Topic: Curious Why People Still Use DAT?

[jb63]

16 bits sound fine to me, so I can understand nameloc1 sticking with his Hi-MD recorders because they are small. Hi-SP even sounds as good to me as PCM.

[snip]

I also don't get the need for hard copies of masters-I wouldn't even want to have to store them or try to find a particular recording. I'm happy just saving the digital file to a hard drive and backing it up to another drive. And I take it buying blank DAT's is getting expensive now.

Interesting.
So you are saying that, like the future of everybody's record collection (which will one day simply be a searchable database in iTunes, with no cases or media, but just a bank of hard drives), the shows you tape will be archived on a bank of 1TB drives, that you will eventually expand as you make more tapes.

That is a pretty cool thought. I have about 1000 master DATs. They are currently stored in 4 large bins and labeled (as best as possible and sorted by date) because, lets face it, I don't need them on the wall to browse through. That is way too much. I listen to quite a few of them regularly, and can find what I am looking for pretty quickly with a few exceptions.

Invariably, if I listen to one, I transfer it at the same time, edit it that week and archive it to DVD.

DVDs have proven to fail on me, but not as much as CDRs. MAN, I hated CDRs, esp when someone would send you one with a label on it that would eventually warp and not play. But there was a period of 8 or more years when that is all anyone would send you. The majority of traders were CDR-only...

I really like the idea of thinking that every recording I made was archived on a searchable hard drive, but that is a librarian's full time 3-year job at a time when we all have to work twice as hard just to stay employed.

I really like having hard copies of my masters, though, so I'd bet, for important shows, I would probably still run backup DAT while the medium lasts.

Don't you miss labeling all those J-Cards when you'd mail out copies to your friends?

;-)

[stevetoney]

16 bits sound fine to me, so I can understand nameloc1 sticking with his Hi-MD recorders because they are small. Hi-SP even sounds as good to me as PCM.

[snip]

I also don't get the need for hard copies of masters-I wouldn't even want to have to store them or try to find a particular recording. I'm happy just saving the digital file to a hard drive and backing it up to another drive. And I take it buying blank DAT's is getting expensive now.

Interesting.
So you are saying that, like the future of everybody's record collection (which will one day simply be a searchable database in iTunes, with no cases or media, but just a bank of hard drives), the shows you tape will be archived on a bank of 1TB drives, that you will eventually expand as you make more tapes.

That is a pretty cool thought. I have about 1000 master DATs. They are currently stored in 4 large bins and labeled (as best as possible and sorted by date) because, lets face it, I don't need them on the wall to browse through. That is way too much. I listen to quite a few of them regularly, and can find what I am looking for pretty quickly with a few exceptions.

Invariably, if I listen to one, I transfer it at the same time, edit it that week and archive it to DVD.

DVDs have proven to fail on me, but not as much as CDRs. MAN, I hated CDRs, esp when someone would send you one with a label on it that would eventually warp and not play. But there was a period of 8 or more years when that is all anyone would send you. The majority of traders were CDR-only...

I really like the idea of thinking that every recording I made was archived on a searchable hard drive, but that is a librarian's full time 3-year job at a time when we all have to work twice as hard just to stay employed.

I really like having hard copies of my masters, though, so I'd bet, for important shows, I would probably still run backup DAT while the medium lasts.

Don't you miss labeling all those J-Cards when you'd mail out copies to your friends?

;-)

Devils advocate. 

You'd be completely f***ed if you 1000 DAT collection went down in a fire or flood.  How many years worth of masters would be gone??? 

Yeah, it takes time to master your DATs and that's a total PITA...but no offense man, but that's exactly one of the biggest problems with DAT, man!  Why keep going down that road?!?

For those that you've got transferred to DVD, then it's trivial to transfer them to harddrive.  I _NEVER_ rely on CD or DVD...they have a very VERY high failure rare with lots of my own DVD burns failing within a couple years.

