Worthless? Debatable. If memory serves it chiefly failed because the RIAA got in a panic about the ability to make exact copies and fought the format tooth and toenail.

For a time, DAT was used as a professional recording medium. There was nothing else to mix to or back up in a digital format. It definitely had its time and was not a complete failure.

you might be interested in the Techmoan youtube channel. He covered DAT in 'Digital Audio Tape: The one DAT got away'

DAT did not fail. It was wildly used in the broadcast, film and television industry. And DATs were in production for nearly 19 years. That isn't a failure.

DAT was killed by the RIAA, who hamstrung the consumer format with copy protection that made it hard to use. With nobody buying the players, the labels never released much content. Professionals and those taping original content had no such issues, which is why it became popular with the taping/bootleg community. You could buy a recorder the size of a Walkman. Might still be a few people using them, but solid state recorders are even smaller and more affordable now.

Ditto on the inability to market them successfully due to being cockblocked by the recording industry. No music no DAT.

For semipro use it was perfect for it's time. It upped the quality considerably for DIY musician-run recording sessions. I knew a lot of people who wanted a better format than 4track cassette, but were not in a position to set up a full-on 16-track analog studio. Also the 2-inch tape used in many of those setups seemed so insanely expensive. Protools and CDRs made it obsolete pretty quickly but a lot of the changes in music culture between, say 1988 and 1998 (the advent and widespread recognition of "college" rock and hiphop) came about specifically with this format in the background.

Minidisc. Loved that format. My ears couldn’t tell the difference between that and CD. And so portable, great editing and with Text too!

I worked with a DAT deck professionally for maybe 5 years. In that time the deck broke down 3 times (ruining tapes in the process) and required expensive repairs. When we got ProTools that was the end of DAT use as a mastering/archiving tool. On the other hand our Tascam reel to reel machine was rock solid for years and years.

My old band used to record some of our live shows onto a Sony DAT machine in the mid 90’s or so. I’ve got no idea where any of em are. lol One again, I really dig the extra edits with old pics, etc. you’ve been adding to your vids, Steve. Thanks for taking the time.

Great video Steve. Love being reminded of forgotten formats. So much work was put into each.

I had DAT - for home studio mastering and live digital recording, i thought it was quite popular in this scenario, and the only real option for quality recording on a budget at the time(?) various aspects were unreliable/clunky though, and for convienence and ease of operation minidisc was so much better, and overall would have been a way better option for above use imo, with quality plenty 'good enough'.

Steve I am a keen follower to your channel but this one is a bit off. Maybe first signs of a fading memory? Contrary to being useless, there was a very good justification for DAT: it was a linear Bit-by-bit recording format following the CD recording standard without the use of data compression. So at the time it was THE ONLY WAY to make 1:1 digital copies of CDs using SPDIF or coaxial connection. Now, what is bad about that? When the alternative for most of us was analogue compact cassettes (that later served as the base format for the DCC)? In my opinion DAT failed mainly because of (1) the clumsy access a linear recording format had (no random access like a disc) and (2) due to the generally high prices which came down to the complicated cassette deck and rotating head drum. Forget about copy protection in the form of Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) cause there were devices that were able to filter that out of the stream. If memory serves me right, DAT tapes cannot be prerecorded at the high speeds of a compact cassette so they received not much attention of the record industry either. After all, if you could buy CDs with bit-by-bit the exact same information, at a fraction of the price, including random access, why would you get recordings on DAT? Sony by the way produced in-car decks with DAT, I had one of these. The ultimate best source you were able to get in your car as CD changers skipped beats all the time due to their sensivity towards vibration - until data buffer systems were brought to the market. So, there was still room for a mass market digital recording format. Philips was the brain behind DCC as they held license rights for the compact cassette format. DCC used heavy and lossy data compression to fit 16 bit recordings onto the narrow tape, using stationary heads. Furthermore it was prone to drop outs due to tiny damages of the often preused magnetic tape which required a high degree of data correction capability which in turn impacted sound quality. DCC of course wasn't a random access format either, so Sony wanted to beat them with the MiniDisc. Being a magneto optical format, it has extremely high data safety, higher actually than CD-RWs. MiniDiscs featured random access, however the first gen of ATRAC sound compression actually produced an even worse result than DCC. Reviewers wrote badly about MiniDiscs as a crap format that audiophiles would not be able to use. At the same time, MP3 was much worse than both of these formats combined but we all know what happened with the iPod. It also reminds us of the review-snobs that had no imagination for people who could well live with compressed music on the move (listened to with gharstly Apple-supplied headphones). Narrow minded journalists around the Globe compared compressed formats with uncompressed CDs and all they came up with were warnings of the End of the World. They actually only let DAT pass as an uncompressed format. Dear Steve, you must have been in the business back then, weren't you probably the same?

