Topic: DAT repair

[airbladder]

I have a fostex d5, same as a tascam da20, I wanted to dust off to transfer some old tapes.  However, I was getting one or two small dropouts every hour or so of playback.  Thought getting the heads cleaned would do the trick and wanted to avoid shipping costs.  So I found someone local to work on it but I think he normally works on older analog stuff.  It's been months and he can't figure out what's wrong with it.  Now I have been super laid back about the situation but it sounds like he doesn't know what he is doing.  What else could be causing the dropouts?

I was hoping to nurture the relationship because if I am running a bunch of old tape it may be good to get the heads cleaned regularly.

In my dat days I always used Paul at pro digital but I figured other shops should be able to matenance a big deck like this and I can save a few bucks...

Your throughs?

[GLouie]

IMO, one or two small dropouts per hour is actually pretty normal for old DAT playbacks today, depending on factors like age and brand of tape, and transport wear.

If the dropouts always show up at the same place on the tape on repeated playbacks, the tape has likely deteriorated at those spots. The best you can do is to clean the heads (use a DDS/DAT cleaning tape), and try repeated playbacks and see if you get through the dropout areas, even if you have to splice together teeny snippets from different playbacks. Also, see if you can get another DAT player/s to try.

If the dropouts are simply from dirty heads, use the cleaning tape and try again. Ideally, one should be prepared to open the machine and perform a deep transport clean of the heads with video chamois sticks and the entire tape path. The need will come sooner or later with the age of DATs now. I do my own work, and realize it may well be impossible to find skilled DAT repair/maintenance.

You may have to splice together small pieces of re-done playback areas to get your complete program. As a last resort, I've also redigitized the player's analog outputs if they sound better through dropouts.

[airbladder]

The dropouts are not always at the same place on the tape.  I tried using the cleaning tape, it didn't help, and I was afraid to use it too much.  In the past I would transfer the tape twice and spice sources together but that was very time consuming.  Is there any way to find those dropouts without actually listening to the entire recording?  If there was a software solution this would be way easier.   

Is it hard to perform a deep transport clean of the heads?  Is this something that anyone can do or something that should be done by a professional?   

Never thought about taking the analog outs.  I could try D5> (analog)> Minime> R-44.  I was considering this to see if I could make some of my old tapes "sound better" but it never occurred to me that it may get rid of the dropouts.   

Thanks for the info....


 

[H₂O]

I personally would NOT go through the trouble of editing the output using multiple takes - I have never had to do that


Are all the tapes exhibiting this behavior?  If so I'd get a new deck ala pcm-r500 or PCM-7040 - the d5 was a good deck in the day but does not have the error handling capabilities of the sony's I just mentioned


You can pick up an r500 for under $100 and the 7040 under $150 - the 7040 is the BEST deck for playing back old tapes period




The 7040 does not support LP mode (i.e. 32khz 12bit)

[airbladder]

I am not sure if all tapes are having this problem.  It's been a while since i used the deck, because of the random drop outs I wanted to get it 'fixed' before I ran any more tape.  It's still being 'repaired' so I don't have it in my possession to do any testing.  I never got around to getting it 'fixed' until I found this place locally to bring it to.  My memory tells me that it was just about every tape.  But if I ran the tape twice I wouldn't get dropouts at the same time, that I why I figured it was the deck.   

I have considered just picking up another deck rather than messing with this one, that is a good suggestion. 
 

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I would get my deck back asap.  You sent it out for cleaning, and it sounds like the guy decided to "fix it".

For these transfers, I think I would acquire a computer type DAT drive.  They are obsolete and inexpensive. With that you should be able to get better error statistics when you do transfers.  But YMMV, because I've never had to transfer old audio DATs.

[H₂O]

I was going to mention the computer option but it can be tricky - the best setup is to use DAT2WAV which is now free

To do this you need the following:
1 working sony sdt-9000 drive
1 DAT2WAV 1.2 beta
1 Adaptec SCSI adapter and 50 pin cable
1 windows xp machine - although dat2wav runs on newer versions I haven't found an ASPI stack that works with it
1 Adaptec ASPI software - free off the Adaptec website
1 12.2 firmware patch for the SDT 9000


Has anyone found an ASPI stack that works with DAT2WAV on win 7?

DAT2WAV is the better solution then other xfer software in that it will do some error correction
The Sony SDT drives read tapes better then the older Seagate/Connor/Archive drives do

[GLouie]

If the dropouts are generally random, the heads are probably just getting clogged with debris after running for a while, which will vary greatly depending on the tape. If you seek a complete copy of a long program, I think it's far easier to replay the dropout areas, get a good playback of those areas, and splice them back into the main file. What's the alternative, keep playing the whole hour until it doesn't dropout somewhere? Making splices is a good skill if you are going to do such work, and it's only a couple per hour. The machine is probably fine, but it may have head, wear, poor error correction, or debris in the guides or transport that move around during use.

Having other machines to try is highly recommended. I use cleaning tapes only as a quick cleaning measure when I start to hear a few small dropouts and need to finish something. Sometimes, only a deep transport cleaning will fix things, such a a tape that completely clogs heads and a cleaning tape does nothing. I can't recommend it without careful training and proper tools. I'm doing this at work (university music school), and have about 6 players to call upon, and in the last 3 years have done about 1,000 DAT transfers dating from 1989. I'm not willing to experiment with the computer drive method, but the ordinary method does take a lot of time to do right.

[airbladder]

Got the deck back today.  It cost 60 to get it cleaned.  Running some tape through it now.  Hopefully a good cleaning did the trick.