Logging DATs...

[Kelly M. Pieklo]

Looking for some opinions here -

Have a client with 200 DATs, each has at most 60 minutes of audio. Would like the DAT audio to be converted to .wavs, named, and placed on a hard drive so he can access the files.

My thought is to load the DATs into PT, and export the regions as audio files, then rename accordingly.

The cost to my client, even with a serious discount, is going to be HUGE. I'm looking for a standalone alternative, assuming one exists.

Thanks in advance, y'all.

[Kuba Pietrzak]

Hi there,
if you rent 3 more dat machines, you record 4 tapes at once (4 hours of audio in 1 hour studio time).
I know, that in our public national radio there is Pyramix system used for such tasks. You can have several projects open at once, and you can inpependly use all functions, controlls, trasnport and so on...
This is not a standalone solution but might help...
Regards
Kuba

[Stuart P.]

Looking for some opinions here -

Have a client with 200 DATs, each has at most 60 minutes of audio. Would like the DAT audio to be converted to .wavs, named, and placed on a hard drive so he can access the files.

My thought is to load the DATs into PT, and export the regions as audio files, then rename accordingly.

The cost to my client, even with a serious discount, is going to be HUGE. I'm looking for a standalone alternative, assuming one exists.

Thanks in advance, y'all.

How are the files to be seperated? Are there PNO's to indicate where the breaks should occur. I saw no mention of timecode, what type of DAT's? Are these sound effects, or production recordings?

If you have a PC, there are programs that analyze the incoming bitstream from a DAT and automaticallly break up the recording according to PNO. It's information that's transmitted down Spdif lines in the bits between 17 and 24. Somehow, I don't think AES carries this info.

You can read about the technology here:

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/tms.htm

So, you could set one DAT at a time to record, and just batch export the files when it's played through. Not too bad!

Hope this helps,
Stuart

[jeremiahmoore]

Two ideas:

1) A stand-alone compact flash recorder.
I recently did a large transfer project for which I purchased an M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96, which has a SPDIF input. I ran several 2GB cards, swapping them out periodically. I babysat the transfers, and didn't have to tie up a computer. This worked great, though track/index markers were not an issue for that project. It'd be worth looking into whether some of the units on the market will break tracks via track ID over spdif.

2) CD-Recorder.
If your DATs are at 44.1 and not over 80 minutes in length, you could use a stand-alone CD recorder set to glean the track IDs from SPDIF. Then rip the CDs to WAV. Some CD-R decks offer sample rate conversion, but you'd have to decide whether to take the quality hit if you're in 48k.

-jeremiah

[DaveP]

You might want to contact Gallery Software in London. They used to make a product that would load Dats faster than realtime and would break up the tapes by ID. He does not make it anymore, the transport he used stop being manufactured. But he might be able to let you know who in your area bought one that you could rent. As I recall the machine loaded the dats at 2-4 times normal speed.

Dave P

[myke2242]

why not use four machines or more. connect them AES/EBU to your 192 i/0. record all for machines at the same time. so in PT you have your four stereo tracks running. you are only limited by the number of machines and AES/EBU inputs and DAT machines you own.

[TVPostSound]

That would be the SONY SDT-9000 DDS3 SCSI DAT (DATA). Using the special SGI firmware.
It would "rip" the audio from audio dats similar to CD and DVD ripping, using Dat2Wav