I just scored one of the best Dolby 8-track players! The Wollensak 3M model 8075.

[Jeffhs]

I have a Radio Shack SCT-11 stereo cassette deck as well with the Dolby FM and tape decoder. I have never used the Dolby circuitry in that deck since I've had it (about two years now). Can't notice the difference in sound anyway between Dolby and non-Dolby encoded tapes (I'm 55 years old and practically deaf in one ear), and I have many Dolby-encoded cassettes here. The Dolby FM decoder is useless now as there are absolutely no Dolby-encoded FM broadcasts in my area, and I'm not sure there ever were any stations in the Cleveland area carrying Dolby-encoded signals when I was growing up in the seventies. However, I seem to remember reading an article somewhere at the time (1970s) about the classical music FM station in Cleveland experimenting with Dolby encoding, but that must have been very short-lived as the station quit the experiments and went back to airing unencoded FM signals about a year or so later.

BTW, I think Dolby noise reduction was a frill anyway in consumer-oriented cassette and 8-track tape decks, since most non-technical listeners could not notice the difference in noise level between when the Dolby system was switched on and when it was off. I think the only people who could actually notice the difference were trained audio engineers and audiophiles with very sharp hearing. Most casual music listeners, like myself, probably, even likely, just left the Dolby system turned off.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

BTW, I think Dolby noise reduction was a frill anyway in consumer-oriented cassette and 8-track tape decks, since most non-technical listeners could not notice the difference in noise level between when the Dolby system was switched on and when it was off. I think the only people who could actually notice the difference were trained audio engineers and audiophiles with very sharp hearing. Most casual music listeners, like myself, probably, even likely, just left the Dolby system turned off.

I am surprised to hear (pun not intended) that you didn't notice the difference then. The improvement with Dolby NR was major to me, and I am near your age. I do not consider myself to be an audiophile at all.