Topic: A thousand DATs?

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I have a friend with a thousand DATs.  Maybe it is only 500, but probably closer to a thousand.  They need to be transferred.  Many of them are probably lone sources.

How do you get a handle on that?    Start a company and get an intern?

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

I could help with some...  Does your friend have a list??? 

Terry

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I don't think there is a proper list.  Quite a few were probably recorded with recording permission but not distribution.

I asked him a while ago if he's made any transfer progress and he just sighed.. I think he's just not into it.  It's off the radar.

I wonder how many others are in this situation?  Maybe their DAT drive is even broken.  I wonder how long those tapes have before bit-rot and physical degradation become major factors?

[hi and lo]

I don't think there is any shortage of working DAT decks; it's really finding new blanks that is a challenge.

Plenty of folks around here would probably be happy to help out with transfers, including myself. The clock is definitely ticking on tape degradation.

[69mako]

I would gladly help out too.  I have a DA20 mkII that needs some use again.  There are plenty of us around willing to lend a helping hand.

Mako

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

I don't think there is a proper list.  Quite a few were probably recorded with recording permission but not distribution.

I asked him a while ago if he's made any transfer progress and he just sighed.. I think he's just not into it.  It's off the radar.

I wonder how many others are in this situation?  Maybe their DAT drive is even broken.  I wonder how long those tapes have before bit-rot and physical degradation become major factors?

Well, tell him I would be happy to do any of his Phish or related material... 

Terry

[sunset]

  I've been transferring hundreds of DAT's the last few months finally, most of them were about 8 -18 years old. I sent my deck in before hand for a check up, it functioned fine. I had good luck for the most part, some broken tapes. I noticed the Maxell DAT's I used like to break(luckily I bought mostly Sony), maybe it was a bad batch. Anyone have any tips or tricks on repairing broken DAT's? I've taped together some without too much trouble, but needed someone to help get it together. Good luck with the transfers.

[bhoy]

I'm in the same situation.  It's just overwhelming overload!  I have a Sony R500 and a Marantz PMD661.  For preservation sake only, I just need to start transferring, and then saving off the raw wav file.  Indexing tracks can happen later.

I don't even want to think of the 1000's of analogs!

Bill

[ilduclo]

I'd be possibly interested in helping depending on the material, my deck was just serviced.

[greenone]

I'm willing to chip in too.

First step is to at least organize them, as good a list as you can put together. You might get people willing to just take a grab bag, but it's better to have some motivation - folks like to work on what they know. You'll get a better transfer and better documentation that way.

Then break 'em up into batches, probably by band. Maybe batches of 10-20. Once you see what folks are interested in, have 'em do maybe 2/3 what they want, and 1/3 other stuff, or half and half. That way you don't have stuff that just sits and rots because people aren't willing to take it on.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

In the 90's, I had a SCSI DAT drive.  That would be a far better way to do transfers than a DAT deck that needs to send the digi out via SPDIF or similar.  I think it is in storage somewhere.  Heck, I might have loaned it to my friend years ago, but I don't think so.

The other neat thing about the scsi drive was that it can give you statistics about retries, errors, etc.  That is invaluable in knowing how good the xfer is.

If this thread can help get the ball rolling with getting some of these old tapes transferred for protection, than that is a very good thing.  I figure quite a few folks have moved on from DAT and just don't want to deal with them anymore.

A lot of folks probably feel the same way about their old analog masters.

[fleish]

I had a bunch of Keller Williams DAT's shipped to me ~6 years ago. I transferred some of them, but since then my DAT deck went missing. If anyone here wanted to take those on let me know.

[hi and lo]

In the 90's, I had a SCSI DAT drive.  That would be a far better way to do transfers than a DAT deck that needs to send the digi out via SPDIF or similar.  I think it is in storage somewhere.  Heck, I might have loaned it to my friend years ago, but I don't think so.

The other neat thing about the scsi drive was that it can give you statistics about retries, errors, etc.  That is invaluable in knowing how good the xfer is.

Yeah... Data drives that could read audio DATs were really a step above (2x speed, iirc), but you'll probably need a machine with windows 98 for the drivers to work. I'm not sure they ever worked with XP, but if they do, that's certainly a better option.

But whether you're using an audio DAT deck or a data drive, the key as others point is simply organization and having a good setup to capture the raw data. Getting through the transfer process is most important; tracking and editing can come after the fact. For me, it was always an issue of tying up main computer while the transfer is going, but there are plenty of cheaper portables now with SPIDF that you don't need a computer at all.

[H₂O]

I have 10-15 audio capiable dds drives and 1 dedicated xfering laptop running xp

This works in most cases but occasionally I still need to use my PCM 7040, a8, or sv4100 to do some tapes

The dds drives are definitely the way to go if you got em

[F.O.Bean]

I feel your pain bro. I have about 400 or so that are lone sources and NEED to be xferred