I have a DAT (digital audio tape) that I recorded about 7 years ago. The guy my friend was taking guitar lessons from wanted to record one of our songs, so we went in and he recorded it for free for us. But he put it on a tape and a DAT. Now I want to put it on cd or on my computer. I would rather use the DAT since it would be alot higher quality than the tape. Is this something that studios would still have and would do for me pretty cheaply? I don't know if DATs are still used or not. There are a few studios about 30 miles from my house. Has anyone done anything like this? Is the quality very good? Thanks.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Record DAT to a CD
- Thread starter bowens
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
DAT is still in use today for professional recording, especially for audio in movie productions. There are companies that offer DAT-to-CD transfer for a fee; put the words "DAT" and "transfer" into google and you'll find some. Christec Media is one that I just found after a 30 second search (but I don't know anything about them, so don't consider this a recommendation).
If you need to do this yourself, you can get the digital information from the DAT out of the S/PDIF connector that any good DAT recorder should have (coax or TOSLINK). I am not quite sure how to get this digital signal straight into a computer; maybe someone else can chime in here. If I had to do this with my current equipment, I'd use my solid-state digital recorder (which has an S/PDIF input) to convert the music into a WAV file, and then process it further to an audio CD.
- Martin
If you need to do this yourself, you can get the digital information from the DAT out of the S/PDIF connector that any good DAT recorder should have (coax or TOSLINK). I am not quite sure how to get this digital signal straight into a computer; maybe someone else can chime in here. If I had to do this with my current equipment, I'd use my solid-state digital recorder (which has an S/PDIF input) to convert the music into a WAV file, and then process it further to an audio CD.
- Martin
Recent Macs, including the OPs Inte mini, have optical compatible Audio I /O ports so you can just hook up the TOSLINK cable to the audio in with an adapter.AviationFan said:
B
balamw said:
I don't have the equipment (a DAT player or recorder) to do it myself. I just need to get it on cd. I was really just wondering if they were still widely used, if the local studios here would be able to do it for me.
I was just clarifying AviationFan's post in that it should be easy if you have access to a DAT deck with optical out, you're essentailly done.bowens said:
If local studios don't have DAT there are plenty of places online that offer this kind of service as AviationFan suggested. How much is it worth to you?
B
If he was nice enough to record you for free, maybe he could burn it for you too?
For him it would be as easy as pushing a button.....
For him it would be as easy as pushing a button.....
what kind of tape? are we talking cassette or 1/4" reel to reel? converters technology has come a long way in 7 years and you may get better results starting from those analogue tapes and converting anew.
just last month i did a cassette dump of an entire album into digital. this was a cassette which was:
1. over 10 years old
2. the only known surviving copy of the session
3. played many times over the years
i was stunned at how good it still sounded.
just last month i did a cassette dump of an entire album into digital. this was a cassette which was:
1. over 10 years old
2. the only known surviving copy of the session
3. played many times over the years
i was stunned at how good it still sounded.
one thing to keep in mind, is that dat tapes are typically recorded at 48khz, so if you can get it into your computer, record it onto a 16-bit, 48khz audio file, then resample it to 16-bit, 44.1khz before recording on CD.
I'm pretty sure Toast and iTunes will do this conversion on the fly, but you'll still want to make sure you're recording it properly from the start.
If you take it to a studio or transfer place, they'll probably know all that anyhow.
Lee Tom
I'm pretty sure Toast and iTunes will do this conversion on the fly, but you'll still want to make sure you're recording it properly from the start.
If you take it to a studio or transfer place, they'll probably know all that anyhow.
Lee Tom
Zim's right. The one thing you can be sure of is that the cassette transfer will sound no wore than the cassette, and you should be able to do it yourself (assuming you still have a cassette player).zimv20 said:
B