I gave up tapes long ago. Mistake. Back then, after several decks, an Aiwa AD-F770 won my heart. Aiwa is not a name associated with high-end; maybe they made a big push into the then-burgeoning cassette tape market. A friend was very high-end and had the Nak Dragon, and we compared. We recorded the same LPs (on his Goldmund Studio TT) through Audio Research pre + power, into Soundlab electrostatics. Good gear. The Nak sounded better — but the Aiwa was more accurate. Using the Aiwa’s monitor switch to compare source to just-recorded-tape, in real time, we could not tell the difference: tape and source sounded identical. It was remarkable. Doing the same on the Nak, the tape sounded better than the source. We scratched our heads — this was impossible — and we concluded the Nak was ’improving’ on the source (enhancing it), sounding a bit ’richer’. We both quite enjoyed it, but if accuracy is an important criteria, and sounding identical to the source is a true achievement, then we had to admit the F770 was better ('nicer' sound notwithstanding).
[A drawback to the Aiwa emerged years later — the transport was so complicated, belts and other rubber bits were almost impossible to replace. I don’t know the Dragon fared in this department.]
[A drawback to the Aiwa emerged years later — the transport was so complicated, belts and other rubber bits were almost impossible to replace. I don’t know the Dragon fared in this department.]