Re: RE: Digital Out on MD

[Travis Hartnett <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

The $200 used DAT machines aren't pro (balanced XLR connectors, digital 
outs, no SCMS, etc) portable units.  Think of the TASCAM DA-P1, that's an 
equivalent model to the MD recorder I was referring to.  But yes, $1600 
for any MD recorder seems silly.

DAT media flakiness: tapes getting eaten, audio dropouts, timecode going 
bad.       I don't think DAT is anyone's first choice for safe archiving 
of data.  People I know who use DAT for field recording transfer it to the 
computer ASAP and then archive to CD or DVD.  Which reminds me of the ugh 
of realtime transfer speeds.  Yetch.

TravisH

 >>In related news, I found a "pro" portable MD recorder, with balanced 
>> ins/outs and digital IO for...$1600.  For that money, I'd get a DAT 
>> recorder, 

>That's ridiculous. Used DAT machines, nice ones, are going for $200 or
>less on
>Ebay these days. Incredibly good deal for a machine that sounds great 
>with 
>no compression.

>> even with the media flakiness of DAT.

>What media flakiness would that be? I've used DATs for years and haven't
>had any
>media problems (aside from one DAT -machine- that had a flakey transport
>problem
>and chewed up a master tape on one session, but it wasn't a great model
>recorder,
>and it had a history of not being maintained, just what happened to be
>available
>at the studio I was working at).