I guess I should sell all my gear and go back to running a dat deck again
Does your current rig offer any convenience benefits over DAT? Audio quality is one part of recording gear but is far from the totality, isn't it?
If you create carefully level matched double-blind comparisons of your DAT capture and your current rig can you tell the difference? I've done this with various recording systems and rejected those that didn't measure up in objective comparisons.
Are you aware of how powerfully bias effects impact what we humans "hear?" Are you aware of the years of testing that have demonstrated the uselessness of sighted comparisons?
Do you use little pyramids to keep your speaker cables off the floor? If not, why not, since David Gilmour did. Surely you wouldn't question the validity of his testimonial, would you?
Are you _really_ interested in knowing the impact of the gear you buy, or are you simply working to have the coolest sig? It's not a snap to do these comparisons well, but the results can really change the way one thinks about audio gear.
Fran