I did a bit of shuffling of the power supplies at one point, I thought having them in the reverse order to the boxes they powered might be a good move as the Burndys hang at different distances from the rack and were furthest from the floor like that but found the supercap was better below the 552ps than above. Swap it with the 500ps in your scheme but if the system isn’t as engaging as you’d hoped then swap it again with the 555ps. It’s hard to know what effect the 500ps will have on the DAT so I’m ignoring that aspect.
I have a Sony TCD-D10.
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Here’s a related question - do we regret that DAT never took off as a domestic format? What factors do we think prevented it being as popular as CD?
I remember (in what were very much my hi-fi salad days) there was huge concern over bootlegging, but I don’t remember this ever being resolved so I’m not sure why it failed, outside the pro market.
Mark
here in the States the DAT format soared. While it was used in the pro market, there was a large population who used it for “bootlegging”. In the '90s and early 2000’s II traveled the country recording live concerts using a DAT, along with high quality microphones (Schoeps), a/d converters (Apogee), and preamps (Lunatec). The rig, along with batteries and cables, was very cumbersome.
I think DAT died off due to more efficient storage mediums, like CF cards, hard drives, etc. The DATape itself was very reliable, but the machines did not have long lifespan. I own Tascam DA-20 mkII (home), Tascam DA-P1 (portable), Sony D-8 (portable) and Sony DTX-10 (in dash car). Every one of my machines required maintenance and refurbishing.
Listening to my tapes through this Naim | Focal system is blowing me away. I’m so glad I kept my DATs.
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I have still somewhere a portable DCC Walkman recorder. I was recording live concerts with it in the late 80’s. The sound was quite good. But I preferred at that time the Sony WD6 . A great machine !
Classic DAT machine, very popular in studios thanks to intersection of cost and reliability. Mine is still going strong and has never needed attention, while the consumer Aiwa deck I also have is now awaiting sale for spares or repair!
DAT as a format never had time to be properly established even in pro use as it was quite quickly superceded by advances in home computing and CD writers. Cost and convenience, as ever.
Really? DAT was commercially available by 1986/7, but direct-to-disc recording and CD burning didn’t become affordable even in mid-range studios until the mid/late-90s. That left a good ten years for DAT to have established itself, and CD managed to pretty much dominate the market within about ten years.
I wonder if it was the lack of pre-recorded DATs in the shops that stopped it becoming more popular? Rather like it was with VHS v. Betamax or (to a lesser extent) DCC v. Minidisc.
Mark
A number of issues worked against DAT; for sure the lack of pre-recorded tapes was a problem. But there was also a good deal of confusion about SCMS (copy protection). And being tape, it lacked the navigation speed of CD. Reported issues with tape longevity and digital drop outs probably didn’t help either. And there also seemed to be issues with some tapes recorded on one machine sometimes not working so well in other machines. Add in high tape cost and also the complexity of the machine mechanics (think miniature VCR), which mean’t it was impossible to develop a truly inexpensive budget machine, and it’s fate was sealed. However, it proved relatively popular in pro use, and quite a number of recordings were originally mastered on DAT.
The convenience of Minidisc rather overshadowed DAT, being particularly popular in Japan, whereas in the UK, while Minidisc recorders did make some modest impact, cassette was still the overwhelming home recording medium of choice right up to the birth of CD-R.
Unfortunately, on top of all the other possible issues above, for the audiophile community, what prevented DAT getting much traction was that it just didn’t sound quite as good as it promised. Many machines tended to have a rather flat and sometimes brittle sound reminiscent of early CD at its worst. Things did improve, particularly with high oversampling Hi-DAT, but by then it was too late for commercial success.
I have Tascam and Sony DAT that I occasionally use - but not really that much these days… The Tascam works well (the Sony needs repairing) and its upto 48/16 SPDIF output is good to feed into modern DACs - and it effectively sounds as good as most digital source at the same rate - true the inbuilt DAC in the Tascam is nothing special - but I never did use it.
Hi Ebor. Just seen this topic. I have a Tascam DA-20 Mk II and a Tascam DA-30 Mk II running into my SuperUniti. The DA-20 is used for taping long concerts and operas from Radio 3 (via the SU’s digital out).
I have a Target stand and the DA-20 sits comfortable on the bottom shelf. The SU is in the middle. The DA-30 sits in another rack on the other side of the living-room.
Fascinating - thanks for the details. I was a huge analogue taping fan back in the day, but couldn’t afford a DAT deck. That boat’s pretty much sailed now, but I’m agog to know what it’s like for those who got one and still use it.
Mark
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