I thought I was looking at Larry Fine in that vintage pic

Before digital formats, I used a BIC T-4M Dual Speed (analog) Cassette Recorder. I recorded many concerts and recitals with it using a pair of old, but fine, dynamic AKG microphones. On One live concert I recorded about 1986, particularly stood out as a quality recording. I recorded it at 3 3/4 ips which is double the normal cassette speed so quality was enhanced as a result. A friend who happened to be a recording engineer at the time listened to the master I recorded and in his opinion it was of a high quality worthy of a studio master level. Later, I upgraded to digital with one of the Tascam Digital Recorders with a pair of large diaphragm MXL Cardioid Condenser Microphones. Although not quite the most exotic or expensive of setups, I made countless live recordings in digital media and it was a very useful set of tools for my applications at that time. Yes, I agree with previous comments about the RIAAs interventions to stymie the development of digital media. The early digital industry suffered growing pains and the earliest of formats failed to be commercially viable as a result.

That was a decent format. I still (sometimes) make backup copies of my LPs on a Sony DTC-1000ES deck and I am generally pleased with the sound reproduction this machine is capable of. Plus the unit itself is a fine piece of engineering.

Minidisc still has a place in my system. Rather than wearing that vinyl down with repeated plays, record it to minidisc and let it play back that same warm sound you fed it. Unlike the more popular CD-R it doesn't eventually become unreadable. Launched in 1992 to total apathy, it was relaunched in 1997 and did moderately well in the UK and Europe. Shame the US did not take to it, because it was a very good contender for replacing ye olde cassette.

Good video, Steve. I was a Sony Mini Disc man myself.............great format, still use it today!

One of my friends had a DAT recorder. I could never afford such things. I'm more interested in that photo of the young Mr. Guttenberg. Very cool! Edit: No homo.

Loved my DAT. Had a deck in my car even. Heat and CDR killed the live affair.

CD's allowed us to press a skip button. Nobody wanted to go back to queuing up a tape after that.

Ah, David Chesky. He's somebody that I went to High School with (Miami Beach Senior High) circa 1972-1973. Met him again at a 20th year reunion.

Some of my fondest memories are from the 90's armed with my Sony D8 and Shure Beta Green cardiod condenser mics recording live Phish, Widespread Panic and countless shows at the GA Theatre in Athens GA like Col Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Karl Denson, etc. then transferring those DATs to cassettes for friends...good stuff.

In the 1970's i worked for JVC and they came out with a format known as Elcaset, a larger higher fidelity analog format.

How in the heck did you find it your apartment is packed!

The reason I had DAT was to record, along with my minidisc recorder, my remixes off the radio. I never knew what time my remixes would air so I would record the entire show, often while I slept. I always used minidisc, but when the batteries died while recording, the TOC doesn’t get written to the disc and it’s basically a coaster. So DAT became my backup. I wish I would have known to use a S-VHS recorder instead of DAT to record those radio shows; this would have saved me a lot of money.

On the UK used market various brands of mini disc recorders are available as are new mini discs. Various radio programmes feature live music performances which are worth recording.

DCC machines only recorded digitally on DCC blanks. The backwards compatibility was that they could play regular analog cassettes, but they couldn’t record analog in any way.

