The Nakamichi Dragon is an audio cassette deck that was introduced by Nakamichi in 1982 and marketed until 1994. The Dragon was the first Nakamichi model with bidirectional replay capability and the world's first production tape recorder with an automatic azimuth correction system; this feature, which was invented by Philips engineers and improved by Niro Nakamichi, continuously adjusts the azimuth of the replay head to minimize apparent head skew and correctly reproduce the treble signal present on the tape. The system allows the correct reproduction of mechanically skewed cassettes and recordings made on misaligned decks. Apart from the Dragon, similar systems have only been used in the Nakamichi TD-1200 car cassette player and the Marantz SD-930 cassette deck. At the time of its introduction, the Dragon had the lowest-ever wow and flutter and the highest-ever dynamic range, losing marginally to the former Nakamichi flagship, the 1000ZXL, in frequency response. Competing models by Sony, Studer, Tandberg and TEAC that were introduced later in the 1980s sometimes surpassed the Dragon in mechanical quality and feature set but none could deliver the same mix of sound quality, flexibility and technological advancement. The Dragon, despite inherent issues with long-term reliability, remained the highest point of compact cassette technology.
Development and production
Background Philips introduced the Compact Cassette in 1963. The new format was intended primarily for dictation and had inherent flaws – a low tape speed and narrow track width – that precluded direct competition with vinyl records and reel-to-reel tapes. The cassette shell was designed to accommodate only two heads, ruling out the use of dedicated recording and replay heads and off-tape monitoring that were the norm in reel-to-reel recorders. In 1972, however, Nakamichi introduced a cassette deck that outperformed most domestic and semi-professional reel-to-reel recorders. Ordinary cassette decks of that period struggled to reproduce 12 kHz on ferric tape and 14 kHz on chromium dioxide tape; the Nakamichi 1000 could record and reproduce signals up to 20 kHz on tapes of either type. It was the first three-head cassette deck, the first with discrete (mechanically, magnetically and electrically separate) record and replay heads, closed-loop double capstan drive, off-tape monitoring, calibration of recording levels and bias, and a convenient manual adjustment of replay head azimuth. While its competitors struggled to approach the performance of the 1000, Nakamichi continued research and in 1981 presented their next flagship, the 1000ZXL. The new deck has a slightly narrower dynamic range and slightly higher wow and flutter than some competitors, but exceeded them in frequency response and low recording distortion, and was praised for subjective musicality. Its price of US$3,800 was too high for the consumer market; the uprated "gold" version, which was priced at $6,000, became the most expensive cassette deck in history. This was a halo model, a vehicle for selling the company's numerous less expensive decks. Although Nakamichi released several models with experimental functionality, overall the company's approach to design was conservative. All models below the 1000 and 700 series followed the same general design and used the same dual-capstan transport that was introduced in 1978. Nakamichi consistently refrained from copying its competitors' latest solutions and features, refused to employ adaptive biasing and Dolby S, and did not make autoreversing decks until introduction of the Dragon. Autoreversing was desirable but bidirectional autoreversing tape transports of the 1970s suffered from inherent head azimuth instability, which caused irrecoverable treble roll-off. This issue had to be resolved before attempting to build a true high-fidelity autoreversing deck.
Azimuth problem
In magnetic recording, "azimuth" denotes the orientation of the magnetic head gap – a narrow, vertical slit that spans the height of the track – with respect to the direction of tape travel. "Absolute azimuth", the angle between the gap and the direction of tape travel, must be set at precisely ninety degrees for correct replay of treble signals. In practice, the main goal is perfecting the "relative azimuth" – the angle between the recording and replay magnetic gaps, which must be as low as possible. A two-head deck, in theory, has zero relative azimuth at a given point in time but in the long term its absolute azimuth drifts away from ninety degrees. The advantage disappears when a two-head deck replays tapes recorded on equipment with an unknown absolute azimuth error.
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