I saw a guy running a sony D5 cassette deck not too long ago. Some guys have a rig that works for them and see no point in upgrading to new technology even if it would somehow make the process of recording somehow easier. One of the reasons I like taping from the section for GD related bands (phil, ratdog, further, etc) is that you are likely to run into someone with some really cool old school gear that he's been running for 15-20 years. I think that stuff is cool and depending on the rig it's only marginally worse technically than the $10k modern rig.
That post made my whole day.
I used to run into those guys often. They were the ones I always wanted to hang in the Van with after the show. They'd drool all over your itty bitty setup while you'd do the same with their Big Cassette deck.
Wasn't long before I became that guy, looking at all the MiniMe's and 722s and stuff...
I'll come up with an excuse for still running DAT soon, I promise.
Wait:
I'm waiting for a hand-held $200, 4-channel machine, with internal mics, line-in, XLR-in with phantom, and 16/24-bit RCA SPDIF in. Might be a while.......
There it is right there!
I haven't had a lot of cash to spread around on gear, and the gear has been changing pretty quickly. 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.
I've been reading up on all the machine choices, and they are ROUGH. Until I took the time to find this board, I'd never really found as much information as I needed to suss out the trail and error stuff between the different flash-based recorders.
It's a huge step and a lot of research. Hell, I just picked up some new mics I'm going to have to learn to work, and that's also a giant chore. And that's just mics!
Really, what capnhook describes above is exactly what i want.
I want what i want without having to compromise, as I've already done that when I started taping on DAT instead of cassette. (nd there are still people who will tell you cassettes are better)
If I could have timecode on every machine made, then I'd be happy, but right now, to get what I get out of my DAT rig, I'd need to buy an M10 and a PMD661 and a lot of flash cards.
OR I could archive onto DVDs or hard discs, but, well, nothing is a nice as those little tape boxes, and nothing more recent is proven to last as long.
So, yeah, I guess I WOULD switch to compact flash tomorrow if I had about $2000 and a few weeks to learn the new stuff. Really comes down to the $. I can buy $170 of tapes and and then I'm only out the cost of tickets and drinks and I KNOW I'll get good tapes.
Does that answer anything?
It certainly doesn't answer where to find 60M DAT tapes.
;-)