DAT's Entertainment - Why Sony's DTC-A6 Was A Great Digital Mixtape Maker 

Another good rif, I love how you bounce off each other.

I've always been curious about DAT but never owned a machine.

R-DAT and I seem to have passed each other by, but as the TR7 got a name-check I'll raise a toast to the blessed memory of Harris Mann (1938-2023).

Sad this format didn't take off in the public. However, it acheived status in recording studios.

'90/'91 I attended a HiFi show in Bolton of all places. Kenwood had an in car DAT installation and it was absolutely fantastic. I was enamoured muchly at such a technological marvel.

The "problems", so to say, with DAT recordings (not copies) were, that on a non-professional level you will almost always lose some of the dynamic resolution because of the necessary headroom you would need to prevent the all-nasty digital limiting distortion when the signal level gets out of range. So, even if the maximum dynamic range runs over 96db, which seems much, but you normally had to let around 10db headroom (-6db/half amplitude means one bit of resolution less). And considering that the lowest resolution bits (the quietest and weakest signals) in digital audio are by far almost a joke with more than 20dB (!) distortion, 16bit dynamic resolution seems to be definitely too low. Professional 16bit recording in those days were like any other studio production done with equalizers, compressors and limiters to overcome this. I even did a lot of mastering in those days with analog tape machines as dithering (low bit noise masking for distortion prevention) and limiting devices before transferring the music to the CD master. CDs then, which have the same resolution with DAT dynamically, were the already properly mastered (or they should have been...) and the dynamic resolution did not suffer from that dilemma. That is why we still use CDs or 16bit/44.1kHz music up until today.

You're like the new Eric and Ernie

Nice machine

Any current even semi-pro digital mastering process includes the equivalent of Super Bit Mapping (i.e. using noise shaping techniques like dithering) when downsampling to 16/44.1 for producing CDs. SBM (and similar trademarked techniques used by other companies) was only relevant when earlier recordings were made at 16/44.1 or indeed at 16/48 while that used an 20/44.1or 48 process properly (which means with added dithering) downsampled to 16/44.1 No digital recordings today are made at 16/anything. A to D conversion is not lossy within the bounds of the frequency response dictated by the sampling rate. You will have to decide between you which is the more appropriate way to copy a high quality analogue source, the cassette deck or some digital AD process. It seems you are in disagreement here. Personally I know what I would choose any time and it is not DAT nor of course the analogue tape.

I had a Sony DAT deck back in the day which I used for off-air concert recordings from Radio 3, with a Tim de Paravinci modded Leak Troughline tuner/valve decoder as the source, and with excellent results. In the end I switched to hard disc recording which became far easier to edit and index, and then burn to CD. In the end I was using a Sony portable recorder and would transfer the files to my PC for editing and burning. Are blank DAT tapes still available, and at what cost?

Mike, have you had any more thoughts about selling me your Exposure V111 super. I'm still interested.

I note there is an A6 recently serviced on ebay right now for £295 if anyone is interested. That seems like a good price. I would be tempted but have bought way too much gear recently and it would tempt divorce.

👍

Is the BX-125 pretty similar to the BX-150?

how many ideas can mike have in a rift episode 😂 dave Sony is pronounced SO KNEE

No!!!! R stands for ROTARY!!!