It's been almost three years since I did a video about the new TASCAM 202mkVII cassette deck and since then that video has gotten almost a million views and although the revival of interest in cassette tapes has not yet reached the level of vinyl records there have been some encouraging signs for example in the UK sales of cassette tapes doubled in 2020 compared to 2019 so there definitely is renewed interest in the format but among cassette tape enthusiasts there has been a lot of skepticism about these new decks about how good or bad they are and whether or not they are worth buying so if you're wondering that yourself I'm going to revisit that subject in this video, this time with the TEAC W-1200 which is very similar to the TASCAM 202mkVII except with a few minor differences and a lower price I won't go into detail about all the controls and features of this deck for that you should watch my review of the TASCAM deck if you haven't already instead I'll just briefly mention the differences between the TEAC and TASCAM decks and then I'll go into greater depth about the technical aspects of these decks with more tests and measurements and more samples of its recording and playback quality. If you happen to be looking for one of these TEAC decks in the past year or so you may have noticed that they are difficult to find in fact I even wondered if TEAC had discontinued these in North America because for a while the only ones I could find were from sellers in Japan well, I'm glad to announce that these are now available in the USA again and in fact TEAC has a new distributor in North America they used to be distributed by Onkyo well, now they're distributed by the company who makes Klipsch speakers and now you can once again find these decks on TEAC's official eBay store which is where I got this one it was listed as "open box" but when it arrived I could find no sign that it had ever been opened as far as I can tell this was totally brand new, never opened or used and TEAC has the so-called open box versions listed for $349 or best offer. I offered them $300 and we negotiated a price of $320 which is what I paid for this one including free shipping there's the model number sticker on the back and the 20 at the beginning of the serial number indicates that this was manufactured in the year 2020. If you've seen my video about the TASCAM deck you have probably already noticed some of the differences between the TEAC version and the TASCAM version for example it does not come with the rack mounting ears and instead it has these more decorative hi-fi component style feet on it. It's also missing the special playback feature which would have a switch right here on the TASCAM version that feature lets you play two cassette tapes simultaneously: one through the line output and another through the headphone output but unless you're a DJ or running a karaoke bar you're unlikely to need that feature so its absence on this version is not going to be such a big deal however, one minor thing about this TEAC deck which is actually better than the TASCAM version is that it comes with audio cables whereas with the TASCAM deck you have to provide your own and yes, it comes with a remote control just like the TASCAM version but everything you can do from the remote control you can also do from the front panel so you're not missing out on anything if you get one of these and it's missing the remote and finally the only other difference is that whereas the TASCAM deck has an amber display the TEAC deck has an aqua blue display it says W-1200 when you first turn it on and then if you put in a tape and hit play you can see the level meter lights up aqua blue with red indications for levels above 0 dB speaking of which, in my video about the TASCAM deck when I mentioned that these decks still have the Dolby logo in their display even though they are no longer equipped with Dolby Noise Reduction a lot of people were thinking I was referring to this dB symbol here, but I was actually referring to this symbol here which is a sort of squared off version of the Dolby logo indicating the Dolby Noise Reduction reference level and one very minor difference is that the display only has three brightness levels compared to the five brightness levels of the TASCAM version so that's the dimmest setting, that's the medium setting, and that's the brightest setting. And in case you're wondering yes, this is a true vacuum fluorescent display because if I turn on NightShot you can see the heater lines. By far the greatest subject of debate about these TEAC and TASCAM decks is the mechanism they use, which is often incorrectly stated to be manufactured by Tanashin. They were the last major manufacturer of cassette tech mechanisms but in the February 2019 issue of Kilobyte Magazine, Marcelo Inoue from the Audio Business Sales Department of Tanashin was quoted as saying that they have not manufactured any new cassette deck mechanisms since 2009 and all cassette mechanisms made since then have been based on clones of Tanashin's designs, made by various manufacturers in China, not by Tanashin. And some people think that this is the same mechanism that is used in cheap no-name boomboxes and Walkmans like the kind you might have seen on Techmoan's channel just because of this similar looking spring on it. But otherwise this mechanism has virtually nothing in common with those first of all, if I put my finger on the sensor to make it think that a tape is inserted, you can see that this is not a mechanical pushbutton mechanism. It is a full-logic solenoid-driven mechanism which smoothly engages the heads when I hit play, and when I let go it automatically stops. It also has auto- stop on rewind and fast forward so for example when it reaches the end of the tape it will automatically stop. also this is a stereo recording and playback head -- it's not mono, and it has AC bias recording with an electromagnetic erase head so it's not a permanent magnet erase head. It