The best way to describe the top-of the-line Marantz DD-92 Digital Compact Cassette deck is to call it a truly elegant machine. It employs high-quality, 18-bit A/D converters, more than necessary to achieve the dynamic range of 100 dB claimed by the manufacturer. In addition, the DD-92 differs from Marantz's other DCC deck, the lower priced DD-82, by its use of a fully shielded copper chassis and hand-selected, audiophile-grade, passive components. In their D/A stages, both decks use 20-bit digital filters with eight-times oversampling, feeding into bitstream D/A converters. According to Marantz, this is the same D/A stage used in the company's reference grade CD player, the CD-11 Mk2, which has a suggested price of $2,500.

The convenience features include an easy-to-read text display for information contained on prerecorded DCC rapes, tinier recording (when connected to an external tinier), and audible fast search in either direction while a tape is playing. You can insert 3-S silent passages (even during playback mode) and mark long sections to be skipped in playback. Track-start ID markers can be inserted, as can end-of-side markers (to trigger an immediate reverse) or "Next" markers (to end recording on one side but wind to the start of the next side before resuming). Tracks can also be renumbered automatically, and any marker can be manually erased.

Marantz DD92

Control layout

Controls are sensibly laid out on the traditional Marantz champagne-gold front panel, with major controls in the most prominent positions. A "Power" switch and "Timer" selector are at the lower left of the panel. Only the power switch can turn the deck completely off, but the remote can place it in "Standby" mode (indicated by an LED), with enough control circuitry running to let the remote turn the DD-92 on again. Small buttons under the cassette drawer handle the manual marker functions, and an "Open/Close" button is below and to the right of the drawer. Beneath the large display are buttons for tape monitoring, resetting the counter, counter "Time" (absolute time, track time, remaining time, or counter), and text display modes plus "Repeat," "Blank Skip," and Auto Music Scan ("AMS"). The large buttons to the right of the display are standard tape-transport functions (though with a rocker for forward and reverse playback) plus the forward and reverse track-selection buttons familiar from CD players. Just below are buttons for "Record," "Append," and "Rec Mute." Pressing "Append" positions the DCC tape for recording and sets the deck in record/pause mode. If the tape is blank, a lead-in buffer area is set up at its beginning; if the tape has been recorded, the final 10 S of the last recording on it is played. To record over part or all of a recorded DCC, you press "Append" along with various tape-transport buttons. A headphone jack is along the lower section of the panel, as are knobs and buttons for headphone level, Dolby NR selection, "Auto Start" (which toggles automatic start-ID marking on and off), "Sync Record" (for synchronizing the start of the recorder and a CD player via Philips ESI bus links), "Input Select" (analog, digital optical, or digital coaxial), and recording balance and master level controls.

In addition to showing text, the display area features a bar-graph stereo level meter, indications for track, time/counter, and "Mode," as well as the status of a number of other functions to let you know exactly what the deck is doing at any given moment. The supplied remote control duplicates just about all of the control functions on the front panel and has number buttons for accessing a given track directly. The rear panel of the DD-92 is equipped with variable and fixed pairs of analog output jacks, coaxial digital in and out jacks, Toslink optical input and output connectors, input and output jacks for a system remote link to other components, and an "External/Internal" switch that selects control via the link or the supplied remote.

Marantz DD92

Use and Listening Tests

I can't wait to get my hands on more DCC software. At the moment, I have only about five prerecorded DCCs, and only one of these contains classical music (which I find much more suitable for subjective listening tests than pop or rock material). So, once again I trotted out my precious DCC version of Mahler's First Symphony (London 425-718-5) and listened to all four movements, first on a pair of high quality headphones (I hoped to detect flaws inherent in the hit-rate reduction system) and then through my reference stereo system terminating in KEF 105.2 speakers.

Marantz DD92

Although I tried to conduct sonic comparison tests between a CD version and the DCC version of Mahler's First Symphony, I must confess that true comparisons were not possible since the two performances are by different orchestras and conductors. What I can say, without qualification, is that the DCC was every hit as "musical'' and enjoyable as the CD, despite some differences in tempo and interpretation. As far as I could detect, the hit-rate reduction system used in DCC did not in any way degrade the performance, nor did I hear any noise or distortion anomalies in the reproduced music, notwithstanding the elevated noise levels noted in my bench tests when I used complex test tones.

The originators of the Digital Compact Cassette format have done their psycho-acoustic homework very well indeed, and the engineers at Marantz have outdone themselves in making the most of the DCC format. I frankly was skeptical when I was told that, using 18-bit A/D conversion, it might he possible to produce DCC recordings that were even freer from noise and distortion than 16-bit linear CD recordings. After extensive experimentation with the DD-92, I have abandoned my skepticism and become a believer!

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