DAT is dead
An explanation why DAT is extinct as per our previous newsletter, but somehow never made the blog!
DAT (Digital Audio Tape) is dead. We get a lot of requests for DAT machines for location recording. Usually it means any type of location recording device. The name seems to stick like “Hoover” instead of vacuum cleaner.
Let me explain a brief history of recording devices for audio over the last 3 decades:When I started in sound, the preferred device was a Nagra. This recorder used Quarter inch tape which gave you about 12 minutes of recording time and you had to be careful to label and seal your used tapes in case you reused them and wiped previous recordings! The unit had 2 windows with “butterflies” that opened a second or 2 after you had started recording to show you that the tape had reached its constant speed, hence the term “ Sound Speed”.
When the whole world was shouting “DIGITAL” the warm listenable sound of tape was lost forever and we all embraced the gritty bright sound of zeros and ones. DAT arrived with a near noiseless solution and complicated mechanism that just wasn’t rugged enough for the field. I had numerous DAT recorders failing on me. Minidisc also made an appearance but the media was compressed to death (and you could hear it!) so it never really took off in the Pro industry.
The current recorders on the market are hard drive, direct to disc and flash memory recorders. Some models being able to record up to 8 tracks simultaneously. My personal favorites are the memory recorders as they have no moving parts, and so far ours have been 100 % reliable. The advantage of the new era recorders is that you can download the media to a PC in a couple of seconds and have all your files labeled or time stamped for edit. We just need these recorders to have valve preamps so that we can get some of that Nagra sound back! So, now you know why DAT is dead…
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