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Are DATs Still Worth Buying?
Anonymous Coward asks: "DATs are currently the standard for recording legal concerts like Phish and the Grateful Dead. However, they're absurdly expensive even on eBay and are no longer being developed actively by any companies. Are there any alternatives that are more cost effective than DATs (Sony has a D100 out for 700 USD) and maintain the same quality? (DATs can sample up to 48kHz)."
If you absolutely MUST have 48kHz sampling rate then i don't know. If you're just going to be recording Phish and Greatful Dead concerts then all you need is a MiniDisc recorder. MD has pretty much taken over the DAT market.
I'll have to see if it can record at 48KHz, since I've only used it at 44.1KHz (CD sample rates). Since it stores at least 20G of data, uses USB or firewire, optical/line-in, dual replaceable batteries, etc., it is great for recording shows.
Minidiscs are certainly cheaper, but they can only hold a little more than an hour and if they screw up during the 'finalization step', the recording is toast - I don't have one but I know of some people who have had this happen. Also for the non-compressed audio purists, it's a no-no since it employs a lossy data compression scheme to store the music on the disc.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Harddisks are the cheapest way to store just about any kind of data these days. Alesis (alesis.com), Mackie (mackie.com), Tascam (tascam.com) and many others sell dedicated recorders that take removable harddisks. Unfortunately all the examples of these I know of are large multitrack rackmount beasts, which is maby not what you're looking for. I would try searching google for harddisk recorders though.
Another option you might consider is using a notebook computer. M-Audio (midiman.com) and Digidesign (digidesign.com) both sell relatively small USB audio interfaces that are better than any laptopss built-in sound. Mark of the Unicorn (motu.com), Presonus (presonus.com) and Echo Audio (echoaudio.com) all sell bulkier-but-nice firewire and pcmcia interfaces.
If you want something that you can carry around in your pocket then minidisc is probably the way to go.
Heh! I have yet to meet anyone that can truely hear the difference between 44.1 and 48 either. These were choosen primarily because they were hard to dither cleanly to each other back in the early days of digital. It pretty much ensured that the average person couldn't afford the high end equipment to convert 44.1 digital recordings to a perfect digital copy...this was a way they thought to force the consumer into introducing an analogue stage which would kill the whole idea of wanting digital because it wasn't pure any more. yeah -- they REALLY predicted what folks wanted out of their digital mediums :-)
:-)
These days, its easy to find high end software that can do clean dithering between these formats with a variety of psychoacoustic models that will predict what one can hear and can't hear and dither accordingly. Few people can hear anything in this process..and a lot of mastering engineers will listen to the same thing over and over encoded a few different ways trying to decide whats better -- when all in all, its generally a coin flip anyways...its getting that good.
Besides, 44.1 to 48khz is the size of 2 semitones of extra audio information past the range of human hearing anyways.
What do ya get from equipment that is 48Khz? Generally its not built for consumer types. This means more exacting standards that are built into it. Do ya normally get better sound...hell yeah...but its not because of the sampling rates...its because ya get what ya pay for most times...as joto says, go for the expensive equipment but keep it in 44.1 and ya won't have to deal with that crap.
96Khz may give you better recordings, but there are a LOT of reasons why it probably won't -- especially from consumer cards (which are generally 2 clocked sync'd 48khz chips as opposed to one 96khz one...giving DOUBLE the problems you would have had at a lower end...but we are only after specs these days aren't we).
As for the difference between 24 and 16 -- concert stuff? Thats a hard choice...if you are just going to throw it on the internet...16 IS the right choice as Joto says. I would still argue 24 bit because it gives you far greater headroom to deal with before clipping. it could mean the difference between a bad take and one thats easily salvagable. Its not like a recording studio where you can ask these guys to start over again. As before, the dithering software can make almost an invisible transformation from one to the other these says...I have several pieces of software in this range that companies have given me...though most are based on the POW-r algs and thus generally the same as I have built into my DAW...I wouldn't know what to suggest. They all seem to work pretty well these days and engineers all fight over which ones are better (I'm sure you could take the same product and change the name and GUI on it and folks will SWEAR they can absolutely hear the difference).
To me, 44.1 / 24 bit is perfect...I still throw my clients in at 96Khz and I'll probably begrudgingly pick up a 192 card here soon if only so I don't have to hear arguement from idiots that think they are audiophiles telling me that they KNOW they can hear the difference (and STILL record at 96Khz
The Neuros with firmware 1.40 (I'm using 1.40A, which is 1.40 with the fully optimized Vorbis decoder which rocks because now I can listen to my 160kbps ABR Vorbis files without clicks over MyFi [in 1.40, they skipped to the point of being unlistenable over MyFi, but only skipped in really complicated sections of songs through the headphone out]...but I'm getting a bit off topic now). Anyway, support for recording to wav files was added in firmware 1.40, with the option of recording 8kHz/8-bit, or 44.1kHz/16-bit or 48kHz/16-bit. 48kHz/16-bit is DAT quality, and the Neuros has a line-in jack so you should be able to hook up most external mics to it (at least with a preamp because it doesn't have a +20dB signal boost; of course I assume that bootleggers don't use crappy unpowered mics that have a maximum signal level of -20 dB instead of 0 dB).
The only problem with recording is that the unit's built in mic picks up a low pitched "hum," which I assume is electrical noise and the noise of the hard drive spinning when it needs to dump the recorded data from where it caches it (I'm not sure if it just caches in RAM or if it writes to the built in flash and then copies over the hd; I think it writes to flash because the hd only spun up once every ten minutes or so when I was recording for about an hour in 44.1kHz/16-bit mode).
The recording stuff has a nice level stereo level meter but no editing tools (yet), so it isn't quite as nice to use as many recorders, but Digital Innovations seems to be responsive to user requests for features (Ogg Vorbis support, scheduled radio recording, equalization, etc.) so maybe there will be a few simple editing tools added eventually (I'm thinking stuff like being able to hit one of the present buttons to make a mark and then hitting the menu button to do something like delete everything between markers or normalize it, etc.). Still, it works great for just recording stuff and then copying it to a computer for editing.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
The Korg Pandora PXR4.
Alex.
DATs are expensive? Really? I usually end up paying around $2 a pop for 60 meter DDS (120 minutes in 44.1/48khz mode, 240 minutes in 32khz) and $2.60 a pop for 90 meter DDS (180min , 360 min) tapes. Check American Digital and Masterpiece AV. If you go down to your CompUSA or Micro Center, sure you're going to pay $10 to $20 for a tape, but that's why you buy online.
I've looked at some of the other alternatives to portable DAT machines, including the mostly open source project Core Sound is pushing, but I'm waiting for it to mature. A 1 gig compact flash card is still over $120 for the most part. That's only about 90 minutes of raw audio. Minidiscs never did it for me. I borrowed one from a friend, and the whole 80 minute capacity issue took me back to the days of flipping over tapes between songs. Do they have discs over 80 minutes for stereo recordings?