also has automatic tape type detection with support for playing all types of tapes including Chrome and Metal. It can also record on Type II high bias Chrome and Chrome equivalent tapes the only thing it cannot do is record onto Type IV Metal tapes; it can only play Type IV tapes, not record on them, but many people never even used Metal tape due to its high cost and these have not even been manufactured in quite a long time so for most people it's not something to worry about. So there really is virtually nothing in common between the mechanism used in these TEAC and TASCAM decks and the mechanism used in cheap boomboxes but if you're still not convinced I'll give you a sample of the cassette playback of a cheap modern boombox then I'll play the same tape in the TEAC deck and I'm sure even through the built-in speaker of an iPhone you'll be able to hear the difference right away The wow & flutter is listed in the official specifications as 0.25% WRMS, which isn't very good but if I put in my official TEAC wow & flutter test tape which has a 3 kHz tone on it designed for measuring wow & flutter and speed accuracy and I measure it on my computer using this software wow & flutter meter also known as WFGUI you can see the actual wow & flutter is around 0.09% to 0.11% WRMS or around 0.20% peak or DIN and it's playing that 3000 Hz test tone at around 3018 Hz which is around 0.6% fast, which is close enough that you wouldn't notice the difference and those are pretty much the same results I got when I tested the TASCAM CD-A580 deck which uses the same cassette deck mechanism as this deck. And using this tape I can measure the accuracy of the level meters it has a 315 Hz tone on it recorded at 0 dB so if I put it in the left side deck and hit play you can see it's measuring exactly at 0 dB on the meter, and if I put it in the right side deck and hit play likewise it's also measuring 0 dB on the meter. Now, with this tape I can measure the frequency response because it has a 20 to 20,000 Hz sine wave sweep on it but since I don't know how accurately this was recorded I'll be using my Denon DR-M24HX deck as a basis of comparison it has a rated frequency response of 25 to 20,000 Hz +/-3 dB although that is rated with Metal tape and this is only a normal-bias tape, so I don't expect it to match that result "20 to 20 kHz at -10 dB" "20 to 20 kHz at -10 dB" so here's the frequency response comparison between the Denon and the left side deck of the TEAC the Denon is the blue line and the TEAC is the pink line first of all, despite what the tape claimed, the frequency response sweep on it only goes up to 17 kHz not 20 kHz, and surprisingly the TEAC deck actually measured better than the Denon deck at 10 kHz its frequency response is 8 dB higher than the Denon's. Now, this could just be down to the individual calibration of each deck or also the fact that the playback head in the Denon has 34 years of wear and tear on it while the head in the TEAC deck is brand new and here's the comparison between the Denon deck which again is the blue line and the right side deck of the TEAC which is the pink line, and again the TEAC actually measured better than the Denon and no I didn't accidentally have the Dolby NR or the MPX filter turned on when I was testing the Denon you would have seen these indicators on the display if I did nor was this test tape accidentally triggering the sensor to use high bias equalization because if I put it in you can clearly see it says normal on the display. And yes, I did clean the heads on the Denon, although I did not attempt to adjust the azimuth because I don't have a hex-head driver small enough to adjust this nut. And I didn't touch the azimuth of the TEAC so I wanted it to be a fair comparison. So that just goes to show that you can't always trust the listed specifications especially when it comes to vintage cassette decks which have many years of use on them. If you made it this far into the video you're probably aware of the fact that Dolby stopped licensing their noise reduction systems in 2014 so any new cassette decks made since then can no longer include it. But when I reviewed the TASCAM CD/cassette combo deck last year I concluded that that's not such a big deal because for any given number of people who would be upset by the lack of Dolby Noise Reduction there always seems to be an equal number of people who say they hate Dolby Noise Reduction and they never used it even on decks that did have it. But now I actually have some data to back up that claim: I found a 9 page-long thread on the Tapeheads.Net Forum entitled "Do you like Dolby noise reduction: your thoughts" and you can see it's pretty close to a 50/50 split between the people who said yes and the people who said no or were indifferent and said they could take it or leave it. So that's why I don't think Dolby Noise Reduction is ever going to come back to cassette decks even if all the patents on it have expired and someone could conceivably make an exact copy of it nobody's going to invest the time and money to develop such a thing when nearly half of the people interested in your product say they wouldn't use it anyway nonetheless, if you have an existing library of tapes that were recorded with Dolby Noise Reduction and you want to play them back TEAC has implemented Dynamic Noise Reduction as a playback-only substitute for Dolby Noise Reduction and they've adjusted it in such a way that they claim it's compatible with Dolby B Noise Reduction with sound quality that is close to the original. Just how close did they manage to get it? to demonstrate that I'll play samples from a few tapes that were recorded with Dolby B Noise Reduction such as this one here which specifically says to turn Dolby B on: "We've put together this demonstration that you can play on any equipment but to get the most benefit from it you'll need to switch to your Dolby B setting, position any equalizers or other processors flat or off, and set your tape by a