Review on Teac LP-R550USBB CD Recorder With Cassette Turntable Black LPR550USBB by David Silva

This unit is not bad for its cost (paid $270) and I would have given this product 5 starts but I took a half-star off for the unit having no tone controls and another half-star off because the CD player's sound is noticeably muffled as if the speakers suddenly had a pair of athletic socks stuffed in their cones. As for the bass, it's almost too much for my listening taste and is quite impressive coming out of those little speakers.The cassette player is crystal clear and has auto-stop in the play mode ONLY. You must mind the cassette in FF and Rewind modes and if the "STOP" button is not pressed within a few seconds of it winding to either end of the tape the drive parts will start to become ruined. The turntable is also crystal clear and besides playing 33 and 45 records it also played my 78 records just fine and the radio is also quite good.It has a "hard" on-off power switch so no worries about it getting hit by a power line spike when it's power is off unlike most electronics these days that have energized circuits even when they're off such as any device that has a "power on-off" button on its remote control. The down-side to this is the remote cannot have a power on-off button, which, of course, it does not.I also like the fact that it has RCA AUX in and out jacks so you can connect it to an external amp or tape deck. It also has a non-volatile memory which means if the power goes out or you shut it off it remembers what radio station it was set to AND what level the volume was set. The CD player also records and has a level control for setting the record audio (large knob on the left) and the large right-hand knob is the volume control and both are digital encoders, not variable resistors (potentiometers) therefore they will never get noisy or intermittent as they age.I bought this as a replacement for the compact Aiwa stereo that just died after 20 years of faithful service. I still like the Aiwa system better, but I could not find a similar unit as a replacement that was not an el-cheapo unit and/or gaudy, tasteless or ugly in appearance. This Teac looks respectable and so far has pretty much lived up to the quality that one expects from a Teac device.