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France, Paris
1 Level
660 Review
54 Karma

Review on High-Quality Teac TN-300SE-WA Analog Belt Drive Turntable In Walnut Finish by Jason Flores

Revainrating 5 out of 5

WHAT AN AWESOME MACHINE

I was looking for a unit that would easily convert my cassettes to CDs, and based on the reviews this looked like one of the best. I can say that the reviews were right: this is a great unit. There are some caveats, however. The main one is that this unit has a VERY short power cord; you're going to have to sit this close to an outlet, you can't just put it anywhere on your entertainment center. Also be warned that it is VERY heavy. Cassette players and CD players tend to be lightweight, so I imagine the weight comes from the turntable (which I haven't used yet).When it comes to converting cassettes to CDs, be prepared to mark the CD track divisions manually; the "auto track increment" can be set to -20, -30, -40 decibels, but since general background tape hiss appears to hover around the -12 to -15 range, the tape hiss is going to prevent the sound level from ever dropping low enough to split the tracks on its own. I never realized just how loud cassette hiss was until now.The only other caveat is that the peak meter is a knob that twirls from -8 to +8, but the spin is a bit loose, which makes it hard to adjust it precisely during recording. (You'll probably be fine just keeping it at +7 or +8 for the whole recording anyway.) The slider bars we had in the 90s for peak meter adjustments were easier to manipulate on the fly.Apart from those few minor complaints, this is a great piece of equipment and I'm having a blast getting all of my audio recordings onto CD since a lot of what I have has never been released on CD and never will be. If you're in the same situation, this is a great unit to get the job done.

Pros
  • turntable work great so far.
Cons
  • Limited volume control options