this is a pioneer CT-W616DR
introduced in 1996 which was well after
the heyday of cassette decks by 1996
there were already CD recorders on the
market and there were also CD recordable
drives for your computer so you could
record music onto your sound card on
your computer and burned it to a CD just
like people do these days of course it
was more expensive than using a cassette
deck but that kind of digital technology
was already on the consumer market at
the time and cassettes were already
pretty much considered obviously they
were still selling well but mostly for
people to play in their cars and their
in their Walkmans at home most people
listen to CDs so cassettes were really
on their way out
in the late 90s but pioneer decided to
give it one last try with these cassette
decks which have a very special feature
says it right here digital processing
system 20 bit analog-to-digital and
digital-to-analog converter so what this
cassette deck does is take the analog
audio on the tape convert it to digital
then it does digital processing on the
audio and converts it back to analog to
provide output through the output jacks
and the headphone jack would have been
nice if this had a digital output like
an optical connector but unfortunately
it does not you can see another feature
mentioned here Digital FLEX and FLEX
stands for frequency level expander what
that does it measures the frequency
response of the cassette as it's being
played and if it detects that the high
frequencies are lacking such as on an
old worn-out tape or a cheap tape that
wasn't very good to begin with it boosts
the high frequencies to make it sound
better but in case it brightens it too
much for your liking you could turn it
off with the button here
there was a similar model the CT-W606DR
which did not have the FLEX feature
at least in North America
because the manual here actually
mentions that lists the features and it
says FLEX button except for U.S. model of
the W606DR and also mentions BLE XD
that's for recording -- it automatically
adjusts the bias the level and the
equalization and XD stands for extended
dynamic range and again it mentions that
if you have the US model of the W606DR
you will not have the BLE XD system for
recording so this cassette that clearly
has a lot of bells and whistles but the
one thing I have not mentioned so far is
the digital noise reduction system that
has developed by pioneer says it's an
innovative system capable of reducing
almost all tape hiss regardless of how
the tape being played was recorded so in
other words you do not need a tape
encoded with Dolby and there it
mentions the frequency response which is
very good for cassette deck of a metal
tape you can get the same frequency
response as a CD player 20 to 20,000
Hertz here's the signal-to-noise ratio
with digital and are on when you're
playing a tape that's Dolby B or C
encoded you get 90 dB which is almost as
good as a CD a CD gives you 96 dB
and what are you playing a tape that was
not encoded with Dolby you get 82 dB
which is better than any regular
cassette deck with Dolby C noise
reduction so this will give you almost
CD quality audio from any cassette
regardless if it was encoded with Dolby
noise reduction or not the one thing
this is lacking is Dolby S noise
reduction which was the best form of
Dolby NR ever offered on cassette
decks and I've heard Dolby S noise
reduction and it does work very very
well but on this deck when you combined
Dolby B or C with this digital noise
reduction I think it gets equally as
good as Dolby S
and in fact I recorded a demo of this
cassette deck playing some tapes some
recorded with Dolby B and some just
plain without any Dolby and I uploaded
that to my music channel I'll include a
link to that in the description to this
video if you want to take a listen to it
this also does not offer dbx noise
reduction which was a competitor system
to Dolby but that system pretty much
died out by the 90s so you really only
find that on cassette decks from the
early to mid 80s at the latest otherwise
this is a pretty fully loaded cassette
deck you get auto reverse and full logic
controls on both decks otherwise you get
automatic tape type selection and you
get that automatic bias level and
equalization setting when you're
recording and it's doing its own little
demo here the way you activate that is
by pushing these two buttons at the same
time then he goes into demo mode most
pioneer products did have a demo mode I
know their CD changers had a similar
feature on them now as for that digital
noise reduction system it does work
extremely well although in certain
situations especially on tapes that were
not recorded with Dolby during the
quieter parts of the recording you can
hear some artifacts from the filtering
it's doing but at least to me I'd rather
hear those artifacts than the tape hiss
especially on a Type I tape without any
