Yeah. I did say that Tom told me to post it a while ago. I guess I didn't realize how "while" it was.
Either way, it still sounds amazing.
Background noise? Honestly, it depends more on what's being played. I only have two Dolby S recordings, one is Collective Soul, the other is Johnny Lang. From what I can gather out of those, they're pretty righteous. I think somewhere in the 80dB range. Dolby C is in the 70dB range, and B is in the 60dB range. Honestly, if we were to have a cassette shootout, I'd put this machine up against nearly anything.