Aiwa AD-F850 Cassette Deck

The AD-F850 costs a little more than its predecessor (Aiwa AD-F810), even though it has fewer facilities.

What has gone? The pretty green backlight behind the cassette, timer-start and the headphone volume control have all disappeared. The only other changes we can spot are a rather pointless styling revision, the flat fascia extrusion being replaced by a more pneumatic looking curvy affair. I think Aiwa should have made the case smaller to save a little on materials and they should have exchanged dubious benefits like the AMTS cassette shell stabiliser for a simple, but more substantially built door. But, as we all know, Japanese companies are convinced of the need for simply perceived value and performance markers and, no matter what, they don't and won't change their outlook. That's why the AD-F850's case is huge, with an enormous fresh-air-to-hardware ratio. It's also made of paper thin steel which makes the deck clanky to use.

SOUND QUALITY

I had to listen a little more intently than expected to catch this deck out; it was quite impressive. Modern metals give best results and new (reformulated) Maxell MX worked a treat with bias turned up a little (+2) and music peaking at +6 absolute maximum. The deck was then quiet enough to record with Dolby B alone, hiss being all but inaudible. I noticed a fine sense of clarity across the midband, clean treble with well maintained transients and slightly lightened but clean bass. There's no doubt that the head is a good one, allowing the AD-F850 to work unusually well with good metals.

Sticking with MX, I was surprised at how well the AD-F850 apparently coped with the long, revealing sustains of Chopin's Opus 48 No I. It didn't pitch jerk or momentarily slur, but I did detect some general pitch vagueness and, on the closing chords, heard a slow wavering. Critical listeners beware; many wouldn't notice though.

Ferric tape commonly sounds vague on transients, because of treble overload (saturation). However, with TDK AR and bias backed off a little, the AD-F850 reproduced the cutting steel guitar strings of Rory Black's Terraplane Blues with surprising ability. However, I did have to pull recording level back to 0dB on peaks and, at this level, hiss became pretty intrusive with Dolby B - Dolby C was needed.

Swopping over to Maxell XL-IIS (chrome bias) I found recording level could be edged up a little without compromising transient definition and hiss was far less obvious - back to Dolby B! The Aiwa gave fine recording quality with this tape, as it did with AR and MX, so it works well with all three tape types -not so common an ability.

The situation with pre-recorded tapes was marginal. Quite obviously, head azimuth error was causing some dullness, but it wasn't too great. As a result, tapes that were a little bright in themselves - as many are - came out sounding clear and balanced with Dolby engaged. Those properly balanced sounded a little dull and leaden, whilst those that sounded a trifle dull (on my Nakamichi ZX-9 reference) became very dull. There's no doubt that this machine would have benefited from better head adjustment, but all the same it gave a fairly clear and stable sound, full in body. Providing you had never heard what a Nakamichi can do to pre-recordeds, you'd be satisfied with this result, if not ecstatic.

CONCLUSION

In spite of its minor weaknesses, I have to say that in the final analysis I was impressed by the AD-F850. It gave fine recording quality with all tape types and managed fairly well with pre-recorded tapes, never becoming unacceptably muffled. At the price, which is almost painfully (for Aiwa that is!) low, this deck remains a real bargain I can recommend.