However, I have to commend the excellent separation and hiss suppression of this unit. The signal-to-noise ratio of this value unit must be one of the best in its class! I hear NO hiss whatsoever from tapes as old as the hills, whether regular oxide, metal or chromium, withOUT the Dolby that comes with it on, even! They, in fact, come VERY close to rivalling my CDs for purity of sound. And the dubbing capability...?? It's so weird to have been away from cassettes players for so long, and come back on the market to see that just about EVERY unit has a dual cassette bay design...! When did this start and was demand for such units so large that even BARGAIN units have them? Who knows, all I know is that I have an excellent sounding unit, albeit with a somewhat inconvenient manual operation, that I can copy cassettes with, at high speed yet!

I also might add that this company was one of the gold-standard brands back in the day for reel-to-reel recorders, so it's no surprise that it sounds good. It ought to hold up well, too.