Does anyone else here use a DAT recorder?

[Sjkrabbe]

Is that even a real photo? It's so perfect, it looks just like a rendered plugin UI

no this is NOT an actual photo of my machine, this is a computer made picture of 7050 I wasn´t at my job so I could not take a photo of it

 

[Robin L]

Just curious. I 've still got a bunch of DAT tapes from way back when, now unused for years (decades?). My player, a Tascam DA-30, died and that was that. BUT, I recently found an other working player for peanuts. I have no idea how long the tapes or player will last, but hopefully I'll get some fun out of before it all goes >>POOF<<. Happy Holidays!

My last DAT recorder was a Tascam DA-30 I must have bought for around $80 back in 2010 or so for a CD project that never got off the ground. Gave it away 2019, still perfectly functional, still perfectly useless as I had moved on to recording directly to SSD thanks to a handheld Tascam recorder. Keep it as long as it "sparks joy", then see if anybody wants to pay anything for it. These sorts of objects become harder to unload the longer one waits.

 

[Jim T]

Just curious. I 've still got a bunch of DAT tapes from way back when, now unused for years (decades?). My player, a Tascam DA-30, died and that was that. BUT, I recently found an other working player for peanuts. I have no idea how long the tapes or player will last, but hopefully I'll get some fun out of before it all goes >>POOF<<. Happy Holidays!

I still have my Sony DTC 690 and it still works, but all of my recording now is through Tascam SDHC card devices. Started with an old DR-2d that still works great, the to a DR-05 and 07, and then DR40's and then to a DR 680 MK2 6 track that can do 6 tracks of 2496 and 2 tracks of 24 192. They are great devices, and I do no more computer recording, just mastering. I lost a college concert 15 years ago when my computer crashed and that was the end of that.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

I recorded a bunch of live concerts for NPR and affiliates back in the nineties, live to 2-track digital on DAT tapes. I recently transferred all the tapes I have to an SSD hard drive using a Tascam DA-30 player. "Recently" means I just transferred the last one a week ago.

I was pleasantly surprised that these 30+ year old tapes would play, but except for one or two they all did. At one point the Tascam stopped working due to mechanical issues, but I was able to get it repaired - it only needed some cleaning and lubrication. Meanwhile, I bought a used Sony DTC-690 which worked fine except it wouldn't play the old tapes so I returned it - it actually did play the tapes, but it was just a bunch of digital glitching instead of decent audio.

So, bottom line is that if you have a player that will play your tapes then transfer them to a hard drive ASAP before they turn into pumpkins. Another DAT machine may work perfectly to record and play back new recordings but may not play your tapes.

DAT was a great technology at the time to simply and inexpensively make Redbook-standard digital recordings. It's long been replaced by more modern options, so unless you have valuable material already stored on DAT, there's no reason to bother with it.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

One curious thing is that older DAT machines only had coax digital outputs, not the "modern" optical TOSLink that succeeded coax. Finding a SPDIF coax to USB adaptor is not an easy task, but coax to optical devices are readily available as are optical to USB so that's the simple cost-effective solution if your player doesn't have optical out.

Although going through two "conversions" is not optimal, it should be better than a round trip to analog and back. At least in theory, this should copy the 16bit 44.k or 48k sequence of ones and zeroes exactly.