Dolby but in case you do not like the
way that the digital noise reduction
system sounds there is a way to defeat
it just by pressing both of the time
count buttons at the same time you can
see the digital light turned off and
that's how you turn off the digital
noise reduction system although you can
still use the FLEX feature and the
automatic BLE XD system even with
digital noise reduction turned off I
don't think anybody's gonna be dubbing
tapes anymore but in case you do this
thing has a feature called digital TDNS
tape duplication noise suppressor system
basically what it does it
takes the audio from the tape that's
being copied the playback audio and it
applies that digital noise reduction to
it so it cleans up the sound before it's
being recorded to the tape you're
recording onto that helps to reduce the
hiss nose that is multiplied when you
copy one tape to another because
normally you get the hiss not only from
the tape you're recording too but the
hiss that was in the playback of the
tape you're playing so this way it says
it reduces the hiss noise in the master
tape by applying digital NR processing
and the bias noise by decreasing the
recording bias signal
while the played music signal is in the
no signal condition as a result the
noise in the middle of the music is
equivalent to the master tape and the
noise between music can be reduced but
you can turn this off just like you can
turn off the digital NR when playing a
tape in case you don't like the way it
sounds and I think I forgot to mention
this also has Dolby HX Pro which is not
a noise reduction encoding system it's a
headroom extension system and if you
want to read how it works you can pause
the video on this little blurb here and
what better way to demonstrate this
cassette deck then with more smooth jazz
from another CD 101.9 sampler tape I was
able to find it on eBay this time just
happen to come up in the search results
and I listened to this and I think it
was recorded without any Dolby because I
tried playing it with Dolby B noise
reduction turn-on and it sounds terrible
and it's also a regular Type I tape you
can tell by the brown color of the tape
chrome tape looks almost black in
comparison so this is a very good test
of this digital noise reduction system
because it's the worst case scenario of
a Type I tape with no Dolby encoding so
I'll give you a few samples of how this
sounds
"sit back and relax and escape from the
ordinary with our smooth jazz sampler
music you'll only hear on CD 101.9"
[Music]
"this is just a sample of the wide
variety of unique music that you'll hear
every day on CD 101.9
no rap no tired oldies no hard rock we
keep the mood right with smooth jazz
that's our promise to you here's more of
the unique blend of music that you'll
only hear on one radio station CD 101.9"
[Music]
"we hope you've enjoyed this sample of
the special music you'll always hear on
CD 101.9
smooth jazz in long extended CD sets
played back-to-back all-day unique music
for people with very special tastes"
and as for getting one of these cassette
decks for yourself
they're not exactly plentiful because
like I mentioned these were produced
when cassettes were already going out of
favour in the late 90s but you can find
them it's always a gamble when buying
used cassette decks because there's such
highly mechanical machines there's so
many things that can go wrong with them
and you really should know how to do
basic maintenance like cleaning and
demagnetizing the heads and adjusting
the azimuth there is a video I'll link
to which has a very good tutorial on how
to do that and you may also sometimes
need to replace the belts and these
things and that varies a lot what
different makes and models so it's not
really possible to give a
one-size-fits-all tutorial on how to do
that you really need to sort of look it
up for your specific model and see if
anybody else has already provided
instructions on how to do that otherwise
it may take some experimenting on how to
get that done and obviously you'll need
to measure the belts and order
replacements if you need to do that but
unless some manufacturers starts making
good cassette decks again which I kind
of doubt will happen this is something
that cassette fans will have to learn how
to do as these higher quality cassette
decks from the 80s and 90s become
increasingly old and they require more
service over time but in my case I did
not need to do any repairs or
maintenance on this cassette deck I
didn't even have to open the cover so if
you shop carefully you should be able to
find one of these and very good condition
"thanks for taking the time to
listen to our station music sampler
whether you listen at home in the car or
while you're working depend on CD 101.9
to create an exceptional environment
with smooth jazz
listen as soon as you can and be sure to
set a button on your car radio too"
[Music]