DAT's All Folks - Any DAT decks left?

August 5, 2005 6:41 AM

Audiofilter: with amazing speed, Digital Audio Tape (DAT) has become a legacy format. In the archiving community, talk is that no major company is actually producing a component level DAT deck anymore, and the portables are soon to disappear as well. Anyone know differently, or know of a retailer still sitting on a significant stock of (new) component audio DAT decks? Lots of linguists, musicians, and ethnographers are suddenly desperate to score one.

Any good advice received here will be promptly circulated to the mailing lists of the archiving community, so here's a chance to help out humanity!

posted by realcountrymusic to technology (12 comments total)

I've heard bad things about Sony DAT recorders and players, but Amazon has a couple vendors listed for one.
posted by Rothko at 7:01 AM on August 5, 2005

Oops, you said deck. Sorry. I thought Marantz and HHB might still sell theirs but apparently not.
posted by Rothko at 7:02 AM on August 5, 2005

Nope, as far as i can tell Marantz and HHB are out of the business, making only flash/HD recorders now. Fostex also appears to have dropped the D15, their last DAT (I just bought what I think was the last new D15 available in the US). Sony still claims to make a $12K production unit, but no supplier actually has one, and that's above the budget of most archives for a legacy technology. Thanks for checking though.
posted by realcountrymusic at 7:07 AM on August 5, 2005

Try here? They have a mailing list where it might also be worth asking.
posted by fire&wings at 7:18 AM on August 5, 2005

Why not call TASCAM and ask on whom they dumped their stock?
posted by Kwantsar at 8:01 AM on August 5, 2005

oh really? Guess I'll sit on my DA20 a little longer. just as I thought DAT decks couldn't get any cheaper.

sweeeeeet.

still, I'm sure you could get one with low use on the heads from Ebay -- hell, DAT portables were down to something like $300 last I checked, with decks going for around $200 or so. I was thinking about selling my DA20 until I realized I could only get about $150 or so for it, and at that price point I decided I'd just rather be able to play my DAT tapes.
posted by fishfucker at 10:06 AM on August 5, 2005

It's probably worth checking around the live concert recording community.

Sonic Sense should have some.
ProDigital should as well.
Terrapin Tapes claims to have a selection.
American Digital says they have some My First Sony's.

It's probably also worth asking on mailing lists such as DAT-Heads, where many tapers are ditching their DATs in favor of computers.
posted by mosch at 10:54 AM on August 5, 2005

The used decks are useful to know about -- I've found plenty on eBay etc. Unfortunately, for those of us who work in business and university environments,, buying used is a hassle and often impossible. ("Approved vendors" and all that.)
Yes, if you have a DAT deck in good shape, hang on to it. Converting DAT tapes might turn into a profitable side business in a couple of years.
Thanks everyone.
posted by realcountrymusic at 3:02 PM on August 5, 2005

"Converting DAT tapes might turn into a profitable side business in a couple of years."

I'd say the time for that business has long passed as well. If you haven't archived those tapes already, I would consider getting it done asap.
posted by mischief at 3:17 PM on August 5, 2005

If you haven't archived those tapes already, I would consider getting it done asap.

Oh, I am deep into the process, mischief. But I run an academic music archive, and our holdings arrive in the form, mostly, of particular field researchers' personal recordings (musical, though there are similar operations in linguistics, folklore, journalism/media, and field biological acoustics as well). Most serious field recordists in my area of academia who have worked in the last decade have relied on DAT -- finicky as it has been. But most of them are minimally tech geeks, and lots have not continued to record into their careers -- most of us do the serious fieldwork thing in grad school, and rarely get fully back to it. As a result, many of my own generation of colleagues (whose recordings will someday come to archives like the one I manage) have not paid attention to changes in audio as closely as people directly involved in music or film/broadcast production. To dozens of my colleagues, to whom I snapped a heads up email about this situation last week, it is a total shock to learn the format is almost dead. Many have only their own field recorders (typically Sony D8s or PCMM1s, sometimes better than that) as playback hardware, and lack the proprietary digital coax cable it would take to run the tape right into a computer without redigitizing it via analog. Yet their recordings are often precious documents of vanishing musics and languages, or very far flung cultures. You see my dilemma: not only do I, as an archivist, have to keep my OWN holdings transferred to each emergent storage standard as it comes online, but I have to anticipate receiving materials in dying formats for years to come. This means backing up hardware -- an extra copy or two of every deck you might use for some project at some point in the future. There are limits of course, but DAT is important enough in my area of the universe that I need as many extra decks as I can afford. Or spreading the load by letting my colleagues know they have to make conversions now, while there's still hardware around, and suggesting they invest in better hardware now. It's like kicking in compression before you get peaked out.

Anyway, thanks all, and mosch especially for some great links. Among other things, Terrapin seems like just the place to get my crustier DAT decks serviced. Sorry to ramble.
posted by realcountrymusic at 8:41 PM on August 5, 2005

No need to apologize. That's good stuff.

Lacking a source for new decks, have you considered organizing a formal network that tracks who has what equipment?
posted by mischief at 8:57 AM on August 6, 2005

considered organizing a formal network that tracks who has what equipment?

No, and that is a fantastic idea, thank you.
posted by realcountrymusic at 4:33 PM on August 6, 2005