I have a Sony PCM-F1 digital recorder. It uses a standard VCR recorder for the transport. The recordings were generally excellent in sound quality, and didn’t suffer from the transport issues that plagued the DAT. There was also a Technics digital recorder that was an all-in-one unit that used VCR tapes.

I own a couple of Tascam DA-20mk2 recorders that were upgraded by my university for recording *brainwaves*. It sounds very cerebral xD

My friend was a DJ/musician in the mid 90s to early 2000s, and he and his friends used DAT as their studio recording medium. I remember him complaining that the tapes were getting difficult to find. I don't recall anybody using it on a consumer level though.

DAT was used by professionals recording live to two track classical concerts/recording sessions. Unti recently, I have been using the DAT medium as a back up for location recording. When paired with the Mytek Stereo 96, it is very good. The Mytek can dither from 24bit to 16bit in real time. Use world class microphones and microphone preamp, one has a very good two channel setup.

I still have a Philips DCC deck that I purchased from J&R music world. Tapes are near impossible to find any longer and it was only 44.K 12 bit if I remember correctly. when it was introduced in the 90's it seemed like a promising format for the average home user, I dubbed the eagles Hell Freezes over before it was available on CD from stereo VHS and it sounded great.

DAT was used to backup mini-computers. The transport and tapes were the same as audio, but the controller and signal were customized. I was still using Beta-HiFi to record audio at that time.

Could you do a video on the minidisc?

I have a Marantz DCC deck and 20 or so cassettes in mothballs around here somewhere. I mostly used it for making mix tapes and recording radio broadcasts. It had a better DAC than the CD player I owned at the time so I used it as a digital pre-amp, too. I think it was the first piece of "high end" gear I owned. Unfortunately time has not been kind to it. The last time I dug it out and hooked it up it played digital just fine, but analog cassettes sounded horrible, almost like the heads were magnetized. Some day I may dig out again and try to fix it, but for now it remains in storage.

Why no love and forgotten? Big record companies and other organizations freaked out over the idea of easy lossless copying of music and lobbied for the recorders to have so strict copy-control measures as to pretty much kill their usability for the single task regular consumers would have bought into it for: home copying of copy-righted music. Plus the compact cassette already had such a firm hold on the market and was good enough for the vast majority of people so very few were convinced to jump on a another format. It was a very similar fate for Minidisc as well. Too draconian copy-control measures and too restricted, proprietary software and interface devices. And when Sony was finally opening it up and improving its usability for the home consumer, it was already the dawn of the MP3 player era, and it was way too late.

Remember the Elcaset.

The format failed, but most importantly, how did it sound?

Hey Steve. How come DCC & DAT tapes seemed to only have lasted a short Time? :) Any idea? :)

Hello Steve. What do you think about the Alesis ADAT system? Seems to me those were pretty popular back in the day.

Cassettes are making a comeback!

I remember a friend of mine getting a tour of the Linn factory in Scotland. When he returned he said that Linn had told him that DAT was the future of audio.

I used it for recording, Tascam multitracks used them, but the transports jammed, I lost many tapes forever after they got eaten.

I have a Sony DTC-1000, unused in the box. I hope it's worth something, but...??

I remember looking at DAT's during the late 80's. They were very expensive, and I didn't see the need, personally. I had my Onkyo Cassette deck that I recorded my CD's to so I could play them in my car. I was a happy camper with that format and the quality was much better than recording albums. Keep inventing, though! You never know what's going to catch on next!

DAT lived into the early 2000s as a tape backup technology.

i still have my tascam da-20 dat recording in the garage from the days of early 90s home studio recording . they were a bit finiky about different machine playback even back in the day .

At about same time, weren't VHS machines, with the "proper digital electronics" also used to make Digital Recordings ???

How about the three competing LP quad formats: SQ, QS and CD4?

I remember being excited about the format, then the music industry freaked and threw massive legal resources against it. By the time they had worked through it, recordable CD's had made the whole thing a mute point.

I have some DDS 90m tapes that I recorded on my DAT in 1996 and they still play fine. I have no error indicator so they may be near death.