The key to the harddrive plan though is to buy TWO large drives and then when you get everything backed up, take the second drive with you to work.  I mean, there's plenty of stuff I'd probably consider more valuable to lose in a house fire, but if the house DID go up in smoke it would be nice to know that my music didn't go with it.

[jb63]

The key to the harddrive plan though is to buy TWO large drives and then when you get everything backed up, take the second drive with you to work.

That is the rough part! You really need twice as much space as you thought. But the hard drive space is trivial compared to what the other media takes up/
There was a fantastic piece on CBS Sunday Morning about archival audio & video where the Smithsonian expert pointed out that now EVERYTHING must be backed up to a new format every five years.

Heh.
I just realized that with 1000 DATs I'm not supposed to ever buy more. Just make an archival transfer and record over an old one until I finally buy a some "new" gear.

;-)

[sparkey]

That is the rough part! You really need twice as much space as you thought.

Not necessarily, you could have a RAID array with multiple hard drives....

[deadheaded]

I picked up a Korg MR1 a year or so ago, and it is a great little machine, but my Oade Mod SBM-1 still makes a better recording. Honest.

no it doesn't!!!!

[sparkey]

My 722 hiccuped when it ran out of power during playback and about 10 tracks aren't appearing in the list of files.  I just moved, so nothing is put together, but I need to mount it from a computer to see if the tracks still exist.  +1 to DAT.

[dave570]

I'm on Edirol R09HR, but I have my Sony D8 in my closet for sentimental reasons. I will use it once in awhile as a second deck patched into someone else in case the Edirol has issues. But I prefer not to use tape anymore. I've been burned by stuck tape in the D8, drop-outs, tape running out before I change them, etc. I enjoy having everything on a memory card.

And word of warning: Always bring an extra card in case shit happens. I've had instances where the Edirol doesn't load a card it loaded previously and the spare card was required to tape the show. Then, I re-format the card on a computer and then re-format the card on the Edirol to get it loaded. I believe that this issue is due to me deleting files on the card from a computer instead of from the Edirol itself. Every now and then, I re-format the card on the Edirol just to keep it sane too.

[dgale]

After reading responses, I respect that people stick with DAT.   However, I do have to wonder whether some of you that responded aren't fully aware of the current state of the flash based recorder.

Are you aware that the price of R-09HR recorders has come down to $250 and MTII are now something like $170?!?

That means you could be recording in 24bit, without SCMS, without needing to transfer tapes in real-time, for about the price of one box of 50 DAT tapes?!?

The R-09HR is easily as capable or moreso as a Sony D8, in terms of features and reliability.

I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence with this post.  But if you weren't aware of the current price point for entering the flash recorder market...well I'm just sayin'.

IMHO, recording with the extra headroom offered by 24bit alone is worth $170!

For starters, I already have about five boxes of leftover 90m DAT tapes, so no need on my end to spend any $$ I don't have on tapes...when those are used up (and at my present rate of catching shows, that will be a while...), I obviously will not be spending $$ on more.  In the meanwhile, I don't have the funds to shell out for the deck I'd want (minimum $600).  As for the R-09HR, I recognize it is small and nice for stealthing, but beyond that it hardly would suit my needs.  I hardly put much faith in the quality of the pre or A/D in a gizmo that small.  There's no free lunch in this world - a recorder that small and that cheap had to have corners cut somewhere.  As it stands now, my DAT recorders have spidf inputs, so I can run a digital feed from my AD2K/MiniMe/MP-2, and when running a sbd feed, they have XLR inputs and never clip, as opposed to trying to cram a balanced sbd feed down into an 1/8" mini jack...thanks but no.  So at this point with my $$ limitations, I'll take 16 bits of higher end pre and A/D over 24bits processed by a $200 recorder.  Yes, replacement of my DAT recorders in inevitable and I clearly understand the benefits all the way around with newer technology, but until I have the $$ to do it right, I'll stick with what I have. 

