Cassette decks. How good can it get?

Back in the day I had a cassette machine, kinda crappy really, but it looked nice and I would record songs from FM radio instead of buying the album.  Then I got my first Teac rtr and that was the end of the cassette almost.  Bought a dbx compander for the Teac and wow what an improvement.  So I tried it on the cassette and it really made a huge difference.  No, not enough so that it came close to the Teac, but good enough for casual playback. 

OP,
dbx equipment can be found on eBay almost all the time, heartily recommended.

Regards,

barts

@wolfie62 

That's about 10 times as many dbx discs as I had, gave them to a friend a while back.  I remember one was "HEART" and another was DeBussy...yes they did sound phenomenal!

Regards,

barts

Didn't Pioneer come out with a direct drive (gear) deck that was supposed to eliminate tape hiss?

I still run my Nak Dragon in my system and it sounds great. Yes the negative reply will be plentiful but most of them are referencing back to their boom box days. They always want to compare to reel to reel and the speed of the tape. Recording an album through a good tape monitor loop like the Sansui 9090 had and using a quality metal oxide tape produced very good recordings. I also recorded many live concerts off radio stations and still listen to them. Is it the best source for critical listening no but it can still sound very good if you make it about just enjoying the music.

@barts 

I bought my dbx discs in 1990. The base Exchange was closing out its entire stock of records. Dbx discs were $15.95 each. They reduced the entire stock to $1 each. I spent $125 in one day. 53 dbx discs. I bought every Nautilus disc and Telarc disc also. The next day I bought their last Denon DP45F deck for $25. I missed out on the 57, 59, 62 decks. My wife was not happy that I spent money on them. She is my ex-wife now…..