DAT tapes....arrrrrggh! HELP

I tried to transfer some important material I've recorded onto DAT tapes onto a hard drive. One tape worked perfectly fine and the second one would not even play on the DAT machine.(Tascam) I tried a different DAT machine (SONY) and while it was a lot better there where still lots of dropouts and noises that sound like velcro ripping with a tunnel reverb on it!
I really, really don't want to loose this stuff (they are recordings and mixes of songs my little brother wrote before he was killed in a car accident in '98)....
Is there anything else I can try to save the tape long enough to just play it once and get a clean transfer?
Maybe try yet another DAT machine?
Thanks in advance,
Freddy

Yes, keep trying other machines.

Thing is, DAT machines have to be calibrated once a year or so. If you don't do this your DAT will eventually not play on other machines. It will still play fine on the original (uncalibrated) machine where it was recorded on though...

Also, a few drop outs can be edited out if you have a DAW. Just copy a similar (short) piece of music from a few bars earlier and paste it in position of the drop out...Apply cross fades, use really short pieces...

Keep trying different machines if you can, and transfer EVERYTHING as you play it. You may find that some sections drop out on one machine, but play fine on another while sections that played fine on the first may drop out on the second. Between the two (or more) you might have all the sections to edit together to make a final, complete take.

Also, I remember there was some kind of issue between Tascam's DA30 (60??), and pretty much every other DAT out there. Mine (I still have it) is a Sony PCM-R500 (I think that's the number) and though I haven't powered it up for a few years, I do remember it sometimes not liking tapes that were recorded on Tascam machines, so that may be something to consider.

Try as many machines as you can get.

JC

Try the smaller drum DATs like the Sony DTC series. We had a DTC 690 which would read virtually ANY tape loaded into it. Always our problem solving machine.

Peter

Freddy,

Sorry to hear about your loss. I lost my older brother to a car accident also, so I feel your pain of wanting to preserve these precious DAT tapes.

Sometimes you can misalign the tracking on the DAT machine to temporarily accommodate a poorly tracking tape. JC hit the nail on the head, and I can't stress the importance of recording EVERYTHING while you're doing this. It saved my ass while transferring some rare SWV recordings from a faulty tape just before it broke... Good luck.

OK thanks for the advice fellas...I'll try some other machines and record every time.
Freddy

[quote author="drpat"]...It saved my ass while transferring some rare SWV recordings... [/quote]
SWV???

...Stevie Way Vaughn...???

I dunno.. I got nuthin'

Keef

Stevie Way Vaughn...???

Click to expand...

HAHAHA in my best Elmer Fudd voice :grin:

If you know a technician who is familiar with rotating head tape path alignments, the infeed and outfeed guideposts can be adjusted to give an optimum head output envelope viewed on a scope for the particular tape you want to transfer. This will allow you to play these tapes, but will require re-alignment later to put it back the way it was. A benchmark tape should be made before anything is done.

Hope is not lost. I worked on a huge archive project to restore 30 years worth of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion.
Almost half of the shows were on DAT. I had Eddie Ciletti modify a couple machines to bring the eye pattern points out to rca jacks on the back so I could view the RF envelope on a scope. By tweaking the incoming and outgoing guide posts, I could get the audio to play by tweaking small amounts and watching the eye pattern. It became part science and part feel to get it right.
We used a Fostex D-5 machine as the guides are more forgiving for constant adjusments. Sony's tend to pop off or break more easily.
I believe the Fostex is a Panasonic drive mechanism.
The problems we had came from mis-aligned record decks that were beat up on the road. Tapes may have played back on those machines, but they were either long-gone or re-aligned at some point. By tweaking the guide posts we were able to re-create the bad alignment of the record deck and get them to play. Sometimes we would have to tweak it section by section and edit it all back together in a DAW.
You could try tweaking on your guide posts in very small increments while listening and see what you get. load this into a workstation at the same time in case you get lucky while tweaking.
Now if you had Beta F-1 tapes, I'd say you are hosed. Those, in my experience were impossible to get everything off in tact.
Good luck!
Scott

Yep, that pretty much confirms my opinion; the only thing is don't expect to see an eye pattern like off a CD player FOP, becuase it isn't really an eye pattern, just an FM envelope off the head amps - adjust for maximum envelope amplitude and flattest envelope shape.

Very interesting info. Especially the adjustments using the eye pattern procedure.
I've had to do a good deal of archiving in my time (library music mostly) and it's an eye opener when you find that tapes from 40 years ago play fine, but more modern stuff becomes a nightmare.
We had the Ampex debacle with the sticky binding (baking tapes in an oven etc.) and several other bizarre formats - even salvaging stuff from cassette. But what really got my attention was the mention here of Beta F1. What a nightmare!
When those tapes dropout - it's for like 3 seconds at a time. I spent a whole month transferring my F1 tapes in the 80's and that was bad enough, but thank God I did because now they would be unplayable.
I think I've been lucky with DAT tapes so far, but this thread is a good warning as to what might be expected.
When I ran a Mastering facility in the 90's we archived onto CD. There was a lot of discussion about archiving onto Exabyte, but can you imagine finding working drives now, plus all the indexing etc. etc.

CD R's aren't without their problems too. I have CD's recorded 8 years ago that won't play any longer. Don't believe anything you hear about archival life, because at this point anything is just an extrapolated speculation from the manufacturers. Only time will tell, and if you have anything worth keeping, tape still looks like the most time-proven medium for endurance of time.

IIRC, Doug Sax opined some years ago that metal masters were the only archival medium that would really last.

But hey, Philips said the CD was Perfect Sound Forever, so there it is!

You are correct Bill, it's not really an eye pattern. I guess I call it that out of habit. The proper RF envelope ends up looking (to me) like an ear of corn with the plastic holder handles poked into the ends. Maybe a strange reference, but I'm a born and bred Nebraska boy.
It's funny that the archive project I worked on was funded by telling donors that the Prairie Home archive of analog tape was deteriorating. It ended up being the digital storage that was the problem. Every inch of 1/4" analog tape was playable. Most of it didn't even need baking.
From my experience, I'd trust an analog backup for archive over anything I've seen thus far.

Scott

The only digital archival medium I can see as being long term stable is an actual Etched aluminum production type CD. Aside from deterioration of the polycarbonate plastic used for the disc itself, these should last for a long, long, time unless physically damaged.

The ancients used to etch rock if they wanted something to last for awhile. Interesting that we haven't come up with anything better...