no longer the case. Even my wife, who normally just shakes her head at my infatuation with still more new and shiny things, was surprised to find that what she was listening to was a tape, not a CD.

From what I've read, if you don't need or want the digital input, stick with the CT-W616DR. My two CD changers and I believe my MD deck all have digital out, so the feature should prove useful to me.

The CT-07D can be a bit hard to find. I had to do some web surfing and call around a bit until I found the unit at the lowest available price.

If you're stillusing cassettes or think you want to, this machine and the CT-W616DR are worth considering. One complaint: does not have the highly touted Dolby S (I have never heard a Dolby-S-recorded tape, so I don't know what I'm missing, anyway).

Great sound!

Noise reduction has problems but can be disabled, coax causes clicks, pause record causes thumps

I am a critical user who has tested computer audio compression, done studio work, and research in psychoacoustics. I could say I have somewhat trained ears (but not musically trained). I am amazed when people state they can't tell the difference between CD. The difference is a type of volume compression; the impact of CD isn't there. Also there are slight variations in frequency response, a lack of clearness that comes from distortion, audible noise (especially in headphones), and dropouts. But overall the sound is excellent for cassette tape. But I found some very annoying faults. Recording and hitting pause caused a glitch between tracks on the tape. Also I tried the coax. I connected the deck to the coax output on my computer soundcard. I noted that the tape starts recording the moment it detects a digital signal. If your music starts at this exact moment, you will lose the first bit of it because the deck doesn't start recording fast enough. This is very frustrating when trying to hit play on Winamp. I seem to recall I found a way to trick it into starting properly but this required coordination. Also when the song finishes and it goes into pause, it records a click on the tape. In the end I had to create all my songs in one huge soundfile with perfect 4 second pauses to satisfy the music search feature. The worst problem I find with tapes is dropouts; while it made old tapes sound a lot clearer than I ever heard them, the drop outs and distortion made it really suck. The digital noise supression seems to work quite well at first, there is no noise between tape tracks and noise in quiet parts is reduced; however there is a pumping effect like a noise gate (or an old DBX tape). Basically a sound fading out will suddenly jump to silence, so things like voice in a noisy background will cut out parts of words. Try a spoken word book on this deck. It was a disaster for me as I was paid to encode master cassette tapes into mp3 to promote online and the noise supression effects made it terrible. I found some difficulties in controlling the tape the way I wanted in recording but I can't remember the details now.
I tried some tests with pure sinewaves made in Cool Edit Pro; I couldn't really test the frequency range because for some reason I heard a tone sweeping downwards at the same time it was sweeping upwards, I suppose this is probably harmonic distortion. The tape got very noisy as the main tone got higher in frequency. I didn't have time to digitize the output into a graph but it seemed to have many peaks and valleys to my ears. Sometime I can test this better and I will be back!
I think it's really cool to have coax in to a tape deck and I think their design is highly innovative; the only of it's kind. Theoretically they could COMPLETELY eliminate distortion by using what is called a fourier convolution process; this is possible today but may require a much faster computer chip inside the deck. This is the same process used to capture the reverb and sound of a real cathedral for use in sound effects programs and devices. I have done some experiments in perfectly equalizing a source sound file to reverse exactly the effects of being recorded to tape with some success; with cool edit pro you could even try recording anti distortion to the tape to make up for it's distortion with their convolution feature.
I look forward to seeing if it will work.

Similar Products Used:

the few years earlier highest end model with Dolby S

Great sound, breathes new life into old cassettes

Transport not as sturdy as the old timers.

Disclaimers:

(1)This is my first review ever, but this machine really got me excited enough that I needed to tell someone.
(2)This is actually for the CT-07D's sister model CT-05D, since it is not listed separately and since it is very similar minus a couple of additional gizmos, I am writing here.

I was sceptical when I ordered it, but I am convinced, even for the list price, this is a must-buy for anyone with a large and cherished old cassette library. My hundreds of cassettes recorded with all those devices listed above were fading away, losing their details and dynamics, it was painful to listen to them even with the machines that recorded them (the HKs, by now, may they R.I.P., the Nak faithfully chugging along after 18 yrs.) As I am writing this, I am listening to a cassette I recorded from an LP ca. 1985. It had lost its high end and low end, and was hissy. On this deck, using the FLEX digital system, it sounds no less than a CD... well.. yes therein also lies the weakness, it sounds like a CD and not like the original LP it was recorded from... But I can live with that, it is better than writing off 200 cassettes, with an LP on each side, that makes the equivalent of 400 CDs, let's see now... that would be worth about $ 5000 if I re-purchased them (assuming they were still around). I know, it also is supposed to have tremendous taping capabilities, but that's what I have a CD burner for, so I don't expect to use it for that, which is why the CT-05D, with its $200 lower tag compared to the CT-07D was sufficient for my needs.

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Nakamichi 480, Harman Kardon CD391, Harman Kardon CD191

power doors, looks

loud click when head engages, no bias, no remote

We got this deck to match all of our other Elite components. The sound is very good and it seems to be a reliable unit. my first recording is flawless. I really like the flex feature that "cleans up" your old tapes. Being an 80's teen, I had a lot of fun revisiting my old tape collection which this deck made sound like new. I would recommend this deck to those with extensive pre-recorded tape collections. I haven't figured out how to use the remote commander from the receiver to run the simple cassette deck steps as the manual states is possible, but that may just be my wiring. Our first tape to tape dupe was very good even in high speed mode. This is an easy to use deck.

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jvc-tdw3something...c.1991