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Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: biker on December 03, 2016, 11:55:00 AM

Title: old DAT tape with no audio
Post by: biker on December 03, 2016, 11:55:00 AM

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  ;D

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

Title: Re: old DAT tape with no audio
Post by: bombdiggity on December 04, 2016, 03:52:47 AM

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. 

Title: Re: old DAT tape with no audio
Post by: biker on December 05, 2016, 08:23:20 AM

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  :shrug:

Roger

Title: Re: old DAT tape with no audio
Post by: H₂O on December 05, 2016, 10:07:50 AM

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.

Title: Re: old DAT tape with no audio
Post by: datbrad on December 05, 2016, 01:33:32 PM

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!

Title: Re: old DAT tape with no audio
Post by: jefflester on December 05, 2016, 06:42:44 PM

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