Sony TCWE475 Dual Cassette Player / Recorder

The product is satisfactory and does exactly
what is desired.
Except for the price it would have received
5 stars.

I am very unhappy with this product. It was overpriced and poor quality, design, and instructions. It lack features for a product that costs this much. I rarely purchase Sony products because this is usually the case, but the only other comparable product had so many poor reviews. I wish I could return it.

Hi,
Ok, the specs sound quite impressive. But i would trust my ears more than the printed material. I have hooked it on to a Nad c320 bee with polk 6i. I am sorry, my friends, it sounds REALLY bad. Needless to say, I checked the amp/speaker set up with a cd player. Sound was pretty neat. I plugged in a Sennheiser headphone to the sony tcwe475, and the sound was still bad.
I guess we need to pass it through an equalizer, 'coz there are no sound controlls in the machine.
I assure you, it sounds duller than the simplest mini component you can think of.
I bought it 'coz i trusted the specs and it was recommended by this guy in circuit-city, which brings me to another point: Always trust your ears more than what others say.

This cassette deck does have some really good features like HX Pro, Dolby B & C, music search (AMS, which looks for blank spaces to guess where the next song is), and full dubbing capabilities. I have it connected to my Onkyo A/V receiver via both output and input, since all of my components operate through the receiver. It works well this way and i can record from all sources with no problem.

I have a problem with the sound. It's not as good as the specs would have you believe. I've compared it with an Onkyo tape recorder and, although the numbers are similar (as far as wow & flutter and dynamic range), the Onkyo is much better (it was too expensive and had less features, but now i see why it cost more). The big thing is the lack of a remote. Sony has this funky A1II communication bus system, which is only truly useful if you buy all Sony components. I don't so it's useless to me. The excuse for not including the remote is that you can buy a Sony 300-CD Changer that can control this tape deck. I don't like it when companies use this method to obtain sales, so chances are i'll eventually resell this deck and get one with its own remote and better sound.

I paid $150 + tax at Circuit City. Same price as from J&R/Amazon and with shipping costs the price is almost equal. I'd say buy it if the price is $110 or less. That's all it's worth to me personally.