the first question is, are all these master recordings? or recordings of artists/shows that have never been in circulation before? if not, are they really worth transfering? i am slowly transfering about the same amount of dats i personally recorded before i went solid state recording. i use a fostex d5 into a box that converts XLR digi out to firewire into final cut pro on a mac. i have used alot of dat machines and the fostex d5 has lasted the longest and is still going strong. plus it has always played ALL tapes. it gets head clogs occaisionally and you have to take the cover off and use alcohol and a tech wipe to clean the heads. if you have a tape that plays back silent, clean the heads. do NOT get a tascam or panasonic. fugazi has been transfering their recordings for the past couple of years and ian used a scsi data unit he got on ebay for cheap. he told me they pb at 4x speed. he also told me that if the unit hits a bad spot in a tape, it will try and resample it. i did not go this method because of the learning curve and i was reluctant to play masters at anything but real time.