Just stepping in with something for the historians:

The tiny Sony DAT Walkman seemed pretty amazing when it came out in about 1990. I Still have mine and it still works, though the Nextel paint is falling off. The modern equavalent D50 is also pretty impressive, and I use it when I want to make a ‘serious’ recording rather than run up the analog Nagra.

But the digital audio equipment that was the first to make my jaw hit the desk was the Decca digital mastering system that they developed in the mid 1970’s. At the time I thought they were just mad - why design and build a digital recorder that used an expensive (£4K in 1974) professional one inch VTR and a whole load of complex electronics to record just one hour of stereo, when an analogue Studer would do the same for a fraction of the cost, but what did I know?

By chance years later, I found myself in the right place at the right time (and in a collecting mode) to acquire one of their digital field recording setups, and I have been the custodian of this equipment for some 12 years now. It is basically just one component from a state-of-the-art (an over used phrase but quite true in this case) record production system, and all of Decca’s classical output on LP and CD would have been made on such systems from (I think) the new year’s day concert in Vienna in 1980 to about 1990. Sorry for the image quality.



(Above) Top to bottom: 20bit A to D, 20bit D to A and the Codec.



Inside the 20 bit A to D, which was based on DBX technology.



The modified IVC 871 Video Tape Recorder



Inside the Ultra Analog based D to A convertor

This equipment is still in working condition, though rarely used these days.