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DAT (digital audio tape) The DAT standard (digital audio tape), created in 1987, is a digital recording format which offers 3 hours of digital sound on a tape half the size of a cassette analogue tape, with the same format as a compact disk or CD (44.1 Khz sampling frequency and 16 bits) It is the only consumer recording standard, not using data compression. This means that the entirety of the signal is retained. The copy of a CD is a real clone. Both DCC tape or Minidisc use data compression. The quality of DAT format is such that professional studios very quickly adopted. It was soon become the digital standard for recording. Moreover, DAT offers a comfort of use infinitely higher than that of an analogue tape. Thus, indexing of the tape and rewinding are extremely fast (50 seconds for a 120 minute tape) and facilitates the location and access to any place on the DAT tape. Purity of sound has two ambassadors: the CD and the DAT. DAT functions with 3 sampling frequency
In the case of the 48 Khz sampling, it is possible to obtain a quality of recording higher than CD. There also exists, on the majority of the machines, a LP mode (long play) which makes it possible to double the duration of recording, more than 6 hours on a 180 minutes tape. The DAT tape is smaller than a traditional cassette tape and uses a metal surface. The tapes are available in durations going from 15 minutes to 180 minutes. Many companies manufacture these tapes like Sony. |