[phil_fernandez]

I've used a D-8 since 1996.  Aside from some issues with 90m tapes, I've never had the problems mentioned here.  As for the cost of blanks, I guess I do not worry about it.  I get mine through my old friends at Masterpiece AV, although I've been warned that they are getting harder to find.  Blank DATs are still cheaper than ordering downloads or buying USBs or CDs.
One thing I have noticed recently - no one asks for patches from me when they see I'm using DAT.  Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

[raymonda]

For starters, I already have about five boxes of leftover 90m DAT tapes, so no need on my end to spend any $$ I don't have on tapes...when those are used up (and at my present rate of catching shows, that will be a while...), I obviously will not be spending $$ on more.  In the meanwhile, I don't have the funds to shell out for the deck I'd want (minimum $600).  As for the R-09HR, I recognize it is small and nice for stealthing, but beyond that it hardly would suit my needs.  I hardly put much faith in the quality of the pre or A/D in a gizmo that small.  There's no free lunch in this world - a recorder that small and that cheap had to have corners cut somewhere.  As it stands now, my DAT recorders have spidf inputs, so I can run a digital feed from my AD2K/MiniMe/MP-2, and when running a sbd feed, they have XLR inputs and never clip, as opposed to trying to cram a balanced sbd feed down into an 1/8" mini jack...thanks but no.  So at this point with my $$ limitations, I'll take 16 bits of higher end pre and A/D over 24bits processed by a $200 recorder.  Yes, replacement of my DAT recorders in inevitable and I clearly understand the benefits all the way around with newer technology, but until I have the $$ to do it right, I'll stick with what I have.
[/quote]

Since you have an outboard A to D you could buy a MTII and CF for around $200 and not worry about using the internal converters. That is what I do and after 400 sessions on the MTII I have only had one recording problem. You would also be able to record higher rez, if that matters to you.

[Drifter1]

Someone will have to pry my TCD D8 out of my dying hand,I'm taking it with me when I go...best piece of equipment I ever owned hands down...

[skaggs]

Had my first CF failure last week.  Luckily it was a chatty Lubriphonic show in Telluride, and Barrett was there to get it.  Listened to it on my headphones on the P2, pulled it out to transfer it, and it would never open.  Card  will not empty or reformat on my PC or in the P2......wtf???

anyway, i only use DAT if i am covering a festival and have more rooms/stages than i do non-DAT machines (WMOD HDP2 or WMOD 661). So i might break out the m1 next month for the durango meltdown........damn the real time transfer though!

[Brian Skalinder]

You might check out the Computer Recording forum's stickied readme and its links to a thread or two about dealing with corrupt audio files.

[dactylus]

Had my first CF failure last week.  Luckily it was a chatty Lubriphonic show in Telluride, and Barrett was there to get it.  Listened to it on my headphones on the P2, pulled it out to transfer it, and it would never open.  Card  will not empty or reformat on my PC or in the P2......wtf???

anyway, i only use DAT if i am covering a festival and have more rooms/stages than i do non-DAT machines (WMOD HDP2 or WMOD 661). So i might break out the m1 next month for the durango meltdown........damn the real time transfer though!

^
Data Recovery links:  http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=117279.0

R-Studio has worked for me in the past.

Good luck!

[yug du nord]

Had my first CF failure last week.  Luckily it was a chatty Lubriphonic show in Telluride, and Barrett was there to get it.  Listened to it on my headphones on the P2, pulled it out to transfer it, and it would never open.  Card  will not empty or reformat on my PC or in the P2......wtf???

anyway, i only use DAT if i am covering a festival and have more rooms/stages than i do non-DAT machines (WMOD HDP2 or WMOD 661). So i might break out the m1 next month for the durango meltdown........damn the real time transfer though!

^
Data Recovery links:  http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=117279.0

R-Studio has worked for me in the past.

Good luck!

HDP2 cf card issues......  I don't like the sound of that.