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)."

Comments

I've recently done the research

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm a long time 'dat-head' (from back in the early 90's). and lately I've heard of an attempt, using a linux-based iPaq, to create a pda-based digital spdif bit-for-bit accurate digital audio recorder. with the goal of making DAT obsolete.

DAT is far from the idea medium. the infamous 'buzzsaw' diginoise from dirty or misaligned heads, from using thinner 90meter tapes instead of the more standard thickness 60meter ones, etc, etc. getting bit-accurate results from DAT is not due to the spdif side of things, its purely the physics of the high rpm tape head drum and the cheapness in the manufacture of something that needs a very high level of precision. and of course you also have to do regular maintenance on the system to keep it clean and aligned.

if you can take the tape part out of DAT, it would be fine. oh, and extend it from 2 hours to something much longer (with no 'tape flips').

the project page that I found has a pda sized expansion card that allows you to import and export digital audio via the spdif protocol. if this system works (I've not personally seen it yet), it could mean that we can finally take the physical problems of the DAT drive out of the live recording loop.

suppose you have a wireless card as your 'storage' (think remote nfs) device. you can go to shows and capture a live digital feed (if you're lucky enough to know the soundboard guy) then remotely transmit the data via nfs/802.11 to your fileserver in your car, in the parking lot. running on the car battery, for reliability. sounds pretty darn cool to me..

I think the card that the core-sound device was based on is the VxPocket, which you can buy today and will work on laptops. so if you don't -need- a pda sized recorder, you can bring a laptop (and 80gig drives are currently available for 2.5" drives) and capture that spdif stream directly to local storage.

finally, it looks like there is hope for live recording enthusiasts, with hard-disk based reliability (hey, compared to tape, HD is heaven).