I used a sony portable for live concerts and bought a home recorder when they were new. sound was good but as you said they were quirky. dead heads used them until the mini disc came out and soon there after machines that used memory. far too many moving parts. sound was very good though

DAT came into its own for (high-end scientific) computing data storage. We used them for many years as they beat the other mag tape backup systems by a country mile. I'd never seen DAT used for audio, so assumed that it was developed for computing.

How about a piece on Elcasette?

Back in the late 80’s when it was introduced I was excited about it. Cost was an inhibitor at the time. Fast forward to mid 90’s Minidisc had been introduced. I was at Incredible Universe (remember that place)? They had DAT machines and the new minidisc recorder. I went with MD since the ease of the format sold me. I acquired a DAT a couple years later. I liked the higher sampling rate which sounded better from CD’s and records I recorded. Nowadays, the DAT tapes I’ve recorded sit untouched along with a stockpile of still sealed and degaussed blanks. Haven’t had luck in finding a reliable unit to enjoy these tapes. All is not lost since the material is already recorded to minidisc. I do miss the punchy audio from a DAT. Just my thoughts about the format:

I love DAT technology, I look for units that are "Untested" and buy them cheap, it's usually a loading belt that's gone, or a gummed up mechanism, I now have 6 units in my collection.

Fun topic. Amazing how much we would try to achieve a sound quality at least equal to vinyl and yet avoid the arcane fussiness of turntables and cartridges. When my 2008 iMac dies as my music server I’ll get a DAP and go on with more tabletop space liberated.

"And DAT would be DAT"? TBH I must have been sleeping because I never heard of either.

I never had a DAT, but I remember the Hifi press was excited about them because they would allow consumers to make digital recordings, and digital at the time was new and still considered revolutionary. Ultimately, consumer digital recording has been very successful, but it gained acceptance as something a PC can do, with no need for a separate expensive dedicated device, and on PC's it used CDs which were a familiar format.

I'm still enjoying my pair of Time-Code Sony PCM-7010F Digital Audio Recorders connected to a Sony RM-D7200 Dual Remote, which does 3 frame accurate auto edits. What's compelling is these professional recorders will record DMR streams and then the recordings can be copied via Digital XLR to strip DMR, which allows those recordings to be placed in computer. For the most part, I used these recorders initially to produce dubs of radio commercials my ad agency produced, which were FedX'd to radio stations. It was less expensive and time consuming than sending 1/4 inch tape. Then mp3 came along, which could be emailed to radio stations. Although mp3 sound was awful, being able to email it rather than needing to FedX DATs, made DAT obsolete. Nevertheless, the ADC and DAC functions of my Sony PCM-7010F's present music as wonderful as any of my late processing components.

There are lots of formats that come and go that are not necessarily without value. I don’t remember DCC, but every recording studio in NYC jumped on the DAT wagon and advertised that they could mix to DAT instead or addition to an analog 2-track. So the musicians wanted it and saw it as an upgrade from cassettes. Everyone was worried about the perfect copy from CDs at the time and kept fighting the advancements in technology. One of the benefits of a DAT was no tape hiss like on a cassette. It was quiet. Inky black, then sound. Great for direct to 2-track live recording. Also great for concert tapers.

in england, rave organisations lived off these things, got planty of rave cassettes from original DAT masters

In the 90’s, I used to mix down to the Sony DAT recorder pictured in your video. It had problems playing back its own recorded tapes never mind those from another machine. Playback would intermittently drop out accompanied by an audible relay “click” that I came to dread like a rat in a Skinner shock box experiment. I eventually abandoned it at a thrift store. Maybe it’s made a new life for itself somewhere propping a door open.

Get a spec of contamination on an,analog tape and you get a dropout that you may or may not hear. Do the same with a DAT and you get untold seconds of massive distortion or no sound at all. Plus all the additional things that can and did go wrong that you just didn't have with cassette or RR.

