So i found an old guy clearing out a station and managed to buy some audio gear, no boomboxes unfortunately but some good portables including this Denon DAT Player: Condition is extremely good, came complete with Denon power supply, add on battery pack (for AA's) and remote control. Works well and sounds amazing. I guess it'll need a belt at some point but i haven't bothered. Lovely thing.
That's a score and being lightly used, it's a major score. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of the digital era popping up on the forum.
What a find! I was recently contemplating buying a DAT "toy" off epay but for good ones they still ask plenty of money I'd say.. Even some DCC (extinct technology almost from its start) players/recorders I saw some went for silly money, IMO. It means that there are still fans or those who want to get acquainted. I wanted too (kinda "play/put on a shelf or throw away") but not for those sums.
The format never took off over here due to ongoing copyright litigation. The only real market was studios and radio stations and I have a feeling they still have them sitting on the shelf. It's a wanted unit with a limited supply. I think the other aspect is a lot of people want to digitize the tapes they had back then, my buddy has hours of radio station interviews he did with DAT that he'd like to upformat.
This one looks nice, very well kept. Interesting case desing too, sleek, modern but not in-your-face. You were lucky. So this one actually uses a belt? The two DAT walkmans I have (TCD-D8 and WMD-DT1) don't use belts from what I could see and what I read. If you have some DAT tapes left, you could have a fair share of fun with it. The sound quality of those things is definitely underrated.
I can't remember since I don't have a unit (yet) but aren't DAT and 8MM (video) tape the same shell and tape? I've only seen 2 maybe 3 DAT or DCC up close but it's been years.
Looking at it it seems DCC seem to have dimensions fairly close if not same to analogue cassettes(?), but DAT seem to have more height than width (generally higher than 8mm it seems), didn't compare dimensions by measuring though. On the net I found this comparison of DCC (left in the back) and DAT (right). But I guess I can't properly judge it with DCC, I never even got to see DCC tapes with my very own eyes, only on photos on the net. 8mm and DAT seem to be very close though, from the case they're sold in it could've fooled me. Reminds me how I once thought I saw DAT in a store that still sold them which turned out to be DV tapes instead. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
DCC was designed so that the same deck could play either DCC cassettes or plain old Compact Cassettes, so the dimensions are going to be almost identical. I always thought they got it the wrong way around. A cassette that would give better sound quality in a special i.e. DCC deck but still play in a normal cassette deck (as was achieved with VHS HiFi) would have been more attractive. Otherwise it is likely you would still need a normal compact cassette to play in the car etc. Using 4mm tape, DAT cassettes are smaller than Mini DV which uses 6.35mm. This isn't surprising given the larger amount of data Mini DV has to hold (about 15 times more than a CD). However, both DAT and Mini DV use Helical scanning and therefore have to pull the tape out of the cassette to wrap it around the rotating head, as did all Video Tape Players except the Fisher Price one. Therefore, both adopt a similar format. It wouldn't surprise me if the same team was involved in both. If you didn't know DAT is uncompressed so really will give CD quality. In fact before hard drive systems became viable many CDs were mastered from DAT, which due to copyright problems and the high price ended up being more a tool for Musicians and Recording Studios than the general public.
Great find ! The Denon badge suggests some extra attention to the audio circuitry. DAT users always seem to be happy with the format.
Sweet find, man! I just hope it stays functional, in light of what Techmoan said about operational issues that cropped-up with the portables due to trying to pack too-much into too-small of package at the very beginning of the format's life. The 8mm is a broader and slightly thicker case, so it won't interchange with DATs. However, I have found that do to a great number of visual similarities, it will interchange with 8mm data storage tapes. That comes in handy for those using 8mm camcorders, and want a "safety" of extra recording runtime. Think that's ironic? Watch the original English (British) version of the Max Headroom movie. While doing an investigation, Edison Carter finds and collects a videotape as evidence... an 8mm cassette, in a movie released at a time when only DAT was public knowledge! It's kinda like seeing the pre-recorded mini-cassette in Clockwork Orange! I remember an article about DAT before it reached the mainstream market... Due to it's 48khz sampling capability--compared to CD's 44.11khz--many record companies were "spooked" that it would do to/for CDs what advances in compact cassette decks threatened to do with vinyl: Allow rampant exchange of high-quality recordings, cutting into sales of original recordings. This sent up protests from the recording companies, in hopes of either ceasing production of DATs and related machines. Or, at least prod development of a "one-time copy" system into DAT recording hardware... so direct copies from one DAT to another can't be possible without introduction of a "contaminating" noise into second-generation copies, making them totally unlistenable. This makes me glad I got ahold of a pair of early consumer-level component decks, which were built before the first copyguards were implemented. Only one works, but once I get the other operational...!
If you get an HHB modified deck like my Sony they don't have the recording limitation for second generation copy, I transfer all my old original Reel To Reels to this format, which sounds amazing, at 7.5ips the DATS hold their own.
