Are DATs being phased out by the CD?

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Crayon Boy

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A couple years ago I visited the audio engineering program at Ohio University in Athens, OH. After looking around their studio a bit I didn't notice a DAT machine and asked the professor about it. He replied that DAT was being phased out by the CD and they no longer taught using DAT machines. I wonder if this is true and what others on this message board think. I've noticed that many mastering houses now accept DAT and CD, but some prefer DAT. Thoughts on this??
 
There is only one company that makes a 24 bit DAT machine. With everyone mixing to 24 bit formats, DAT has just gone the way of the Dodo. I have 2 DAT machines that I haven't used in 2 or 3 years. If I tried to sell them on Ebay, I would get $150 for both.
 
I don't mix to mine anymore, but I recently dug it out of the rack and have been doing some live location to two track recording with it. Other than that, it hadn't even been switched on in a while.
 
I don't even get DAT's in anymore... I'll bet it's been six months - maybe longer.
 
:D And, DATS the way it goes.


Green Hornet
I just could resist DAT line! :D
 
I dont even get any SEX anymore....................Ill bet its been 6 months



(while we are telling jokes)
 
Crayon Boy said:
Are DATs being phased out by the CD?
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God I hope so!!! Talk about a horse shit format. I just remember the joys of having to run a mixdown machine and two backups all at the same time, and usually at least one of them would be fucked.

DAT = Damn Awful Technology



Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Good riddance as far as the DAT is concerned. Boy am I glad that format has died. Talk about an unreliable format. Tapes were so small and fragile, they went bad for no apparent reason, got chewed up in the machines so easily. The machines themselves need constant adjustment to function at their best, and again are generally fragile and finicky.

What a garbage format. Hard disk recording and burning to CD's is much, much better.

And as far as being phased out, DAT was phased out a long time ago. Sure, there are still some machines in use I would guess, but it has been a long time since the format has been part of the recording mainstream.
 
Well, there not as bad as all that. I've never had one go bad or get munched. The ONLY problem I have with them is the low recording resolution (16/48 max).
 
Misalignment between DAT machines is a really fun problem:) personally, I don't miss DAT for a minute. However, there was a point in time when it was a good technology. Also, there is a huge difference between different DAT machine models. There was in influx of cheaper DAT machines that seemed to cause more problems than others. This is true of any technology though:)
 
Track Rat said:
Well, there not as bad as all that. I've never had one go bad or get munched. The ONLY problem I have with them is the low recording resolution (16/48 max).
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Same here..I have one that sits unused...and sits...and sits..Its vintage now you know :D
 
The problem with DAT is that it was never intended as a professional format. It was intended as a consumer format, but the record labels were so scared of copywrite infringment that they did everything they could to kill it. The manufactures then marketed it as a "PRO" format, but it never really grew out of the limitations of it's original market.

I just remember running three DAT machines, with high end converters for each one, as the internal converters on most DAT machines are questionable at best. And runing 1/2" and 1/4" analog backups at the same time.

BLECH.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
hey guys, right now im buying them up cheap. I am waiting for the DAT comeback, when people figure out 20 years from now that cds give you cancer or something. Seriously, anybody got any under 50 bucks, someone just gave me a bunch of dat tapes to put on cd.
 
Light said:
. It was intended as a consumer format,

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."

M.K. Gandhi
Click to expand...

Yikes! Consumer? :eek:
Regular consumers are so much less careful with their gear than pros or home reccers. I can't imagine it surviving the consumer market, with all the problems it had.
 
Track Rat said:
Well, there not as bad as all that. I've never had one go bad or get munched. The ONLY problem I have with them is the low recording resolution (16/48 max).
Click to expand...

You are just lucky then I guess. I've owned a couple pro DAT machines (Sony, Panasonic), and had troubles with tapes getting munched. I know others that had the same or similar problems. Getting a DAT machine tuned up to deliver very low error rates is another bit of maintanence that I got tired of paying for.

Some DAT machines will have a special button press access code to show the error rate. The same model can have dramatically different error rates between units. When I want to do a DAT to disk transfer of an old tape I bring the tape to an engineer friend of mine who has the identical machine as me, but his error rates are much lower. We both go to the same place to have our machines tweaked out, too.

Even if the errors aren't bad enough to be audible, they do affect the sound of the music. Lower error rates sound better. Even though there is no *apparent* audio problem with my DAT, I can hear the subtle difference between transfers done on my machine and his. Again, both machines serviced by the same tech, in fine working condition, etc.

DAT machines are just garbage, it is so good they are gone. There is nothing to like about them. Spending money on a DAT now is a total waste unless you need to access a lot of archived DAT tapes, or have people bringing tracks on DAT for you to work on. Otherwise, completely dead.
 
unfourtanately, i'm young so i never got to experience all the joys of the DAT. I went straight to CD, so i feel kinda lucky, anyone wants to give me a DAT player though, id take it.
 
A friend recorded a couple of albums in the early '90's and the studio gave him a choice of formats for the masters (they were released as analog cassettes) so he asked for DATs! Last year he asked me to burn them to CD and I had to rent a DAT deck to play them back. (shakes head)

At least, there was no DA/AD conversion involved: I hooked up my digital mixer to the AES/EBU outputs and it went straight to the hard drive.
 
Well, they certainly did come in handy when a blank CD-R was $35 or more...
 
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