Loved my DCC and HI-MD

The 90s were a time when too many new formats entered the market. Myself bought a portable DCC recorder and was fine with it. Tapes were affordable and I still could playback my compact cassettes. Then DAT and MiniDisc and later CDR came out. CDR destroyed the consumer market but DAT had a short life in the (home)recording studio. For now it is all vinyl for me, I buy the occasional CD for in my car or if there is no other way of getting a specific album.

Holy crap I never knew that DAT can set didn't play in other manufacturers players. Good thing I never made that mistake. I did love mini CD though. Although I was never able to afford a good player recorder

Although they never achieved commercial success these machines were INVALUABLE to the live music recording scene in the late 80s and early 90s. The problem of "generations" degrading in traditional "tape" trading were gone! The major drawback were occasional blips and drop-outs. Thanks to all of the tapers for their hard work and investments back then - the recordings live on today in the live music archive and throughout the internet.

Have you been living under a rock the last 10 years? You haven’t heard about the DCC revival? DCC museum? New fans of the DCC, old fans, new releases on DCC. Maybe in the 90’s it didn’t take off as hoped but ever since 2017 a revival is going on

I was considering DAT before I go into Minidisc.

Pioneer elcat?

I'm still wanting a deck to transfer to hard drive. my friends have thousands of shows collecting dust.

I just went to Mini Disc, and still have it in my theater space. However, CD-R recording really replaced MD, for me, in the Nineties. Like, someone said earlier MP3's really was the final thing that killed MD.

I think some of those failed because of the timing... Minidisc was a slow burn... The format did hold on for some time, but was killed of by mp3's i guess?

In its day, DAT was a fantastic advancement. In the early 80's I was a member of Edward Tatnall Canby's choral group "The Canby Singers" and recall recording an album of a cappella classic music at St. Johns in the Village. While Ed was best known as a liner note writer for classical releases for over 3 decades, he was also a well known audio writer and his performing group had done a few LPs for Nonesuch label. This was his first for the old Musical Heritage Society...it was also the first digital recording on the MHS label. The recording was done with a SONY PCM F-1 coupled with a VCR for data storage. Now that was an ungainly format that deserved its early death! I believe Ed recounted the challenges of that session and this newfangled digital system subsequently in his column at "Audio" magazine. In the next few years, Canby made great use of DAT (as I did, as well, with other amateur and semi-pro a cappella location recordings) as soon as we could get our hands on units. The DAT format really was the first truly portable high quality recording option for the common man. Sure, you could make a decent location recording with a truckload of analog equipment - or if money was no object, a Stellavox or Nagra portable reel to reel. I think the portable SONY TCD-D10 Pro DAT recorder was the ground-breaking unit the could compete for location recordists at 1/10th the cost of the haughty Swiss alternatives of the day. If Ed was alive today, I'm sure he would marvel at the sound quality that can be had for "next to nothing" with flash drive technology, ever smaller and cheaper digital circuits and microphone advancements. But you do have to work with what exists in the moment. When you think of some of the greatest classical and jazz recordings EVER, the cost of the hardware to achieve similar sonic results today is virtually absurd (now the performing and engineering talent are the rarer commodities)... for instance, you'd pay more for a microphone stand allowing proper mic placement (like a Shure S15A) than for the entire mic/recorder system i.e. Zoom H2.

I always did my digital recording on my HiFi VHS.

I still run a few DAT machines and love the format. DAT mechanisms were very fragile, the tapes were conveniently-sized but expensive and overall, DAT was never a thing for the consumer market. The RIAA debate didn't help either and made the format lose 4 years to gain the necessary traction. Also, only a handful of pre-recorded titles were ever available. Maintenance was a pain since the tape path could only be cleaned with a dry type cleaning tape if you didn't want to open up the unit and even then, damaging the heads was pretty easy. The 500$ sentry level units were of mostly low quality and reliability and the higher quality units did cost an arm and a leg. Sound quality was pretty decent since most DATs had good quality audio circuitry and great ADCs/DACs for the time. But after all, it was too little too late. Even though devices for portable and car use were available 🤷🏼‍♂️

The 90s is the peak of HI FI . They did not sell it for long enough ,. As we working up the ladder we had VHS HI FI with the VU Meters & level L R , headphone jack & MIC . If you can get one of these DAT with Tapes it would be easyer to use than VHS . A NI-CAM VHS will sound basically the same as DAT as DSP is used . I would have a DAT as Tape is my main format . These tapes are so slippy that there is almost friction proof and last many years as people still use them today , tapes are METAL .