selector to high." and if you still can't live without the ability to have perfect-quality Dolby B and C playback and recording there is now a software based Dolby Noise Reduction encoder and decoder available for your computer for both Windows and Mac. It costs $15 and if you want to make a Dolby-encoded recording on this deck that software has a built-in Dolby reference level calibration tone so all you have to do is put in your blank tape to record on hit record and then enable that calibration tone in that software and adjust the recording level until it matches the Dolby logo in the level meter here. So it turns out that Dolby indication on the level meter is actually still useful for something even though this deck does not internally support Dolby Noise Reduction anymore. I wanted to cover a few of the recording features I didn't have a chance to get to in my review of the TASCAM version of this deck probably the most useful is the parallel recording feature which lets you record onto two tapes simultaneously this is useful if you are a musical artist and you want to release your album on cassette and do your own duplication. With this feature you can make two copies at the same time, saving you time. So you just put one tape into the first deck, another tape into the second deck, and then you push parallel record and it automatically starts going. I'll just wait a couple seconds for it to get past the leader and I'll start OK, that's enough, so now I'll do Return To Zero on both decks and I'll start playing the recording it made on this tape I was just using cheap Walmart Onn tapes, that's why the quality is not very good but let me see how accurate the counters are OK, the end of that commercial was at 52. So if I fast-forward this one, the next commercial should begin at 52 as you saw the next commercial began at exactly 52 on that counter, so they're pretty accurate next is the microphone input which is a feature that many newer cassettes don't have so it's nice that this one has it. So you just plug in a microphone and then press record, and then you can adjust your level and start your recording "This is a test recording of the microphone input..." "This is a test recording of the microphone input of the TEAC W-1200 cassette deck." This deck has a USB output, which is very handy for converting your tapes into digital form, although it does not come with a USB cable -- you'll need to provide your own. If I go into the Control Panel it shows up as a USB audio codec and you get your level adjustment here unlike some other USB audio inputs I've seen the 0 dB point is calibrated all the way at the maximum rather than down here somewhere, so you probably won't need to reduce it that much to prevent it from overloading and clipping when you're transferring the audio into your computer. And here's a sample of audio I transferred from this cassette using the USB output. Internally it's identical to the TASCAM 202mkVII -- no surprise there, and seeing this makes me wish I would have imported one of these from Japan because the TEAC decks they sell in Japan have a silver faceplate, which I highly prefer over the black faceplate, and those are set for the Japanese voltage of 100 volts. But you can see here on the circuit board of the power transformer it has jumper settings for 100 volts, 120 volts, or 230 volts and this one is switchable between 120 and 230 volts. But if you got one of the Japanese ones I think it would just come with a jumper here on the 100 volt setting. You could just disconnect that jumper and then just solder in a jumper for whatever voltage you want to use, either 120 volts or 230 volts and here's the circuit board with those front panel switches on it. You can see it shows the 202mkVII model number on it so I think if you wanted to enable that special playback feature that the TASCAM version has but the TEAC version does not all you would have to do is solder in that missing switch on this circuit board and then cut a hole in the front panel for it, and then you would have that special playback feature. The motors it uses were made by TRW you can see the production date of July 8th, 2020 and it's a 12-volt DC counter-clockwise motor running at 2000 to 4000 RPM these are probably not the highest- quality motors available, but at least they're not counterfeit Mabuchi motors speaking of which, I recently contacted Mabuchi and they told me they have not made any of these EG- series cassette deck and turntable motors in almost 10 years so anything made since then with the Mabuchi logo on it is not a real Mabuchi motor -- it's a counterfeit. And I found on eBay some new old stock Panasonic Matsushita cassette deck motors. They're from a seller in Bulgaria and including shipping they cost about $20 each so I'm going to try installing them into this deck and see if that improves the wow & flutter, but that will have to wait for another video because I don't know how long they're going to take to arrive. And if you're wondering who makes the mechanism used in these decks, well, you can see here they're made by CSG unfortunately with only a three-letter acronym to go by, it's pretty hard to find any information about them but I've seen their cassette mechanisms also used in products sold by Sony and Toshiba so I think it's possible CSG directly took over when Tanashin decided to end their production of cassette mechanisms. So that's about it for my review of the TEAC W-1200 cassette deck. No, it's not the best cassette deck ever made -- but it's not claiming or pretending to be. So it's not going to replace your Nakamichi Dragon, but it's a good-quality, decent-performing, fully-featured cassette deck and I think the price TEAC is selling these for on their eBay store is reasonable, especially if you get one of these so-called "open box" deals that turns out to be brand new, never used.
When people post on this sub saying they want to record from youtube/Spotify, is this what they are looking for?