Topic: old DAT tape with no audio

[biker]

Hi,

I am transferring some old DAT tapes for a friend and have come across one with no audio on it. It has a Rob Wasserman Trio ticket stub in it from 3/26/1994, so I was really looking forward to hearing this one. It is on a TDK DC4-90 DDS tape. When I play it I get one second of A Time on my DA20, and then the display goes blank.  I've skimmed through it and no audio anywhere. No info on the recording deck. The other 18 tapes in this batch transferred fine, except for a Steve Miller Band tape that broke. Maybe there was a little too much preshow partying for this one 

I did a little searching on the forums but didn't see much. Any thoughts? I have a DA30MkII but it doesn't like 90m DDS tapes.

Thanks!
Roger

[bombdiggity]

I received one that did that.  No idea what it really means but I suspect it probably jammed in the recorder so nothing actually made it on the tape.  Those things could be finicky. 

[biker]

Early on I fumbled the record sequence keystrokes a few times and ended up in record/pause on my DA-P1. Meters were bouncing but no wheels turning. My brain does that from time to time now as well 

Roger

[H₂O]

This was fairly common back in the day - tape would mis-load, deck is dirty, etc and you record 2 hours of nothing - at least once every 50-100 decks/tapes this would happen.  I would here about this happening about once every 1-2 large shows (40-50 tapers present)

Could also be a "I forgot to unpause" recording as well.

I would typcially try and get patchers contact info just in case this happened back then - more common was a bad tape or digital  chain glitch that would ruin a recording.

[datbrad]

Do you only have one deck to use for playback? I have tapes that won't play on every deck I have, with no pattern. Sometimes the SV3700 is the only one that will work. I'd get that tape into another machine before giving up on it. Good luck!

[jefflester]

Fortunately there is a nice recording of that in circulation:
http://db.etree.org/shn/73832