i feel sorry for anybody who is going to get that "hardcore" on DAT that they feel the need to build their own DAT players/recorders for mere 16bit/44.1kHz recordings that can't compare to the latest digital recorders. Who really would want to hold onto that piece of digital recording technology on a tape medium?
personally I don't think there will be such a person for DAT like there are for ATR's for all the reasons I stated in my earlier post. Why would you want to when 24bit/88.2-192kHz recording is getting cheaper every 6months?
remember it all boils down to "how it sounds". Analog Tape REcording is still alive because MANY engineers and producers think it sounds better. I don't think anyone is going to defend DAT recording in the same way with respect to its successing technology. And anybody that does, should have their ears checked
the only reason DAT might stick around is for playback? But why? especially when you can transfer the 1s and 0s off of a tape medium to a computer?
not trying to be an ass, it just doesn't make any sense to me that DAT's will be around forever, like ATR's and analog tape will be.