DAT

[Darren]

Ive been offered a small number of DAT master tape copies and am considering getting a DAT machine to play them on, maybe burn a few to CD etc.
Im guessing that the tapes will be a really high fidelity source, but Ive never used DAT. Does anyone own a machine? Are they easy to use? easier than compact cassettes used to be?

[The Grand Wazoo]

Nick (Beechwoods) is undoubtedly yer man for this one Darren.

[Rare Bird]

I used the Panasonic SV3700 on my studio engineering courses, excellent machines.

[Beechwoods]

DAT's dead easy to use Darren. I have a Tascam DA20 MkII which is an excellent little semi-pro / small studio machine. They can be picked up for not much money these days as everyone is going file-based.

If you have access to some masters then I would definitely go for it. DAT can sound lovely and the machines are great to use. My only problem with DAT was that over time tapes would drop-out resulting in momentary digi-noise, so in the long term it wasn't such a good medium for archiving. I've now transferred all my important DATs to FLAC.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/articles/tascamda20.html

[greenhomeelectronics]

DAT was a pretty good format, it works kind of like a VHS video recorder. The only thing is they have similar problems to VCR's eg mechanism faults and tapes sticking to the head drum. They tend to suffer from drop outs if the heads are anything but spotless. They were a fairly short lived technology because minidisc and recordable cd soon replaced them. More of a curio now as md and cdr have many advantages eg reliability and track access time.

[Darren]

Many thanks to all who contributed. Im struggling to make up my mind what to do... But hey! it's al part of the fun.
Kind regards,
Darren

[s70rmp]

I've had 3 DATmachines over the years and love the format, I have found that some albums that I have transffered to DAT sound better on play back.

There's been some right bargins on ebay recently

I currently have a Sony DTC-690, dead easy to use - pop in the tape and I always fast forward the tape to the end and let it rewind before playing to ensure the tape is not caught on it's self.

Back in the early '90's I had a Sony D3 deck and used it for bootlegging shows. was a great tool.