Proaudio Tape Decks or Cassette Decks are electronic machines used to playback recorded audio from cassette tapes. Most tape decks are also used to record audio to blank cassette tapes. Tape decks can also be used to erase recorded audio from cassette tapes.

Proaudio Tape decks ( usually housed in rugged rack mountable chasis ) are available in single-well, dual wells and multi wells. Tape deck well/s or compartment/s is where you load and unload cassette tapes for playback and/or recording.

Proaudio Tape decks has mechanical tape transport system which consist of 1-3 motors, belts, clutches, tension springs, reel spindle ( used for winding the cassette tapes reels forward or in reverse ), capstan and pinch roller assembly ( used to hold the actual magnetic tape during playback and/or recording ), playback head ( used for playback ), recording head ( used for recording ) and last but not the least erase head ( used for erasing recorded audio ).

The basic front panel controls of proaudio tape decks are, POWER SWITCH, TIMER, TIMER RESET, STOP, PLAY, RECORD, PAUSE, REWIND, FAST FORWARD and EJECT. Depending on the model, tape decks can also come with controls such as, INTRO CHECK which allows the user to preview recorded segments, SYNC REV which allows the user to activate the synchro reverse dubbing feature, DUB / DUBBING or DUB START which allows the user to copy the contents of tape1 to tape 2 ( for dual well decks ), DOLBY NR which activates the dolby noise reduction system on/off, METAL / CRO2 / NORMAL which selects the type of cassette tape to be used ( most tape decks has automatic tape detection system ) and many more ( varies from models / manufacturers ).