I have a Sony PCM-M1 and I love it. I used to have a Tascam DA-P1, which, while being the best quality portable DAT on the market, was just way too bulky for my uses (I've been recording indie rock shows for 3 years now). The DA-P1 is about the size of a playstation 1, while the M1 is smaller than your average cassette walkman. Add to that some quality mic's (core-sound or what i use, sound professionals), and you can churn out really nice quality live recordings, without having to hook up to the soundboard (i prefer audience recordings to soundboard anyways, they don't sound so produced). I also use a Python DDS drive which allows me to transfer my recordings straight to wav from the DAT at 2.2x, 100% digitally. You can't do that with minidisc.
I don't think minidisc will ever replace DAT, for people who are willing to spend the extra money. The 2 things that made me choose DAT over MD are the fact that even at the baseline of 80 minutes, there is some compression, as well as the 80 minute limit is not long enough for some shows(you can record for longer but the compression is even higher).
As has been stated above, DAT's are relatively cheap when bought online, especially when you consider how often they will need to be used (I go to alot of shows but only go through about 20 tapes every 6+ months). Plus, there's far less chance of data corruption than if you were to record to a hard drive (even if you transferred to CD).
I don't see giving up DAT in favor of a hard drive solution any time soon, DAT is tried and true, and hard drive recording is still in it's infancy.
well, if someone wanted to have a stable bittorrent site that didn't have to bow to legal pressures to stop. torrentse.cx really shut down because the colocation facility pulled the plug after the cease & desist - the cease & desist was just for one musical artist (BT), and the admin removed the albums from it right away(as per the request - they stated once that was done they wouldn't be seeking any legal action), but the colocation facility obviously didn't wanna get in the middle of anything. so this is just going to keep happening
DVDShrink is the best at making backups of dvd9's (to dvd5 aka dvd+/-r) of what I've used. I haven't used DVD2One but if you don't feel like paying for it (or downloading a crack), dvdshrink is the way to go. It usually takes less than an hour to convert an entire dvd-9 (say 7gb or so) to a 4.3gb dvd-r. Then just burn with nero (as a UDF 1.02 DVD-R) and voila, there's your copy. The 1.02 part of UDF is important, as it provides the most backward compatibility with older players.
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I don't think minidisc will ever replace DAT, for people who are willing to spend the extra money. The 2 things that made me choose DAT over MD are the fact that even at the baseline of 80 minutes, there is some compression, as well as the 80 minute limit is not long enough for some shows(you can record for longer but the compression is even higher). As has been stated above, DAT's are relatively cheap when bought online, especially when you consider how often they will need to be used (I go to alot of shows but only go through about 20 tapes every 6+ months). Plus, there's far less chance of data corruption than if you were to record to a hard drive (even if you transferred to CD).
I don't see giving up DAT in favor of a hard drive solution any time soon, DAT is tried and true, and hard drive recording is still in it's infancy.
well, if someone wanted to have a stable bittorrent site that didn't have to bow to legal pressures to stop. torrentse.cx really shut down because the colocation facility pulled the plug after the cease & desist - the cease & desist was just for one musical artist (BT), and the admin removed the albums from it right away(as per the request - they stated once that was done they wouldn't be seeking any legal action), but the colocation facility obviously didn't wanna get in the middle of anything. so this is just going to keep happening
DVDShrink is the best at making backups of dvd9's (to dvd5 aka dvd+/-r) of what I've used. I haven't used DVD2One but if you don't feel like paying for it (or downloading a crack), dvdshrink is the way to go. It usually takes less than an hour to convert an entire dvd-9 (say 7gb or so) to a 4.3gb dvd-r. Then just burn with nero (as a UDF 1.02 DVD-R) and voila, there's your copy. The 1.02 part of UDF is important, as it provides the most backward compatibility with older players.