Quote:
the Dragon, unfortunately the auto-azimuth adjustment reacted too slow. |
Auto-azimuth isn't something that needs to react quickly. Remember, any tape you put in the Dragon, has only been recorded at one azimuth anyway. It doesn't change throughout that side of the cassette. Once the deck has dialed itself in, it's set for the remainder of the cassette. Besides.

I got to (ahem) play with my Dad's deck a fair amount. I don't remember the azimuth adjustment as being noticeable at all. (Used to play stuff recorded on my deck on his. Think I had an Onkyo or some such at that time. Tapes played back on the Dragon from my deck sounded better than being played back on the deck on which they were originally made!)
I got a CR-7A specifically because it has manual azimuth control. *I* wanted my own control over what it's doing. Plus, the Dragon is an auto-reverse deck, and the CR-7A isn't. IMO, an auto-reverse deck simply cannot match the raw performance of a single direction deck. And ... if you actually look through the old reviews, there are a lot of people that say that, believe it or not, the CR-7A was the best cassette deck ever made. By anyone. Forget about newer noise reduction schemes like Dolby HX (or whatever it was), Dolby S, etc.
Shoot. Nakamichi engineered the crap out of those decks. Remember the RX series? Some of those actually flipped the cassette in the well for ... "auto-reverse" ...
http://www.sonicsense.com/nakfaq42.html
http://www.naks.com/home.html
Go to the "Naks" link.