Just for fun: Any reason to own a DAT deck?

[lo.fi.love]

Hey folks,

Being obsessed with older equipment as I am, I keep wondering if there's any good reason for me to pick up a DAT deck.

I know that DAT has been superseded by other technologies, so is there any reason why one should have a DAT these days? That is, if you're not a mastering studio, and you don't run a pressing plant...

 

[jedblue]

I've got one I've had new since 1995 Jeff. It's hardly ever been used since then. I used to use it at home to play back DAT masters that were made in the studio we used to run when DAT or 1/4" was about it for masters. It has quite a nice sound but offers nothing that hard disk or cd recording does and the tapes are expensive and hard to find. Truly overtaken technology in my mind.

 

[Victory Pete]

Hey folks,

Being obsessed with older equipment as I am, I keep wondering if there's any good reason for me to pick up a DAT deck.

I know that DAT has been superseded by other technologies, so is there any reason why one should have a DAT these days? That is, if you're not a mastering studio, and you don't run a pressing plant...

I use my DA30MKII every now and then. I use it to record our practices sometimes. People come in with their old DAT tapes and want to tweak them and copy to CD. Sometimes I do mastering to DAT and then make a digital transfer to my CD recorder. I paid a lot of money for it so I try to get as much out of it as I can.
VP

 

[mixsit]

Reason to own.. But ops I see you did a swap on me. Ok.
-1 you still have some master on DAT
-2 the DA30 mkI was 'one the last they made that has a serviceable deck' or so I was told by the service tech
-3 it's worth less than I paid for it and the 'you never know factor, and it's not taking up too much room.
But, reasons to 'pick one up'?


'Vintage digital'.. Lots of gears and spinning whirly things..
I'm comming up blank here guys and galls..

 

[Blue Jinn]

Maybe (if you find a DAT deck with good converters)

In my ever lasting quest to do things harder than they need to be I've mixed to DAT and used dat2wav and an audio capable DAT drive to extract the wav files for further work on the computer. #73 on the list of things is to find Apogee 944's and upgrade the deck I have....

However, maybe you find a good deck with better A/D than the sound card at a good price, then use S/PDIF to transfer to the PC.

Basically use the A/D on teh DAT deck instead of the PC. That way you also get a real knob and a real dB meter to set input level with. For some reason I prefer that.

Or, you want to mix to digital, but have a compelling need to feel like you've mixed to "tape."

 

[Farview]

Most DAT machines are only 16 bit and are not up to the quality of a $100 M-Audio card plugged into the computer you already have running Reaper for free.

 

[ofajen]

No reason for me. If I need a digital 2-track, I can use my flash recorder. If I'm recording from the standalone, it even has S/PDIF input so I can avoid extra conversion. Plus, if I'm moving a file to the computer, it can just plug in and show up as a USB volume and copy files to and fro. YMMV.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[LUNE]

I sure wouldn't sell my DA-30 for what they go for now - after all this time, they seem to keep their own (unlike the second model with the shuttle wheel... problems there) I'd take a DAT recorder over a CD recorder any day.... ... however at this point I only use it to access old tapes - wouldn't be putting anything new on there - and wouldn't be getting one if I didn't have one already, and wouldn't be paying to have one repaired - I'd be trying to borrow a friend's to transfer my tapes. Though in other areas, I'm buying up machines I once owned just to (have the possibility to) transfer old tapes... and I confess I like the IDEA of mixing w/o computer, but 16bit? I guess not.

I DO like the synchronized twin silver input knobs! Maybe I could rout a signal through the DA-30 (without passing through the converters) just to use those! ...but here again I won't be doing this - even though it SEEMS that the thing will run forever (we're on 18(?) years w/o service) I suppose I'll only use it when I need it and be happy it works then.

I fear for the 'data' on my digital tapes much more than the 'material' on my analog ones.

 

[Beck]

I voted no, since you ruled out the need for having one to transfer or master other people's work.

The only other reason you might need a DAT is if you don't have a bleeding ulcer and would like one.

DAT and ADAT are the only tape formats I've ever irrecoverably lost material. I hate that tape-is-being-eaten sound. It’s almost as bad as the tape-snapped-in-two sound, or the tape-is-flaking-apart-so-the-music-suddenly-disappears sound.

 

[Herm]

If you need a door stop or a boat anchor yea I would get one.
I had one and did two cds with it Along with adats and a Mackie 8 buss mixer.
The only thing that save the sound of those was we duplicated everything at the mastering plant to cassettes.

 

[Dr ZEE]

I keep mine DA30 mkII in the collection of proclaimed "industry standard" equipment as an invisible trial evidence against the proclaimers.

I keep a collection of hard printed literature filled with unbiased "educational" material as well ..., dates, places, legendary and "iconic" names (lots of those! ) - all there, heh heh

...of course, there'll be no damn trial, but it's fan to fantasize about it

 

[mshilarious]

For the record, I famously predicted c. 1990 to approximately three people who knew what DAT was that it would never catch on as a consumer format, because it lacked random access and didn't fare as well as a CD when left on a dashboard on a hot day (not that I particularly recommend that for any medium).

Digital doesn't really need a medium per se anymore, so it's silly to tie on a going-forward basis to any particular one. It's just data, store it however you like. Upload it to your hosted, backed-up FTP service if you like.

 

[mshilarious]

I keep mine DA30 mkII in the collection of proclaimed "industry standard" equipment as an invisible trial evidence against the proclaimers.

I keep a collection of hard printed literature filled with unbiased "educational" material as well ..., dates, places, legendary and "iconic" names (lots of those! ) - all there, heh heh

...of course, there'll be no damn trial, but it's fan to fantasize about it

The first to be arrested and shot will be Tascam and Fostex for their 4-track cassette decks