Dat was huge in the jam rock scene for taping shows until hard drives became big enough.

Mini disc was probably more popular in later years. Sony promoted it heavily.

DAT was the standard in recording studios for transfers for years. Every studio has a number of them, mostly Panasonic SV3700 and later series. They were driven out by the record companies which send more time and money suing the public in the early 90s. All the labels were bought up by just a few large corporations and changed the industry so most successful acts were dropped if they had not monster hits for a while and they pulled away from radio preferring to promote by MTV which overnight killed radio, touring industry and recording. Typically, instead of investing in new artists with longer contracts they suddenly developed the 1 record with option deal and instead of teaming them with a skilled producer and competent studio, acts were given $25k and told to buy a Mackie mixer and some ADATs and record themselves. The 90s were the lost generation in recorded music and the industry never recovered. The labels blamed DAT and got all sorts of laws enacted to control DAT, assessing higher taxes on the decks and media. I was involved in the first album recorded with a standalone digital deck, a 3m experimental that we used to record a Santana album that fed both of the 2 machines 3M engineers brought out to California and mult'ed to our Ampex and Studer 2in analog 24 track decks. At the end we listened to both versions and decided the digital had promise but it did not lend itself to the way we worked for a long time to get the sounds that worked. The amble was released using the analog version. It would take a bit of experience with them to learn new tricks and techniques to be a dependable production tool. Besides they broke down a lot during those sessions. The 3M guys were sort of depressed because they were the designers. But they packed them up and trucked them down to Hollywood to Warners and they were used to record Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop which has a very dry sound no one had heard before, unlike the big band ensemble recorded all live as we always did with Santana, with up to 110 live mics in the live sessions. Those actually were a better test of digital than the Cooder album. Within a year or two, techniques to exploit the differences between analog and digital were developed independently by many engineers. The demand for CDs started Christmas 1984. I bought my first DASH format deck a PCM3324 in 1985 but never used it, I kept it down in LA where the scoring houses had the budgets to rent them for over $1000 a day. Analog for albums was still king so my 6 Studers were very busy cranking out a long string of hit records. It was funny, one project was for doing songs for a movie Back to the Future, that we wrote, recorded and mixed in 3 days in analog and it was taken down to LA by Steven Spielberg who had come up personally to audition the finished recording and they had it transferred to digital in LA...on my own rented out digital deck as a strange coincidence. That was a big hit as a single, Power of Love...the analog version. ADAT and DA88 format decks were cheap enough to allow every band and songwriter to play recording engineer/producer/arranger/performer by the early 90s

is that Larry David at the 4 minute mark?

Techmoan has already done everything about obsolete media

What was your content ? I got the subject, but ....

I have a major love hate relationship with the DAT format. Once upon a time in the late 80s, digital became all the rage and many musicians were excited about making digital recordings especially in "hifi" genres like jazz and classical. The cheapest way to do that was to make a live to DAT recording as a stereo mix. I built my career as a recording engineer on my ability to do a live mix of a jazz group that sounded really good. That's the love part. But the hate part was, as you mention, that the tapes and hardware were incredibly finicky. I had DAT machines in the repair shop on a regular basis and the machines were incredibly expensive also. My portable DAT machine cost $3500! All in all, the aftermath has been horrendous. The tapes are difficult to maintain and machines literally break on the shelf without being used. I was relieved when it was time to move on to an equally obsolete and infuriating format: ADAT and it's evil twin Tascam DA 88 which were multitrack digital machines. Again horrible to maintain and recover at a later date. I am envious of the younger engineers who never had to suffer with these terrible formats but yes, they did give me the opportunity to work with many great musicians. Love and hate. Thanks Steve.

