Dolby NR encoding - did it ever work

Let me tell you something about well-executed dolbyB. It is great. My perfectly aligned and calibrated Nak 682ZX sounds incredible for a cassette deck, especially with Maxell Vertex tape. Forget those TDK, Sony , Denon etc. tapes. I tried everything. And my Nak is not even specifically calibrated for the Vertex. There is no roll-off, nothing that matters is lost. In most cases I do record with dolbyB. No live recording, only from records and cds. DolbyC sucks, I never use it.

This may be hard to believe, but recordings that I make from cds sound better than the cds. Noisier, yes, but better in everything else. This deck, or maybe any good deck, does something in the proccess of the recording. My CEC TL5100Z belt drive player is pretty good, especially the transport, but not high end at all, so I don't know how it would be with top of the line players.
That's one of the reasons why I make recordings from cds, another being that I make compilations. And yet another - deck is much more involving to interact with.

I will partly correct what I said before. I think, my cartridge and new cables were not fully broken in when I was making comparisons while recording from my Spacedeck turntable, though they had over 150 hours on them.
First of all, the deck cannot really compete with the turntable. The dynamics gets compressed a little but the biggest difference is in the soundstage - it loses both depth and width, but the deck still sounds very very good. The same can be said about the difference between recordings made without Dolby B and with it. They do sound better without it even though they are noisier, of course.

I don't know, Norman, my Nak was aligned and calibrated by Willy Hermann five years ago, and I did send him Maxell Vertex tape along with the deck. But I cannot be certain what he did with Dolby if anything. The deck still sounds exactly the same as when it returned from him. The sound is definitely not mid-fi, the deck just reached its limits. As I said, the drop in dynamics with Dolby is not dramatic but quite noticeable. In any case, I don't really need Dolby, some extra noise doesn't bother me. And of course I record directly from phono to deck, I never use tape-out on the amp.

Norman,
It is Nak 682ZX. I just disconnect the phono stage from the integrated amp and go directly to the deck. I of course calibrate each cassette when recording, this makes a lot of a difference.