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Review + Technical Article: Marantz PMD-300CP Cassette Deck


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This started out as an on-line search for a new cassette deck for a friend who has several hundred cassettes of field recordings made in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most are oral history, interviews, family stories, and some casual living-room music. Like too many people with a closet full tapes not listened to in years, she no longer has anything to play them on. She's working on some documentation projects now and wants to digitize these tapes. I figured that since she's a non-techie it would be best to start the project with a new deck that has a warranty and doesn't have someone else's problems. I was surprised to find how few were available today. I got hold of this Marantz to see if it would be a decent choice for her project, and along the line ended up writing more than a "it works and sounds OK" review, dug deep into its performance, reminding myself how long it's been since I'd worked with cassettes myself, either for listening or bench work.

 

Bottom line - it's OK but doesn't sound quite as good as my TASCAM 122 that I used for comparison.

 

Even if you aren't in the market for a cassette deck (What? You aren't going to release your next album on cassette?) you might find it interesting to read about my test results and procedures and learn something about analog recorder deficiencies and help you feel better about never wanting to deal with analog tape again.

 

Better download it. It's long: https://mikeriversaudio.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/marantz_pmd-300cp_review.pdf

 

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