Hey Steve there's a guy from England that pretty much does all retro stuff you might want to check out. I believe he goes under the name Teckmoan on his KZfaq channel.

Sony DAT vs Philips DCC something like Blu ray against HD dvd

Considering the marketing to consumers, DAT & DCC (along with HI-FI VCR) had too much going against it. With the industry concerns, the overall trade-offs weren't there. Similarly in several ways, just barely pre-CD's I walked into the Circuit City on Broadway in The Village one evening. They had just gotten HI-FI VCR and demoed Tina Turner - blew me out of my shoes, and I bought one. I had reel-to-reel, and did not own a VCR, and was in the habit of ripping LP's to get the mixes I wanted. The sound was unreal, but it was cumbersome and clunky, and head alignment was finicky. The deal breaker was mag tape - it was still the media touching something - wear & tear, plus accessing by track. For a typical consumer, the listening conveniences weren't there, and the recording capability wasn't important enough. Sound took last place in those arguments, especially when competing with the CD.

I have noticed everyday there are between 11-13 thumbs down on everyone of Steve's videos. No matter what the topic is,the haters are there. Presumably the same people since the numbers are always the same. Interesting these are chronological adults with emotional levels of a 10-13 year old.

I still use analogue cassette tape, metal, chrome & super ferric, to record LP's onto, to play in my studio/workshop, & they still sound excellent, but you need a top deck to get the best recording, on a top deck you will be surprised how good they can sound, but I still don't think they are audiophile sound quality, I've never tried dcc or dat.

DAT ended up being a pro only take-up for studios. Prior to that we mastered to PCM via F1 Betamax & dedicated PCM U-Matic. I guess the public saw nothing wrong with analogue cassette whilst the CD was an easy in-car take up. Minidisc did better in Europe than the US but by that time the public was probably more interested in newer TV & video technology such as DVD & flat screen TV's.

I still use DAT. I have many DAT tapes from the late 80's right into the 90's with many awesome 2 track masters, so I have to keep one or two handy regardless.

Why no love? Because they ate my masters.

Back in the day, I was excited to see the tech coming out. But what killed this tech, were the extremely high costs to purchase, lack of support from the music labels, & the emergence of the CD around that time.

My wife brought back a MiniDisc recorder from Tokyo. It was so much better than anything I found stateside. Another format that should RIP.

Bad timing, CD/ROM was in full speed the time this came out. However, I want to buy 1 of these, I like Tape.

DAT was hardly obstructed by record companies. So much so that after that experience Sony purchased Columbia to be able to release music in its new formats no matter what.

If a company offered a dat that met or exceded cd quality I'd buy it in a minute.

Although it's true that DAT was not a commercial success like the compact cassette, it's wrong to state it was a failed format. It lasted (officially) between 1988 and 2005 and became irrelevant when hard disk drives became large enough to make digital recordings on hard drives viable. Being an uncompressed digital format, it's the content specs that matter - the medium for transfer is almost irrelevant. Pro recording systems turned into computers with multi-channel recording and many offered a DAT drive to record a two channel mix-down. In the pro world, it became pretty much a standard for distribution of master tapes and allowed lossless digital copies to be made. DAT decks are a bit finicky but the claim that "tapes recorded on one brand recorder don't play well on another brand deck" are totally incorrect and bogus. The recording standard is well defined and followed (and that's the reason studios used DAT cassettes for transfers) and has a robust error correction protocol that allows lots of lost bits before the output is degraded. However, it's sensitive to mis tracking (as any digital format is) and unless a deck is correctly adjusted and mechanically within specs, it may give out dropouts. I have tinkered with plenty of these decks, mostly SONY of course, and I can confirm that if they are given some simple servicing, they can perform pretty well. Not claiming DAT should be revived of course. We are in 2019 and if one wants a good quality recording, bit depth and sampling rates have increased at least twofold in the last years, so the format is not a good choice anymore. But for amateurs wanting to store music onto a physical format that won't deteriorate as fast as a USB stick will (or perhaps a CD-R/DVD-R), and play for hours on end without a need for a computer, it's fun.